The spare room – train the brain

The last article looked at finding and building confidence during paddling; a few things can be done before paddling to get into the correct headspace and after to allow the focus to be on the right things for reflection.

Similarly to the previous article, these are a few things that you can have a play with to see if they can promote a positive mindset to allow your best performance. These are suggestions and should be looked at as such; if they don’t work, don’t feel like you have to force yourself. These golden threads could be vital elements to any coaching toolbox; same again, these are pointers; if it’s not working for you or your learners, apply a different approach.

Before paddling

Before getting on the water, many elements can fill up mental space, everything from home or work life to thoughts of the rivers themselves. I’ve had people that have filled their minds with the information from guide books in the past, including things like ‘must make portages’ to ‘a leaders test piece’, and this becomes a mental hurdle before the paddling kit has even gone on.

This before paddling time is also the environment where the super excited will be bouncing off the wall; again, this has the potential to bring everyone up with them or fill the mental space with unwanted thoughts. If the uncontrollable psyche brings everyone to a high, let it ride; if it’s not, either try and move away, block it out or strategically change the subject.

Building mental space

Use the time before to try and empty your mind; it’s often this mind full or lack of mental space that sees us forgetting that vital bit of kit or too full of worry to be able to think about the task at hand. To avoid the mind un-necessarily racing, the distraction tactic could be focusing on something simple like all my kits packed and in the right place. Vital elements of positive self-talk like I’m fuelled up, rested, and ready or the above point of either changing the subject or vocalising your feeling. If you feel comfortable enough to voice your concerns, you’ll be amazed at how many other people are in the same situation as you, potentially even the super psyched; it might be their smokescreen.

Coach’s top tip here, this is potentially the start of your course. Maybe there’s been the journey from hell for them to get to you; perhaps work or home life has been too much. Maybe it’s the morning of their assessment, and they’ve been prepping for months. Allow time at the start of your course to allow people not just to tell you why they’re there but also what’s been troubling them before-hand. For one, I wouldn’t be comfortable telling a new group of people information based on the latter, instead of creating a time where people can come and confide in you in a personal manner. Like before, if someone has confided in, you listen and do your best to understand. This doesn’t mean belittling or making it trivial, and this means listening.

Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please!

The right fuel before-hand can be beneficial too. Overly heavy or starchy foods can make you feel sluggish and down. Lighter food and fruit can be enough to fuel you up without these down feelings of lethargy. Feed the body and the mind. The same goes through the day; try eating little and often rather than a big meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Music is from the street, designed to make you move your feet

The music played on the way to the river can have a considerable effect on your mood; sounds obvious this but listening to the blues on the way to the river will probably act as a downer for some people; that downer wouldn’t necessarily translate to the best state of mind to push your grade/feel at your best. We’ve all heard of the boxer choosing the entry music that gets them fired up and ‘in the mood’, this fired up is what we’re aiming for. Maybe not in the same way as the prizefighter, but the principle is the same. Is there a song or music genre that makes you dance around the kitchen like a loon or puts a smile on your face? Listen to lots of that! You’re after the sort of music that lifts you higher than you’ve ever been lifted before (Jackie Wilson was on to something here).

Is there one song in particular? So long as it’s keeping you in the right state of mind, get it deliberately stuck in your head, turn it into the earworm. Try to keep it to yourself, though, as the ace of spades works for some, but if you’re more of a Toots and the Maytals kind of person, getting the other stuck in your head might be damaging.

Coaching tip here. Try encouraging the use of music; if there’s someone who’s finding themselves distracted or mentally full, ask them to try music association to their movements; if they’re still going all out, suggest something with a slower tempo/more chilled. It might mean you might not get any ‘hard skills’ in, but it could be enough to positively distract or stop someone powering around the river all the time.

After paddling

In the last article, there was a lot of information based around the then, and now, there was also information about the human brain and the irrational brain. Without realising, we can often listen to and remember the irrational brain. The last article looked at recognising which one is making noise, and this section will look at which one to listen to, remember and reflect upon after paddling. The first thing I’m going to mention here is that the inner caveman, ‘primal being,’ can find volume when you’re low on energy levels. If you can, do your thinking and reflecting when you’re fresh and awake and listen to both the human brain and the irrational brain, same as during paddling, try and use the human brain to reason with the beast. Hopefully, this gets you remembering what the rational being was saying and less from the caveman.

