Taking Back Control of Your Potential: World Tour Pro Cyclist – Case Study

Context

Competitive cycling at all levels is hard. And professional road cyclists, both women and men, are renowned for their toughness in an unforgiving, brutal sport. The physical effort, the weather conditions and open, exposed competitive arenas, the crashes, the 1 in 40-200 odds of winning, the culture of riding through pain, low pay, poor working conditions, constant travel etc. Cycling is a hard sport.

So, anyone who knows anything about it, knows that racing success can’t only be measured by wins. Only a select few get to assess themselves against that criteria. Success can sometimes be just making the finish of the race, or having the ability and courage to attack in a breakaway which so often gets engulfed by an inevitable peloton. So, while all riders are in it to be a part of winning races, they all know that there’s so much more to being a great racer that only podium places.

The Observation, Offer & Agreement

I’d been listening to a World Tour professional cyclist’s public speaking for a quite a while and without trying, started noticing patterns in what he would say. He seemed to be looking for answers, searching for assurances. At a deeper level, I was actually wondering about his confidence and self-belief. To me, he seemed to be looking for clues for a way forward.

As I kept noticing this pattern, I increasingly felt like I wanted to do something about it. I felt like, in the right circumstances, I could help.

At some point, I made contact. I didn’t know him or anyone who did, so it was a long shot. Twitter contact, to direct message, to multiple emails. Emails where I told him I’d really enjoyed his interviews, which I definitely had. I also shared my observation and interpretation of some of his speaking, and asked if I was on the money or not. I told him what I do and therefore why I’d be noticing that stuff, and then asked the key question. Would he be interested in discussing this further to see what we might be able to do together?

He said yes and a few weeks later we met for the first time on Skype. I was in Melbourne, he was in Spain. It went well. He was friendly and open toward me while still sussing me out and assessing my credibility and whether he could benefit from working with me. A few weeks later, we spoke again and went a bit deeper; discussing what we’d work on, for what purpose, and what goals we’d direct our efforts toward.

We also discussed fees which I found a little challenging because I’d contacted him in the first place. I wasn’t used to targeting a specific client out of the blue, as a “stranger”, and then charging them. Key to reconciling this in my mind was asking him a question for commitment. How would I know if he was invested?I mean, I was there, keen, and had contacted him. I was prepared to work with him, but how would I know if he was committed? Clients needs to be invested in the process to get the results they’re after, and this begins right from the start. Asking this question was important and I remember him pausing for about 10 seconds considering it. His answer was to pay money, to ensure the work purpose, accountability and professionalism. We were away.

What Did He Want?

He wanted to win a race.

It’d been a long time since his last individual victory and he was unsure if it’d ever happen again. His domestique team role, had seemed to, over time, dull his ambitions and focus required to get a great result for himself.

He backed up this goal to win, with the statement “but if I don’t end up winning a race, I want to at least know, at the end of my career, I got the most out of myself.”

The beautiful sport of road cycling is also a hard sport – and not only because of crashes.

The Start

We did our first coaching session where we further fleshed out goals and started exploring the topic. Toward the end of the session he said he thought he was looking for some sort of technique, and perhaps an assessment of mental skills.

In the days following, I continually felt dissatisfied (only from my own perspective) with how things went and decided to email him some of my thoughts and observations. I was able to clearly articulate, and it seemed to help because that opened up another conversation when next met about his commitment to, and confidence in, the project. We also covered how we’d work together, and what I was actually offering, compared to what he might have been expecting. This helped a lot and seemed to kick us off in a good way from then on.

Meetings

Initially I thought we’d meet session to session at set times, like most of my coaching relationships. But it was him who said it’d be helpful for him to debrief his races by either sending a text, voice message, or in live conversation.

I’m always up for tailoring my approach to what’ll work best for the client and I loved that he was guiding me in how to help him. We quickly settled into a routine of some longer skype calls, and daily messages both written and spoken. In this way, we were able to create some great momentum quickly. And because he was constantly testing his insights and chosen actions, and also getting frequent feedback in races, our working process and conversation were accelerated.

With the different international time zones, there were often times when one of us would send a message without receiving an instant reply. I couldn’t help thinking that often this was a real strength of this arrangement as it allowed both us to take our time to reflect and consider our response.

How To Get There

Now winning a race is a great goal because it’s so definite but, but a lot of it’s out of a rider’s control. No matter how good a rider is on a particular day, there may be other riders who are stronger, or you might have a crash, or mechanical problem…. the list goes on. And at World Tour level the field is often about 180 riders, so your chances are 1 in 180, less a few team mates.

