The lesson from Biles’ withdrawal: Athletes are humans and need guidance

The Olympics have been rocked by the recent exit of Olympic gymnastics champion, Simone Biles, citing “mental health issues”.

After completing an event, her routine didn’t go as expected and she promptly withdrew from competition, citing her mental troubles.

Local media applauded her “bravery” and for bringing mental health into the spotlight on a world stage event. 

There is a lot of controversy around this because people are asking, if she had mental issues then why was she allowed to compete?

The United States sports program makes a nice living for the very best of psychiatrists, psychologists and mental toughness coaches, so why wouldn’t she have been exposed to counselling? 

The other controversial question in focus is, where was her coach in all of this, and why didn’t she pick up this potential problem before the Games?

Coaches and gymnastic athletes spend up to 45 hours-a-week coaching and training and sometimes more than seven-hours-a-day. 

Biles’ coach has been coaching her since 2005, which is a little over 16 years, and with that amount of time spent with an athlete, there is very little a coach would not know about an athlete. 

Pressure to win

The other factor that no one is talking about is that gymnasts typically retire in their late teens or early twenties, which means this could have been Biles’ last Olympics at 24-years-old. 

As a veteran gymnastic athlete, the psychological pressures of having to win gold for her country perhaps caused her to crack.

Sport is not always fair at times and successful athletes are expected to perform at their best all the time because there are so many engines behind the scenes riding financially on the back of their success. 

Whether it be an ageing athlete that cannot perform their best, coaches turning a blind eye or external factors placing immense pressure to perform, one thing that stands out more and more is that athletes need to be protected more, need mental conditioning and guidance counselling for their transition into retirement. 

It was an unfortunate event that occurred, but it has highlighted the important fact that athletes are human beings too and no matter what their medal count or success, still need guidance at the highest level. 

Most importantly, good mental health is paramount for longevity in any athlete’s career. 

Here are four things you need as an aspiring athlete: 

Mental Training Game Plan: 

1 Start with the fundamentals

Sporting life skills can be taught at a young age and teaching a child to deal with defeat, how to overcome adversity, how to deal with a setback from injury and how to be disciplined in training are valuable life lessons that every sporting athlete needs to learn. This can be taught by a qualified coach our trained councillor with a sports psychology honours degree. 

2 Learn to communicate 

The art of effective communication is a skill that can be taught. By teaching an athlete to communicate their feelings, it allows for self-rationalisation and for others to add feedback, input experience and guidance.  Internalising stress and feelings impact on health and mental stress physically and psychologically.

3  Book a Sports Psychology Assessment

Gone are the days where it is taboo to see a sports psychologist. An assessment provides valuable insight into understanding your strengths and weaknesses. There are an array of tests you can go for – the Wonderlic Test to measure intelligence, Sports Competitive Anxiety Test (Scat), Sports Anxiety Scale, Profile of Mood States (Poms) and the Likert scale, which is a psychometric scale used in a survey in which respondents specify their level of agreement to a statement. 

4 Find a Sports Psychologist 

Assessments are only part of the puzzle but with a trained professional you can achieve greatness.

They can help teach you to:

Set goals.

Conquer your fears. 

Understand underline problems causing you not to succeed.

Improve your mental clarity and focus.

Learn how to problem-solve.

Improve attitude. 

Learn how to block out or deal with verbally abusive coaches. 

Improve natural aggression for competition. 

Help cope with pre-game anxiety. 

Better channeling of aggressive thoughts and behaviors. 

Sport can be dark at times and if you are serious about taking it to the next level then you need the right people by your side who have the skills and experience to teach you coping mechanisms and techniques for real-life challenges.