Amanda Reddin is the gymnastics coach of the three-time world champion Beth Tweddle, 26, the current British women’s senior champion, Hannah Whelan, 19, and the rising star Jennifer Pinches, 17
The mental and physical preparation to train a gymnast to elite status starts when they’re eight or nine. That mental preparation is critical to guide them through the hormonal changes they experience in their teens. Without the psychological tools, they’d really struggle. They can achieve elite status at 16, and used to peak at 17 to 18, but Beth [Tweddle] is proving that’s not always true.
Training is all about repetition: it’s a numbers game, and a girl who doesn’t have the mental stamina to repeat the same movements again and again won’t be able to make it. They train six hours a day, six days a week, with Thursday afternoon and Sunday off. It’s tough, but they know the graft expected of them, and because they want to succeed they get on with it without backchat. I spend more time with them than their parents, so am massively tuned into their emotions. I can tell if something’s bothering them as soon as they walk through the door, so inevitably my role is like a mentor at times, as well as coach.
They have a three-hour break in the middle of the day, and get straight on with academic work. Jenny [Pinches] is doing her A-levels, and Beth is always online doing some course or another. Academic work has got easier since they can contact tutors online, but it’s inevitable their school work is affected. Jenny will be sitting her A-levels during selections before the Games. I try to remind her that academic work is something she can come back to once this career is over.
Other countries have reputations for using tougher techniques, but this isn’t true. We have to compete in an international game, and the only advantage countries like China have over us is their bigger pool of manpower to choose from. Physical damage is a risk, but we’re much better at understanding those risks, and evaluating what a body can take, day in and day out.
The perfect height for an elite gymnast is 5ft 1in, and diet is a big factor in their lives. Limiting the calories and keeping protein content high during training is important, but when they are not training they can relax a little. Gymnasts used to be too skinny, but today they want more muscle as the rigours of training demand it. Boyfriends are fine, so long as they’re not a distraction. Being a gymnast takes a certain sort of temperament; you can’t be hot-headed and you have to be an absolute perfectionist. In the past I’d go for talent in a young gymnast, but now I’d choose a hard worker.
Caryl Becker is the physiotherapist for the British Olympic Association, and will be the chief physiotherapist for Team GB at the Olympic Games
During the Olympics it’s like a conveyor belt, with people in the clinic all the time. Treatment has to be fast but effective. I treated athletes on buses between heats at the last Games, such as a modern pentathlete who had to have immediate treatments between fencing and swimming.
Even a small injury can send an athlete spiralling downhill, so we work hard on reminding them of small gains, as building them up psychologically is part of recovery. If an athlete believes you can make them better, their chance of recovery improves massively.
The fact everyone is now more open to alternative medicine makes this job really interesting. At the moment there’s a fad for [taping injuries with] coloured kinesiology tape, even though there’s a lot of debate about how it works. We’re really open to ideas and something like acupuncture is now used by all of us, and has been for at least a decade.
We’re sent new technology all the time: ultrasound is still used but has largely given way to Bodyflow machines, which use different wavelengths to effect recovery by, for example, improving blood flow or reducing inflammation by increasing the uptake of blood to a muscle.
We’ll also use ice baths, or contrast baths, where an athlete sits in cold then hot water so that blood vessels open and then close to help improve blood flow and get rid of toxins. Athletes with unlimited budgets might use a more sophisticated version of this, such as whole-body cryotherapy, but the evidence that this helps recovery is largely anecdotal, although the placebo effect of helping an athlete believe he’s being aided through recovery can be powerful.
People can rely too much on technology. I believe nothing compares to putting your hands on someone and making them feel better. My hands are my most sensitive tool, and I can work out fast if someone feels different or wrong, which no machine can do.
Jeni Pearce is the head of performance nutrition at the English Institute of Sport. She works with a team of 16 performance nutritionists and exercise nutritionists, covering 30 Olympic sports
I think of food as science. To me it doesn’t look like potatoes and meat, but starch and protein. Different sports require totally different diets and attitudes. Boxers have to reach a certain weight to compete, and if they don’t they’re disqualified. Other sports like gymnastics or synchronised swimming, where the athletes must look light while performing intricate manoeuvres, are about weight management.