Terminology sometimes used in sport psychology is the distinction between an end goal and a performance goal.

End goals are the final results you’re aiming for – in this case to win a race. A performance goal is an outcome, within your control, that gives you the best chance of reaching your end goal. The key factor here is that it has to be 100% within your control. Something that can be done and relied on every time without fail.

There are things we all want, and not all of It’s in our control. Directing where we place our efforts is critical.

We identified that “racing freely” was his performance goal. When he did that, he not only got good placings, but also felt satisfied with his race regardless. This was important because alongside his goal to win a race, he also wanted to know he was doing everything possible to fulfil his potential as a racer.

Racing freely was the ticket.

Defining It

If racing freely was the way, what did that look like to him, and how would we know if he was doing it?

The vision of racing freely was defined, explored, shaped, challenged and assessed. Once this picture was starting to take place and become more front of mind for him, his self-awareness of when he was and wasn’t, racing freely, became clearer. This allowed him to be more internally responsive in any momentof the race. To notice when it was flowing, or when his attention may have been elsewhere, and to be able to instantly and easily redirect direct his focus.

Things were going well.

He felt better, and to me, seemed like he was more in control of getting what he wanted. I was happy with my role and effectiveness, everything was going great and then… he went missing.

Gone Dark

I didn’t understand. Everything was telling me the relationship was flying and working really well for him. I didn’t want to impose, so I left it to him to reconnect. And for a while, he didn’t. I was still confused and unsure, so I made contact and he told me he didn’t have a contract with a team for next year, it was distracting him and he was wondering what was the point of doing this work when he didn’t know if he was even going to be racing next year.

So, he put us on hold. Which I understood, and was completely ok with.

A few days later it was still nagging in my mind. Normally, out respect for clients being self-determining adults, doing the learning when they’re ready, and engaging with coaches when they want to, I leave the ball in the client’s court. I do this as clearly as I can so they know it’s in their court, and that they’re well and truly capable of hitting it back when they want to. But in this case my deeper human instincts were telling me to do it differently.

I contacted him again, confirmed I understood his situation and decision, and then made him an offer without attachment. Our work didn’t have to be limited to bike racing performance. It could also extend to personal support, especially for navigating tricky situations such as he was facing. I often worked with clients in that way. Also, if he was concerned about finances re: next year etc., we could postpone payments, and when he got himself sorted with another ride with a team we could re-instate them then.

I think this was a bit of a key moment in our working relationship as he’d previously mentioned the confidence and self-belief he got when he felt others believed in him. Rapport, trust, respect, care. Genuinely wanting to help him be his best? I think so.

For The Purpose Of What?

Once “racing freely” became more established and active, it started to become obvious that a stronger purpose was required. Racing freely for the purpose of ……. We began to shine the light on his end goal for individual races. (To clarify, while his goal was to win a race, he wasn’t aiming to win every race he entered because sometimes he had a domestique team role to set someone else up to win, or sometimes the race parcours didn’t suit his strengths.)

His goals had been a bit ambiguous. A bit blurry. Which not only made it hard for him to aim at and know if he’d been successful, but also allowed wriggle room on his accountability to those goals. By the end of our time together he had a stronger appreciation for how detailed his end goal needed to be for him to realise it.

As the weeks went on, some strong and surprising performances (his words) started happening both with his performance and end goals.

He was beginning to feel in control of his experience.

By being more in control and having a raised mastery of himself, the chance of realising his external end goal of winning a race became that much more likely. His confidence had jumped. His tone of voice had changed. I was picking up more enthusiasm, curiosity and a sense of opportunity.

Canada

It was powerful learning for him when he rode two races in 3 days in Canada – Quebec and Montreal. In the first race, he had very specific performance, and end goals, and ended up racing at a level that, in his own words, “surprised” himself.

On reflection, I wondered if the significance of “surprising himself” was pointing to something deeper at stake for him.

I remember challenging him quite strongly on something he said he’d done very late in the race. I was wondering if his decision to jump across from the group he was with, to the rider out in front, had been a martyr mission and a way of self-sabotaging himself. But it wasn’t. In fact, he was completely satisfied with his performance. He’d not only raced freely, listening to his gut, but had raced without fear of what might happen if he made the move and it didn’t work.

2 days later with a different race and parcours less suitable to his physiological makeup, he struggled to identify a measurable realistic goal for the race. As a result, he reported that the race felt much harder than normal and his degree of satisfaction was much reduced. Almost like going through the motions.

In 3 days he’d learned for himself, something significant – the power of a specifically crafted and defined goal and the related focal points. And the better he crafted it, the better he raced.

