The Lead up to Nationals
The story of this years Nationals starts several weeks ago with a mounting fear internally that I was working beyond my capacity for too long a period. In the back of my mind I knew I was walking a dangerous line in terms of keeping my head above water physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. On top of this I knew I needed to start thinking about architecting my runway to hit peak performance at the National Championships.
Strategy #1
My first mechanism to manage my workload and keep an eye towards peak performance was a religious ‘internal focus’. Time that I may have invested in fundraising, speaking at events or telling my story publicly was turned internal – focused on a simple question “How do I survive this chapter that feels unsurmountable… And how do I go beyond that and find my best lifetime performance at Nationals?”.
Believe it or not previous to implementing this first mechanism I was feeling victimized by my story. I was barely getting my head above water – day after day – struggling to earn enough money to pay all the bills, find enough family time to feel connected, take a breath to personally find myself and train enough to improve at the pace required.
Strategy #1.1
In a state of controlled emergency I started to identify and dedicate the smallest increments of time and energy to activities that were I defined as “energy filling”. For example, I began spending 10 or 15 minutes in our garden after I got home after the long day, on my hands and knees weeding. Yes, weeding. This has becoming one of the most therapeutic rituals I have included in my life. I began reading a new book to Tash at night before we went to bed. And most importantly I re-instated my meditation and journaling practice – 10 minutes of journalling and 10 minutes of writing every night.
The impact of owning the inputs
Within days I was noticing a difference. A change in energy, mood, resilience and confidence. I began skyrocketing.
Then a breakthrough at the track.
Playing around with a couple of new drills to better connect the transfer of energy onto the discus I felt something complete foreign.
The sling.
The sling is the feeling that occurs when the discus gains speed and acceleration at exactly the right moment through the final peak of the throw. When done correctly “the sling” is what leads to the effortless feeling of throwing the Discus huge distances.
I had never truly felt this before and the moment I let go of that first throw my eyes widened.
What the heck was that.
It felt incredible, and the discus seemed to effortlessly pop out of my hand with a beautiful high trajectory. Rep after rep in this drill which only considered about half of the technical throw I began to understand what this feeling meant.
There was only one problem, I was 2 weeks away from the National Championships and I was having no success connecting the dots from the back of the circle and the connection from the drill.
Disaster Looming
Weeks turned into days and I decided to go and compete at a local competition 6 days before Nationals to see if I could put the pieces together.
It was a colossal failure. I managed to throw a measly 46 meters half integrating this new technique at best while forgetting all the other important things I have learnt. I quickly dismissed the meet as I knew it wasn’t representative of what I was capable of. A small crack of doubt remained open in the back of my mind however, I knew I needed to prepare to have a painful and disappointing Nationals given my progression.
In the days leading up to Nationals I added an additional 1-2 dry technical sessions where I could isolate and focus on the leading indicators to finding that ‘sling’.
Challenge in resilience & capacity V.1
The hours leading up to my departure for Ottawa Tash and I struggled with the realities of this journey. We argued and fought over the things most important to us in life – family and our own personal identities both individually and as a couple. Eventually we were able to come together and renew our vows to support each other, to love one another, and find a way to thrive together.
And then I was off.
Dedicated time & energy to peak performance
As I settled into my hotel I realized this is the very first time since last years National Championships where I have had 2-3 days to fully prepare for a competition. A reminder in and of itself of how valuable this dedicated time of focus and energy alignment can be. Imagine if I had been fine tuning this preparation practice all year – the thoughts of figuring out how to train full time were flashing in my head…
The next thing I knew gameday was here and I was preparing to head to the track for my event. Sure enough as we pulled up to the stadium thunder and lightning struck. Yes, literal thunder and lightning – along with dumping rain rolled on top of the track.
Challenge in resilience and capacity V.2
Rain is the single most detrimental factor for throwing discus. Rain is never good – it makes it nearly impossible to keep a comfortable grip on the disc, and the ring’s personality immediately transforms into into a slick and sly villain – stealing throws from competitors due to slips and falls.
