"Even those who flaunt, experience stress": sports psychologist Kozhevnikova about quarantine and its consequences

- The profession of a sports psychologist implies that a specialist of this profile should be one step ahead in any situation in which athletes and their trainers may find themselves. In connection with the current situation in world sports, what do you see as the greatest danger?

- This is primarily uncertainty. No one can figure out what to do, how long the quarantine will last, for how long one or another competition will be postponed. All this causes fear, and when a person is scared, he regresses - begins to act quickly, convulsively, automatically, if only to rework the current moment, without counting on the future. But we must act in exactly the opposite way: calm down, slow down, turn on the brain, begin to think rationally. In a state of increased stress, someone begins to eat a lot, drink, hibernate someone, or, on the contrary, a person for any reason breaks down to a cry.

It is very important to first lower the level of anxiety: reduce the number of incoming news, reduce time on social networks. Next, you need to try to refocus, remember that life is not only about sports. There are close and dear people, there is education, some other affairs and strategies.

Planning is very important here, but in order to start this process, you first need to ask yourself the question: “What do I want? Stay in the sport? Then I continue to train and use the opportunities that are, not in the hall, so on the street, not on the street, so in the apartment. Want to go to the next Olympics? Then I will take responsibility for this choice, and if it turns out to be unsuccessful, at least it will not be a pity, because I myself made this decision. ” Such plans allow you to slowly shift your attention from the alarming "now" to some rational actions aimed at the future.

- These recommendations are applicable, it seems to me, not only to sports.

- Naturally. It’s just that if an ordinary layman can stop and think about how to strategically re-plan their own future without hurry, then it’s completely undesirable for athletes to stop because they are all very vulnerable emotionally. As soon as people interrupt the training process, they are faced with a huge amount of discomfort that needs to be digested somehow.

The problem is also that most athletes and trainers are not very knowledgeable in matters of regulation and support of their emotional apparatus. They are used to supporting it through a constant high load, and when this load in the usual volume disappears, a wave of powerful emotions rolls in: fear, anger, confusion, and there is no skill to digest them.

“And as a result, people just lose time?”

- This wording is not entirely correct here. What does it mean to lose time when you don’t understand what to do? Just let's imagine a standard day for a person who is in quarantine for the second or even third week. He is already overwhelmed with anxiety. It seems like we should calmly continue to train, take sessions, do something else, but meanwhile it rushes from all sides that the sport will be closed and what then? Not thinking about it becomes impossible.

Therefore, it is now important, firstly, to continue to train, and, secondly, to reinforce yourself with additional survival techniques. Learn the same meditation, relaxation techniques that relieve bodily tension; be sure to find support in some kind of strong, adult people with whom you can just speak your emotions and how to wash them off.

Even cooler if there is a professional nearby who can put all your fears on the shelves: are you afraid because it is a real threat, or have you just never encountered anything like this before? As soon as the athlete begins to understand that nothing really terrible is happening to him, everything becomes much simpler.

- We once spoke with you that the majority of Russian athletes are not too independent people

“Well, yes, it is.” In addition, all of them are scared to take on something new. Athletes are professionally sharpened in this way: to do what works well, and to avoid what does not work out at all. They are scared to start learning simply because in their professional world a person feels grandiose and great, he succeeds with a half kick, and then you need to plunge into a completely new world and start from scratch. Therefore, a lot of uncertainty. Although it is very useful to get some new skill, plunge into some kind of training, show yourself that you can. Not to mention that this immediately sharply reduces the state of anxiety.

- It seems to me that what is happening can very much change the usual state of things, because those whom we are accustomed to consider as leaders can get confused and go by the wayside, and some of those who were not taken into account at all are capable of making great progress as in personal plan, and in sports, if you pull yourself together, evaluate the situation and quickly decide how to proceed.

- What is happening now is more likely to divide coaches, athletes, and managers, too, into two groups: either I will learn to withstand such delays, or I will deny them. Those who deny it are likely to become depressed. It is hard for them to go down from Olympus and begin to cultivate the plot humbly daily. For them, either all or nothing. These sufferings eat the resource, and do not give a way out of the situation. And people just lay down on the rug: "I do not want anything."