My client had a powerful learning from two contrasting extremes, in races two days apart.

Added to all this, at an overview level, was a swinging from wanting individual line honours, to accepting, executing and thriving, on his team domestique role with comments like “it’s what I do best”.  When I’d notice these swings, (and in some ways, almost conflicting priorities) I again felt like maybe there was something deeper at stake for him… and perhaps that the idea of winning a race would act an indicator that something else more important had been achieved.

World Champs

My client was chosen to be in his country’s team for the world championships, and so began a brilliant opportunity to put his learning and emerging development to the test in the heat one of the highest level races of the year.

In a sign of the times I marvelled as we had our 2 coaching conversations in the week leading up to the one day race. I was from Australia on a surf trip in an Indonesian village at the time, he was in based in Spain doing his last couple of training sessions, and then preparing with his team for a race in Norway. Technology!

The interesting thing in these lead-up sessions was that he was experiencing an increased level of anxiety, and doubt. And he didn’t understand why. He’d done world champs before. Why now?

We were able to establish that from his improved goal setting, race focus and confidence, he’d actually set himself a more ambitious goal than usual. A “stretch” goal – he felt motivated enough to do that. He didn’t want to perform his team role at the same level as normal. He wanted to do it better than ever before.

As a result of this extra stretch and heightened self-set standards, a new type of uncertainty was arising. Almost like a thought of “I want to go for this but….. will I be able to deliver?” By identifying the emotion of uncertainty, and recognising the choice of resisting, or accepting this uncertainty, he was able to accept the feeling and move more into excitement. We also discussed how fluctuating feelings of anxiousness and excitement are normal when you care a lot and are really aspiring for high standards.

My client would get the chance to put his learning to the test in the hottest of fires – the World Championships

The day came, he raced and we debriefed the next day. He hadn’t reached his end goal of perfectly setting up his teammate to win, and he was frustrated with this.

However, in terms of him doing everything he could within his control, he was 100% satisfied. He hadn’t got in his own way at all, and had used his all his internal capacity to get the most out himself. His thoughts, attention and attitude had all been optimised. He’d raced freely, listened to his gut, and trusted his instincts.

And therein lies the realities of racing. On the day, he just “didn’t have the legs” to complete the job.

Sometime this can be an escape clause for athletes and people in general. The old “I just didn’t have it today…”. But in this case, as it was my client’s agenda we’d been working to all along, and he was the one who presented the problem, and he was the one who wanted to move away into new ways of racing, it was clear he wasn’t avoiding accountability to his own goals.

Which takes us to his original goals:

1. Win a race (i.e. an external end goal – in this World Championships example it wasn’t to win, but deliver a teammate to an exact location in the race).
2. And if he couldn’t do that, at least know he’d done everything he could to get the most out of himself (an internal performance goal).

A few weeks later he just missed placing on the podium getting a 4th. His highest placing for a long time.

After The Dust Settled

On reviewing our time together at the end of the season, I was unsure how he would feel about his situation. Despite his breakthroughs, he hadn’t won a race yet. To me it seemed that we were at the tip of the iceberg in terms of tapping into his full potential, and there was lots of exciting work to do. But then he surprised me.

He seemed to be at a place where he’d come full circle on his journey.

He was completely satisfied with his progress. He even said, “I reached my goal”. This was complete news to me. Maybe he had something in mind all along that we hadn’t discussed or maybe he discovered throughout the process what he really wanted. Either way he was good and happy to end our work together:

”I was a bit overwhelmed with the cycling world, and you brought a lot of perspective into my life and my thoughts last season. Not only did you help me understand how to control my thoughts while racing, but also you helped me find the passion again in my racing. You were able to help me to race on instincts again, instil that inner self belief to allow myself to race for the win. In my eyes, last year was a huge step in my career, at a critical point.”

So, What Did He Really Want?

Reflecting a while later, and though he never said it, I couldn’t help but think our work together had been an exercise in him shrugging off an identify that no longer worked for him, that was limiting what he believed possible for himself.

Seeing things differently based on new experiences.

And while he’d labelled winning a race as the goal, I wondered if it was more about knowing he could be different, be better, knowing that he could change, and that if he wanted, he had the capacity to do what it took to get a win.

Through his journey, he’d restored his hope. His perceptions of himself and his experience of his racing was back within his control. And he could see his potential as clearly as perhaps he once could in his younger years.

We all want to know that growth and expansion is possible for ourselves. That, if we make the choice, we can become more than we are.

It’s a choice worth making.

Scott.