As I walked up to the Discus ring the senior women were warming up and I watched as the first woman into the ring doing a couple of turn drills immediately slipped and slammed right on her back.
Not good news. On top of that, our event was delayed by an hour to 8PM EST, or 11PM PST.
The Art of the “Steel”
It was at this point that I started to realize all of the work I had done over the last year to “steel myself” was paying off. This concept refers to the ability of assuming a total singular undistracted focus – a mind that is impenetrable by intimidation, distractions or obstacles. As many others began nervously complaining and worrying about the rain I found myself throwing my headphones on, grinning to myself and finding a space to warm up.
Another huge test of this improvement was the fact that the two top Discus throwers in Canada would be in attendance this year, Jordan Young and Tim Nedow. These two are flirting with World and Olympic standards in both Discus and Hammer Throw – they are also both enormous human beings clocking in at 6’7ish and in the 280-310lb range (I also came to learn as I got to know them that they are great guys and fierce competitors).
The last time I threw against world class athletes down in LA back in April I was embarrassingly laughed off the world stage – I acted like a complete imposter and crumpled under the pressure and intimidation.
This would be a great test.
To round out the playing field along with Jordan and Tim the two competitors who had come 1st and 2nd in last years Nationals were also in attendance having both entered with better qualifying distances – I came into the event ranked 5th or 6th.
Nevertheless there was something different about this time. I felt calm, focused and excited to compete and throw. I noticed the stands around the discus pit began to fill up and this too excited me – if I was in luck these fans would be in for a bit of a shock as the “Discus kook” from Vancouver stepped into the ring.
Dissecting the Peak Performance equation
I go in detail about how I was feeling and what my energy looked like before the event because this is the biggest determining factor of performance in Discus. The perfect discus throw is one where complete zen like relaxation and insane aggression dance ballet together – it requires not only massive amounts of explosive power and focus but also the ability to stay completely relaxed and loose through 99% of the throw until the final burst – the 1 inch punch.
To illustrate this, let me ask the question – do you remember the first time you had to get up and give a presentation, speak in front of a class, or do something that felt incredibly uncomfortable? Your heart rate may have sped up a bit, you may have gotten a bit shaky, do you notice your breath shortening or becoming anxious? Well, this was exactly what I looked like when I walked into the ring to throw down in LA at my first world competition. I remember having gulps of water minutes before I was called up to throw only to realize that my mouth was going dry in a matter of seconds. I was in full fledged fight or flight – panic attack mode.
My best throw from that meet in LA, 42 meters. My worst performance since throwing Discus over the last 2 years – 8 meters under my personal best.
The test of a competitor
As we moved from the marshalling tent to the field I walked amongst the giants and those who beat me last year with confidence. I almost didn’t even know they were there. As I warmed up I felt smooth and confident – even after throwing one of my warm up throws into the net, a somewhat embarrassing event as the disc falls in slow motion down to the cement where it makes a crashing clang and the whole crowd groans – I simply picked up my second disc, walked back in the circle and completely my best feeling warm up throw of the event.
I was ready.
Stepping onto the stage & finding Flow
As I let the first throw go I knew it was a good one.
53.10m.
A lifetime personal best and 3 meter improvement over last year’s National performance. I chuckled slightly to myself as the crowd watching was clearly a bit shocked that this random thrower no one had ever seen had just snuck into 3rd place.
Through the rest of the competition I wasn’t able to better that 53 meter throw, but for the first time it wasn’t nerves or for a lack of focus which has plagued me in previous meets – it was fatigue. By the 4th throw I realized I was running out of gas – a consequence of warming up for too long and not taking the delay into account.
Before this meet I had thrown over 52 meters once in my life. My series at Nationals was 53.10, 52,30, 52.70, 52,10, and 51.90.
As I debriefed with coach Garrett afterwards he kindly informed me that my practice throws were significantly better than any of my competition throws. Another encouragement I took with confidence not disappointment.
