By Russ Ebbets
Track Coach editor Russ Ebbets discussion the ordinary and extraordinary stresses that affect all athletes and how to deal with them.
When Floyd Patterson fought Ingemar Johansson the first time he got knocked down 7x in the third round before the referee stopped the fight. Patterson was “out on his feet” and some of Johansson’s blows were gruesome. When they asked Patterson why he did not “stay down” and save himself he replied that he was amazed at how Johansson kept getting back up, he thought, in his deluded state, that he was clobbering Johansson. Persistence, willfulness or simple stubbornness are all necessary, to a degree, to succeed. But we all have our limits. In the two re-matches Patterson KO’ed Johansson twice and proved to be the only man Johansson lost to in his pro career.
Six or seven years ago I spent a weekend hiking the Appalachian Trail in Vermont. I camped that night at a lean-to that had a number of SOBO or southbound thru-hikers with about 500 miles under their belt. Nightly campfire discussions on the AT are usually informative and can run the gamut from trail conditions to water to food to bugs. This particular night the subject was falling down.
AT hikers, to me, are experts in hiking. They carry their world on their backs and have reduced life to the bare essentials that they can carry. Most have learned to focus their attention on what matters, what keeps them safe and what they need to hike on. It is a perspective stripped of adornments or the need to impress but seemingly filled with satisfaction, friendship, cooperation and perseverance. Life on the AT is a world within the world.
To my surprise everyone at the campsite had fallen down that day. In fact, all noted that they usually fell at least one time each day. I was amazed. The reason falling down is an issue is that this is how most hikers get hurt and when you are five miles from nowhere any hurt can make a long day, a very long day. The general sentiment was, “You fall down, you get up.” Maybe that is too simplistic, even unrealistic but it is the reality all lived with as they took the next step.
When I was teaching, I taught a course on anxiety and depression. Actually, it was a segment on anxiety and depression that was a lead-in to a capstone technique course. For many it was not well received.
A significant number of third-year interns had already achieved the “expert” stage by this point in their education. This was not in reality but in their own inflated estimation. The common gripe was what did this veer into two psychological qualities have to do with a technique course? Having all the knowledge in the world and essentially no real-world experience explained the resistance, they didn’t know what they didn’t know.
Patient compliance is the biggest problem in healthcare. Anxiety and depression reduce compliance. I figured it was a good idea learning how to recognize situations that lessen treatment efficacy. What did I know?
Anxiety and depression are about a distorted time orientation. If one were to chart mental health on a timeline, depression would be the past, anxiety the future and a healthy state would be “here and now.” Depression is an obsessive dwelling in the past while anxiety is a sustained fear of the future. From time to time, we all spend some time in these states of mind. All this becomes a problem when “some time” becomes a constant state of mind, an invasive and pervasive crippling thought pattern that re-directs one’s actions in non-productive ways.
Fatigue plays a major role in both these states. I’m using fatigue in a general sense. Actually, one has moved past the simple day-to-day fatigue we all face at the end of a busy day or a well-planned training schedule to a state of overtraining—or worse a chronic fatigue state. The pictograph displays the devolution of one’s efforts that lead to chronic fatigue. (Figure 1)
Why does this happen? At a basic level there is an imbalance in the mind-body-spirit trichotomy (Figure 2). The mind (one’s wants and desires) has disregarded the sense of the body and continually drives on, disregarding the requisite rest and regeneration necessary to keep things on an even keel. Hope can be lost, lament and frustration arrive. Some give up, others re-double efforts but in either case the results are unsatisfactory. The tendency to keep digging just makes the hole deeper and deeper.
The cause of all this is stress, too much accumulated stress that the body cannot accommodate. For most people stress has only negative connotations. You hate your job, you married the wrong person, your kids are out-of-control or there’s a pandemic. But stress and stressors can also be generated from seemingly positive life events. Consider for a moment plans for a wedding, moving to a new city for a better job, the birth of a child, a new puppy or winning the lottery can create enough change (i.e. – stress) to disrupt the order of one’s life and result in excessive fatigue, anxiety, doubts and fears.
Making an Olympic team (achieving a life-long goal for some, or a life-changing goal for others) also can create changes and pressures that some handle and others don’t. While making the Olympic team in the 2-person kayak would be a great personal achievement it is probably not an event discipline that is going to land your picture on a cereal box, have you pitching national brands on TV or generate your own sneaker line.
The pressures of athletic stardom and celebrity were brought into focus with Simone Biles’ Olympic meltdown. It is difficult for the average television viewer to imagine the pressures she faced leading up to the Games. At 24 she is almost in uncharted waters in terms of a gymnast of her “advanced” age participating. Certainly, there have been older gymnasts, but they have never been the “star” of the Olympics. No longer was Biles the wide-eyed 15-year-old on her first Olympic team, realizing a childhood dream where everything was exciting and wonderful.
Biles had graduated to the “grand old lady” status with endorsement deals, photo ops and enough social media presence that her every move could be captured, chronicled and scrutinized. Expectations were not just high, they were off the charts, after all we are talking about the G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time). The pressures of her chosen lifestyle were overwhelming. She could not step back and rest and recover. This constant drain upset her internal sense of balance, literally and the “twisties” were added to the wider lexicon of sport.
The Social Readjustment Rating Scale has been used for years to chart the amount of stress one can manage healthfully. When one accumulates 300 points in a year the drama of those changes is so great that the majority of humans have trouble coping with all the new pressures and begin to exhibit aberrant coping behaviors such as impatience, anger, substance abuse, loss of focus, withdrawal, anxiety or depression that can degrade one’s quality of life. In a short period of time the odds are high that one will experience a personal breakdown. Scoring 150-300 points rates a 50% chance of suffering a health crisis and less than 150 points is generally accommodated with day-to-day coping mechanisms. (Figure 3)
Therapy, medication and personal changes may be necessary to weather the storm while one adapts to the new normal, whatever that may be. Another idea to keep the ship on an even keel is to dedicate two hours a week for you. Just you. Take two hours of unstructured time to do something for you – and not feel guilty about doing it.
I once read somewhere that 70% of Americans will experience some type of life changing setback in any given 10-year period. If true, that is a troubling statistic. On the other hand, you and I are not alone in all this. If you think for a moment about your network of family and friends, neighbors, religious institutions, civic groups and communities and even the support of social media (GoFundMe) all can offer a safety net that can soften the blow of turbulent times and help right the ship.
It is an unrealistic expectation that life is simply a smooth transition from one day to the next. It doesn’t work that way with training, on the AT or any other reality. Life is a journey with peaks and valleys, good times and bad. With help, perseverance and self-reliance one can weather the tough times, learn from the stumbles and relish the good times. Ultimately, we all need to accept the fact that the most important lesson from the “fall downs” is to get back up.
P.S. – If you have Netflix there is a fascinating documentary Untold Stories: Breaking Point that details the struggles of Mardy Fish, a world class tennis player. Of note is his rapid ascent when he lost some 30 pounds over the course of a year through “dedicated training.” To me it is a classic example of chronic overtraining (the will driving the body to exhaustion that led to his subsequent anxiety disorder). His newfound drive temporarily gave him some success but created a situation that became unsustainable.