We help the athletes develop the cooking skills they might have missed out on in life due to their training. Food is always on their mind, so meals must be colourful and interesting to maintain interest either when consuming large quantities – there’s only so many versions of spag bol anyone can take – or when dieting. We get creative with spices to replace sugar, and use lots of fresh herbs and coloured veg, which are full of antioxidants.
We’ve developed healthy versions of junk, as everyone has cravings. A scoop of ice cream can be combined with fruit, instead of chocolate sauce. I joke with athletes that chocolate sauce is not a nutrient, but actually sugar per se is not a poison, and the glucose and fructose it contains can help an athlete maintain blood sugar levels, which is really important when someone’s training very hard. Fruit and a little bit of syrup is the best way to take sugar.
Elite athletes just cannot afford to drink alcohol, and avoid it by choice as it really affects performance and delays recovery. A single drink can psychologically affect an athlete, but also have bad consequences on biochemical and performance issues. Athletes know they have to make sacrifices, and alcohol is one of them.
At the Olympics the catering area will be a huge international supermarket open 24 hours a day, serving whatever an athlete wants, in whatever quantities, for free. Our challenge is keeping the athletes focused, because what they eat might mean their dreams may be over within days. For example, we keep boxers within five per cent of their ideal weight for most of the year. That requires loads of support and encouragement, as if they don’t meet their weight they don’t box. Imagine training for years, and then being let down by 50g of weight gain? It can be devastating.
Sarah Cecil is a sports psychologist, managing a team of psychologists for the English Institute of Sport, working mostly with track and field athletes
The most important thing I do is work with the coaches, as they’re the key to training a great athlete. Creating a winner isn’t just about understanding the psychology of winning itself, but about understanding what happens to your brain under pressure.
We can’t simulate the Olympics, but we can manipulate events in training to track how an individual athlete’s brain works. One tactic is to get them very scared early, then discuss what they’re finding scary. We might do pressure training by getting them to do a skill-based task when they’re very tired, or we might introduce the idea of consequence training to make the task more difficult, for example by giving them just one chance to achieve something and cut off the training if they don’t achieve it. Understanding how their brain works under pressure helps us to develop tactics that will help the athletes cope with the huge pressure of the Olympics.
I don’t think any one sport is more psychologically challenging than another, but each has its own unique demands. The 100m is over so fast there’s no time to dwell on it, but this brings with it intense pressure. A hockey player on the other hand has to dwell on their performance throughout a match.
Seeing circumstances as opportunities and not threats is key to winning. During a performance, such as before a heat, there are certain fast techniques you can use to instil confidence in an athlete. For some it’s about reiterating inspirational quotes from winners, for others it’s about recalling past great performances or breaking down the challenge into tiny goals.
We work with doctors to deal with memory when someone’s been injured, using techniques to make sure the memory doesn’t get stored in the brain. One technique we’ve developed is to encourage an athlete to play a computer game – even on a phone or BlackBerry – immediately after a trauma. We found if they used a computer straight afterwards, the memory wouldn’t get stored in the brain, and as a result the memory of that trauma doesn’t have the same emotional power to damage future performance.
The fact it’s a home Olympics will mean British athletes have more distractions. During the Games, and for at least a week beforehand, every athlete will move into the Olympic village, even if they live locally. I tell them that the best thing to imagine is that the Games isn’t actually in London, as they won’t have much contact with their families during this time. I’m sometimes asked if we give advice on whether an athlete should have sex before a competition, in the way you hear about footballers being given advice on this, but this isn’t an area of the athletes’ lives I’d ever talk to them about.
You have to work on your mental attributes as much as your physical performance. Athletes have to be very brave people who face their fears, and really understand themselves. They might not be able to articulate it eloquently, but they certainly know how to handle pressures most of us will never experience.