The seemingly insignificant ‘everything’ moments
It’s funny when I think of 53m, it is such a seemingly insignificant number in the context of this whole journey. Even in the context of this season I think I am capable of increasing that still by 2 or 3 meters more. But I couldn’t have been more proud after that 1st throw. I was beaming inside.
And the reason is an important one. If I zoom out and look at this journey, the only thing consistent throughout it all is how I show up and perform every individual day. The energy I can devote to training, the ability for me to sustain the effort of having a full time career and helping Tash raise our family – and most importantly how I show up to compete.
And through the 6 weeks leading up to Nationals I painstakingly was able to work my way through each of those equations and yet again have the best performance of my life.
This, is what leads to a framework, which can be applied to any pursuit, any endeavour and frankly to our entire lives.
And that is why I do this – it challenges me day in an day out, minute by minute to learn how to become my best self. And the next 3 years will only lead to more of that.
And maybe for this journey it will be more than 3 years… Garrett and I started casually talking about if I make my 2020 goal, what would 2024 look like. 😉
We as human beings are capable of anything.
The journey starts above our shoulders.
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Living Life by a Simple Hypothesis
Sometimes I think we overcomplicate things in life. I find that when I live in tune with the hypothesis below, I am happy, fulfilled and feeling as if I’m doing my best work in the world.
I am at my best when striving towards a pursuit that intrinsically motivates me, is aligned with my values in life and challenges me beyond my comfort zone.
I refer to this state as “The Deep End” of life and I aspire to access this environment for as long and frequently as possible. Why? Because the opportunity it provides me for deep, paradigm shifting learning and growth is unrivalled.
I believe that over the long game of life — years and decades — this learning and growth compounds to create exponential value and results.
So far so good? Hopefully you can think of an experience in your own life where you have experienced the rich learnings from a dive way out of your comfort zone in the Deep End.
There’s one problem I have encountered with the Deep End, it is not actually where we capture our greatest learning and growth.
Let me explain further.
How We Learn: The Present and the Future
I believe our most significant learnings don’t actually arise when we are immersed in the present experience — but instead come long after, when we are intentionally reflecting back on our adventure in the Deep End. In my experience, 90% of my most valuable learning and growth comes through the act of pausing to reflect after the experience itself is over.
Had I not spent the time to intentionally sit down and think, reflect, journal, meditate and mentally deconstruct my experience – that learning and growth would remain trapped in my subconscious and eventually lost.
In a world that increasingly is too distracted, addicted to devices, ego driven, and without foundational framework or guide for living – we are losing sight of the art of learning.
Now let’s take a look at what we’ve learnt from the science.
Learning and The Conscious Brain
Our brain’s are incredible.
They are the reason we are here, standing upright, talking with others, and the dominant species on this planet. The brain has adapted and evolved over millions of years to help us thrive in this world.
Kevin Simlar and Robert Hanson, authors of “The Elephant in the Brain” make an argument that it is in fact this very ability to learn “post-experience” that has differentiated us from all other species on this planet. As we developed this capability hundreds of thousands of years ago to store and analyze past experiences we could update our set of actions to better optimize for survival. More on this shortly.
The facilitator of this capability for conscious thought and decision making is called our pre-frontal cortex (PFC). Whenever you are engaged in active thought — focusing on a new task, considering a set of decisions — this is your PFC at work. Unbeknownst to us, our brains have already done a lot of work in the milliseconds leading up to us forming a conscious thought. The main task is the parsing and prioritizing of millions of raw data points being collected by our brain via the brain stem at any given point in time. Before that conscious thought takes place our brain has already culled and stored 90% of the data it received and formatted the remaining 10% for our conscious processing in the PFC.
Here lies the gap.
When immersed in the present moment, we only have access to the information our brain deems most important to navigate the immediate decisions at hand.
This results in the “surface level” learnings and insights seen in the iceberg visual.
So, what happens to the 90% of information we don’t consciously get access to?
