What gives Elite Athletes the Edge? | Janne Mortensen | TEDxOdense

[Music] [Music] you're 15 years old and you want to be the best not just the best you can be but the best in the world I can take young young talent and transform their talents I can make them perform on national team European Championships World Championships and take them into the Olympics so if you want to be the best of the best you call me well it's not the young athletes that call me it's their parents so would you like to know what I can say to a 15 15 year old that will make him or her into an elite athlete well first you have to know what I say to the parents so I got a call from a mom to a 14 year old swimmer he was very talented they're always very very talented like the best in his league but in competition he gets angry and every time he faces the pressure he goes into pieces and this mother felt so bad for her son he trained so hard I want him to perform so that he can feel successful can you help him so this is a mother who clearly understands the process of performance can you help my son perform that's what the mothers said but what parents do is often very different standing on the sidelines numerous times I've been listening to comments and questions asked from one parent to another and often in front of their children did she win how many goals did he score isn't she in the position for the national team shouldn't he be able to win the next game so the parent act as if the results are everything getting to that top of the podium getting the best grades coming in as number one all the questions I hear are centered on the result not who you are not your experience not what you've been working on not how you felt not your thoughts or your plan no all the questions are centered on what you have achieved or what you want to achieve so from a very young age this becomes our fixed mindset the results are what matters this doesn't work we have to change this we're here we have to flip it upside down for these young people we have to make them understand that this focus on results will ruin them and then they will never reach that podium anyway and this is terrible for me to say because the reason for parents coaches athletes to hire me is to get results so when I say I don't want to focus on results I don't even want to talk about results for a moment the parents will play nice they'll say yeah of course it's all about the process don't talk about the results but the minute I leave the room hang up the phone they're back asking the question so just how many goals did you score so they say they want one thing but they do another so I talked to the parents of a tennis girl 12 years old tennis family and these parents were so frustrated she's not motivated anymore and she's not having any fun when when she's training so I asked well if she's not motivated and she's not having any fun why play tennis and the parents were like well when you have committed yourself and you have trained so hard and the Danish championship it's within a month don't you owe it to the trainer and the club to compete so the parents are teaching the daughter two different lessons here the first lesson is that you have to finish what you have started and this is a perfectly fine thing to learn but the second lesson they're teaching the daughter is that you have to compromise what feels right for you in order to meet the expectations of other people when we focus too much on the result it is totally counterproductive there are so many things that are out of an athlete's control you don't know what your competitor will do you don't know if the Jets will be fair you don't know if the weather or an injury will slow you down chance coincidence luck plays a much bigger part that you would ever like to admit so when we focus too much on the result the pressure is immense we see the consequences of this result oriented approach everywhere according to the WHL by 2030 depression will be the biggest global disease mental illness makes up to 25% of Denmark's burden of disease and there is an increase in number of children that do not thrive physically or psychologically in school they cannot keep up what I see in my work is that more and more young people even children are showing symptoms of anxiety depression and stress everywhere they go they're trying to perform because that's what they think they have to to be good enough to be accepted and to be someone so here is the big secret you have to become someone before you can become something you have to become someone before you can become something often when we talk about becoming someone we actually mean having some kind of status by being that's someone but something like the young badminton player wanting to be the best badminton player in Denmark or a young athlete wanting to become a part of the youth national team so this thing you have to become or chief becomes far more important than who you become and this is not the right way to find balance when you realize who you want to be everything get so much easier because this will be your comp has to guide you it will guide you and show you how to make decisions all kinds of decisions but especially those decisions made under the pressure in the moment of brilliance so how do we find out who we want to be we try to find this in our work with mental training I am 100% focused on helping young athletes find out who they are in who they want to be together with the with the athlete we set up a group of individual values and we make sure that every value is very well defined so that the athlete know exactly what every value means to that athlete from there we analyze every challenging situation from the perspective of those values then the value will give the answer to the athlete of what is the right and meaningful way for them to act in different kind of situations when I first met Michael he was in school now he is a full time international badminton player at first Mikkel was struggling with keeping a high level of performance every time he faced the pressure he felt like quitting so he wanted to be able to continue even when he felt like quitting so we uncovered Michael's values and we found out that he needed to work on a strong willpower determination and focus on development so based on those values we made a game plan so with time Michael became conscious enough to be able during pressure to choose should he a act on his feeling and quit or should he be stay in the match follow his game plan and continue so because Michaels values were now aligned he was capable of choosing B now he had a higher goal than just winning the match now he was also working on what kind of badminton player what kind of person he would like to be so by focusing not on the results but on his values it worked and other athlete I've been working with for years is Caroline Caroline is a world-class para athlete she went to her first Paralympics in 2008 again in 2012 I followed her in 2016 in Rio and now we're working on going to Tokyo in 2020 caroline has done a question specialized in dressage when I first met her she was really frustrated about not getting enough out of her training with her trainer she felt like she spent so much time listening to the feedback of a trainer in her headset that she somehow lost the connection with herself and the horse so we found out that what Kell I needed to work on was that being more self dependent and taking responsibility so with time Caroline started to ask her trainer to communicate differently with her now she was very focused on always listening to the feedback her own feedback before listening to the feedback of her trainer she also started to structure her own training and she started to always evaluating herself first before letting the opinions of other people in today Caroline trusts herself and that is a very big step in order to accomplish anything to be able to trust yourself and listen to yourself firsthand working with elite athletes I use a three-step process something you can use to step number one what are the basic values you want to live by step number two how does these values look like in action and step number three consistently live and act by these values even when things get tough especially when things get tough and I know it's it's really easy for me just to stand here and like that in reality this means years of training hard work and mental toughness so the reality is hard the idea is easy parents can so easily undermine the work we do with the young athletes not because that's what they want to but because that what happens when maybe they're not conscious enough or maybe they don't know any better so parents choice of words and timing has such a big impact that's my problem too not only am i an elite coach I'm also a parent so last summer I was bicycling with my oldest daughter she had just learned how to ride her bike and we were practicing on using the brakes every time she used the brakes correctly I cheered I was so proud of her but then it hit me why was I only cheering when she did it correctly why was I not cheering every time she tried but failed and tried again this is scary this was what happened to me when I was not conscious enough it is so hard to break through from a fixed mindset and that's why I'm here today to remind you that my job all of our jobs is to help young people understand what's really important so if you want to inspire a young person in your life please help them figure out who they want to be so that they can make right and conscious decisions on what's meaningful to them before we can truly be something we all have to become someone [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 118,583

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Extreme Sports, Mental health, Personal growth, Psychology, Sports

Id: Y7J-WvrI4DM

Length: 16min 3sec (963 seconds)

Published: Tue May 21 2019