Kriss Akabusi's Blog

Vision

“I want Gold,” said Dai Greene about the forth-coming Olympic games in London. (Source)

Athletes have absolute clarity around who they are and what they stand for. Everything they do is subordinated to who they see themselves as, in Athletic terms. A 1/4 miler behaves and thinks differently to a Pole Vaulter or Shot- Putter so knowing what your discipline is, is vitality important. I like the word discipline and the rest of my life has lacked this quality when put into comparison to my life as a world-class athlete. The vision to be world class as an athlete focuses the mind on making sure you do everything it takes in order to get there. Who you hang around with, the training you do, the competition you enter, the food that you eat will all be predicated on the clarity of the vision you have for yourself and your performance.

Values

What you are going to stand for is the next key. Am I going to be a consistent trainer? Will I love or loathe competitions? Is money more important that winning? Is winning at major championships more important than winning on the racing circuit? Do I want medals or records? Will I be meticulous in my training and eating or will I be happy-go-lucky? Tom Daley the young British diver fell foul of this thought process as far as his national coach was concerned. (source)

A lot has been made of Tom Daley’s schedule and whether he’s spending too much time with media commitments and not enough time training… What do you make of it all? Daley’s commitment to the Olympic Games was questioned by British Swimming officials, most notably Evangulov, Diving’s performance director. Evangulov likened him to Anna Kournikova, whose on-court achievements were famously mismatched with her off-court profile. Following those comments a meeting took place between Daley, Evangulov, and the 17-year-old’s management company and things have been smoothed over, everybody is happy but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating and competition against the worlds’ best is a very hard test! The world of sport is hard and the written medial even harder. If Daley gets it right he will never have to work again after the Olympic games, the media PR machine will ensure greatness resounds to the uttermost but he must get it right. If he gets it wrong I shudder at the thought of the scribes who may turn Pharisees.

Strategy

Roger Black speaks eloquently about our 4 x 400 metre relay gold medal winning team at the World Championships in Tokyo 1991; it was all down to strategy, thinking outside of the box, daring to be different, doing whatever it took to be ahead of the rest and having a good grasp on past performance and current trends. The Americans had been undefeated for the previous 50 years in the 4×400 meter relay event and they used to run from the front, take it out, stay out and win. Contemporary wisdom at the time held that in relay running you put your best man last (anchor), second best guy on the first leg and the rest in the berths in the middle. (source)

Margaret Heffernan has written a New York Times bestseller called Wilful Blindness in which she warns the eagle eyed reader that, we “ignore the obvious at our peril.”

With in our athletic tradition it had become accepted practice that best athletes ran the anchor (last) leg and the next best would get the team rolling on the first leg, but a review of outcomes showed the British runners that in all actuality this tried and tested formula meant that in world class performance (for the preceeding 50 years) the USA would run out victorious while the rest of the world fought out for the minor medals in their wake. And so a new strategy was formulated that took the world by surprise and the Title champions to the Sceptered Isles.

Goals

Goals depend about where you are at in that moment in time, and each goal can become a stepping stone to achieving the overarching goal or meta vision. Check out this youtube clip recorded by myself a couple of years ago regarding the goals of young Olympians getting ready for their big moment.



Athletes have Outcome goals, Performance goals and Daily Goals.

Outcome goal- This year I want to make the Olympic Team.

Performance goal- This year I need to run sub 45 seconds.

Daily Goal- Today the session is… and I need to do…… and I did and I felt… and as a result I’m ready for my aforementioned goals.

Athletes have a selective memory around their daily goals taking out the positives and deleting, distorting or sometimes denying the negatives. This is not to say that they don’t notice rank bad performance but they will put a spin on it so that they will go out and put measure in place not to repeat the mistake again. By the time they get to the start line for the major championships all that is recalled is the many times they have beaten their competitors, ran faster than them, trained harder than them and earned the right to be champion of the worlddddddddddddddd.

So on that note I say to you, “Let the games begin.”