Accessing the Iceberg of our Subconscious
One of the most simple heuristics that has helped me understand how to access the iceberg of wisdom and knowledge hidden within our own subconscious mind is this:
As long as we are mentally preoccupied with an activity in the present, we cannot access our the iceberg of subconscious knowledge.
In other words, whether we are pursuing a goal in the Deep End of life, drowning in thoughts of stress and anxiety, or immediately jumping from one task to the next without pause — we are forgoing the opportunity to learn and grow from the depths of our subconscious.
Sidenote: Dr.Matthew Walker, author of “Why We Sleep” suggests that this also has a significant negative impact on our ability to fall asleep quickly and get deep restful sleep. By foregoing opportunities to pause and reflect throughout the day, our brain’s are forced to begin this activity just as we are laying our head down on the pillow.
Reflection & Inquiry
While we are only just beginning to understand the neuroscience of our brain’s processing of subconscious information, we have intuitively known the art of reflection tens of thousands of years how to access this information. The answer is simple and as a result is often overlooked.
Pause. Be still.
Quiet the mind.
Find Flow.
Rest. Recover.
Reflect. Inquire.
Slowing down, stillness, a quiet mind
A prerequisite to accessing the wisdom of our subconscious is the quieting of our conscious Pre Frontal Cortex powerhouse. This is one of the incredible benefits to breath-work, mindfulness meditation, and frankly any other activity that causes us to detach from our conscious thought — eg, going for a walk where you are simply focused on the awe of Mother Nature that surrounds you.
Non-Performance Flow States
Finding ‘Flow States’, or more specifically the act of being fully immersed and focused on a task that is intrinsically motivating, engaging, challenging and rewarding is another way to stimulate our subconscious processing. Inherently, Flow States are partially subconscious by nature (to access a Flow State you must have practiced the activity enough for our brain to have laid some “unconsciously competent” neural wiring) and don’t need to be performing a sport at an Olympic level. For example the walk described above (walking and general navigation being two of the activities with “unconsciously competent” wiring — can provide the right person with a Flow state). When it comes to using Flow States as a vehicle for subconscious processing I think it’s important to make the distinction between Performance Flow (intentionally using Flow to access a Peak Performance state) and Non-Performance Flow (fully immersed and engaged in an activity without the intention or requirement of Peak Performance).
Sleep
It turns out that REM sleep, occurring in the latter half of a full 7+ hour of sleep night (not to be confused with 7 hours in bed), is where our brains begin making ‘new’ connections between different streams of raw data that have been captured in the previous day. Compromise on sleep and you automatically lose this super hero power.
Reflection & Inquiry
Iceberg metaphor as it relates to conscious and unconscious learnings
There’s something about the iceberg metaphor that is staying on my mind. The most recent thought is the idea that every experience, adventure and journey we go on in life has the potential to represent significant learning and growth. Whether the outcome is good bad or ugly it actually doesn’t matter. As we walk through the experience we have access to the top half of the iceberg, the 10% of conscious learning that comes from the immediacy and present experience of whatever we’re going through. The problem, however is that it takes longer for our subconscious, which is capturing 90 to 95% of the information that we don’t consciously process to make sense of what we’re going through. This bottom half of the iceberg, the 90%, can only be accessed through intentional reflection, inquiry, And self reflection over time. When we choose to raise from one thing to the other, or to avoid the challenging self reflection that may come with failure, negative stories or deep scary vulnerabilities we lose and forfeit the opportunity to capture the 90% of growth and learning that we could otherwise apply to the long-term trajectory of our lives.
Where to from here?
If you want some help establishing your foundation, upon which you are able to jump into the Deep End, I would recommend taking some time completing this free Human Performance Assessment I have developed as part of the Human Performance Project.
Once your direction is set and you are up the High Dive or off into the Deep End, it’s important to build in intentional reflection time at different periods.
I founded The Human Performance Project to equip humans, teams, and groups with the roadmap and tools required to pursue audacious goals, dreams and aspirations in the Deep End of life.
You can learn more about this work here.
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