Coaching tip…

If you’re going to use a feedback session where the videos are analysed away from the environment (classroom, for example), make sure this is done when people are full of as much energy as possible. Before paddling rather than afterwards works well on our rolling courses.

The spare room

If you’re anything like me, your spare room gets filled up with junk, and things need throwing out to create space; I found a Beetlejuice wig the last time I cleared out the spare room. We often keep things of importance or things of fondness, photos or objects that bring back memories. My suggestion is to try and do the same with your brain; why fill it with junk and shut the door when you can keep it clean and full of fond memories.

To be less ‘hippy’ imagine that you’ve had one of those days where you’ve been progressing at a rate of knots, every move you’ve made has felt smooth and weightless, but at the end of the day, you’ve made one daft mistake that’s resulted in a swim. Which do you remember? If the ‘cave man’ gets their way, the swim gets put in the spare room. Eventually, there’s no space left and the door bursts open in the form of a mini-breakdown, strop or all your kit being put on e-bay. Instead, with reason and rationale (the human brain), why did the swim happen? Now that you’ve dealt with it and understand why it happened, it doesn’t need to go into storage. Instead, you can keep and frame the effortless and weightless feel you experienced during the day.

Coaching this can be quite tricky as we’re all used to focusing on the things we didn’t do well rather than the things we can do effortlessly. To encourage this above idea of training the brain, work with things like two or three things you liked and one thing you’d change. One of the coolest things I stole along these lines was the idea of a bin and a video camera. During the interactions (any part of the day, not just the end), the reflections from the day that get vocalised are put in the camera if you want to record/remember it or put in the bin if you want to forget.

Tracking progress

Apps like Strava have boosted people’s mindset towards running or cycling, often putting themselves on a leader board. This tracking allows you to monitor progress and try and beat personal bests. Unfortunately, there isn’t yet an app that does this for performance in a similar vein. This could be done in several ways, from the hard feedback of smoothly paddling the next step rapid or nailing that boof to the keeping of notes or photos and videos from the day.

Taking notes

Written reflections don’t work for everyone; however, the scribbling down of some high points and something to work on next time helps keep a record of progress; when you have one of those blisteringly brilliant days on the water, record what made it so. It could be as simple as a soul surf on a new wave that you previously thought was intimidating; jot it down, I surfed that wave! Mine was the first time I surfed the front wave at Shepperton weir on the Thames. A few months down the line, on your bad day (we all have them), when things aren’t working, and you’re tripping over your edges every time you surf the wave, you can look back and see the progression, even on your clunkiest of days.

Photos and videos

The photo and video thing are controversial. Their plus is that they don’t lie; that’s also their downside. Video coaching became all the rage a few years ago because of the interactive and precise feedback you can give/receive. The controversial part is the reliance on it for both learners and coaches that appeared. So long as it’s not a distraction or the decision-making factor is blurred (must paddle this rapid for the go pro/camera), then their uses are powerful. To get the most from the camera, evaluate performance and determine a pattern, in the last three vids I’ve seen this, I’ll see what tweaking does to performance. Once this information has been gathered and understood, be ruthless, delete them. If you end up with one or two videos or photos that you’re proud of, this is far more confidence-boosting that lots of videos showing the same thing needing to be fixed over and over again.

The highlight reel

These highlight reels from well-known top paddlers aren’t hard to find, and the footage isn’t hard hits and big swims; it’s all the highs and all the clean lines and good times. If it works for you, why not put together your own using the above-gained footage and put it to the upbeat tune that became your paddling earworm.

You can do this as a coach, too, make sure it’s agreed and that the learner is happy with it. It obvious this, send it to them and only make it public if they’re happy with that.

There we go, a few ideas and methods you can use to help build confidence and find the correct headspace. The big point here is these methods and ideas aren’t gospel; they work for some and not for others; find the things that work for you and concentrate on those. As you develop, these threads may change, and your motivations or home lives may change as well or become a factor that plays on your mind; that’s ok too, be as methodical as you can with your approach to tackling them.

My last thought (hopefully not a soapbox style rant) is aimed at coaching; venues are key. Previously my naive approach was ‘take people into the environment, and they naturally become more confident, simple!’ Utilise venues with many options and encourage people to ‘step it up’ when they feel ready and not before. This stops the feeling of being dragged, kicking and screaming into the next environment.

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