“That is what I call the words“ wasting time. ”

“I understand what you want to say, but in my understanding,“ wasting time ”is lying on the bed and spitting on the ceiling. Here we are talking about the activation of an internal “punisher” of an athlete who is not ready to compromise and broadcasts thoughts that do not contribute to survival: “I consider everything pointless, consider myself a freak, believe that I couldn’t do it, that no one can help me, that sports in general it’s become absolutely useless to anyone, but I don’t even pretend to other professions, and in general it would be better to fly to Mars. ”

You do not need to be indignant or edifying, saying that you are wasting your time. It’s extremely difficult for an athlete who finds himself in such a state to understand his own internal resources, it’s been hit in his head since childhood that he must cope with all his problems himself. Most of these athletes will still be silent until the last out of fear of seeming weak. And they just need help.

- Why are you so sure that all athletes are scared without exception? Why don’t you admit that people are simply happy that they have formed an extra two months of rest?

- Firstly, because I myself was exactly the same athlete, and I remember well how much internal panic caused any internal doubts: “Are we going to the World Cup or not going? Do we have money for the trip? And if God forbid, an injury? ” It is clear that this is my personal experience, but I have reason to believe that the situation is the same with most athletes. Those who flaunt, claiming that they do not care, actually unconsciously include denying and dissociative mechanisms that allow them to defend themselves. This only additionally indicates that people inside are experiencing stress in full, pretending to be calm.

“And the younger the person, the stronger the stress?”

- Rather, the opposite.

- Let's take a simple example: there are three unique skater girls, each of whom could become the world champion this season. But the competition was canceled, and now it is generally unclear whether there will be another such championship in the lives of these girls.

- Specifically, in this case, you are right. These girls are simply put out of brackets because they are such a one-time product as a rifle clip: one clip is shot, the other is inserted.

The vast majority of “normal” juniors who do not reach the adult level before the age of 21 experience calmer stress because, firstly, they are still largely under the wing of their parents, and secondly, because of their young age , there is no such distant look beyond the horizon: they don’t think about family, about their strategies, about how they get settled and how to earn money.

The concept of perspective for this age category is what is located ten centimeters from the person’s own nose. In any case, those juniors with whom I constantly work in biathlon are very calm about everything.

- Now in quarantine, do you continue to work with biathletes?

- Yes.

- What does it look like?

- Since our season was interrupted, I suggested continuing weekly counseling online, as we did throughout the season, and everyone who worked with me accepted this offer. Apparently, this is important for them. The current moment, according to my observations, they all experience quite soundly.

- You probably watched during the season what is happening in the Russian team? Don't you think that the entire Russian biathlon has turned into a huge stress area, on which units, to put it mildly, can survive?

- Any adult sport looks like this - it is very stressful both in a competitive form and in an administrative one. Yes, what a sport: any large corporation designed for the race to profit is exactly the same stressful organization. How the Russian Biathlon Union differs in this respect conditionally from Coca-Cola Corporation, I do not know. But I do not consider this to be some kind of anomalous phenomenon, rather, I consider it as a given. And I teach people to work with it correctly. Well, how else? Going from the junior level to the World Cup, where speeds are much higher - is that not stress, or what?

- From what happened in the adult biathlon this season: what situation was most interesting to you psychologically?

- I will not say offhand, but from the most recent impressions - I had a great interest in Martin Fourcade, who voiced the decision to end his career. It was very curious how this inner uncertainty affects the shooting.

- Unsure of what?

- Marten did not one day decided to leave? Such things ripen in a person for a long time, and this, of course, creates a completely different emotional mood than when an athlete is at the peak of his performance and gives everything out automatically. The person who decided to leave speaks very differently in the last year. In other words, Fourcade was already hard to catch the streaming state, when everything turns out by itself: running, shooting, speed ...

- For some reason I thought that you would remember Alexander Loginov. After all, after the World Cup and the persecution associated with that period, he also actually expressed his intention to end his career.

- I can only imagine how difficult Sasha is experiencing the current moment from an emotional point of view. I do not think that he is happy with this decision that it suits him.

- Believe that Loginov can really leave?

- I have no idea. I’m just saying that such a decision, serious or announced on emotions, is not made from a good life, but because a person is bad and doesn’t feel within himself internal resources to cope with it on his own, but he doesn’t have such a resource outside .

- And what does “resource outside” mean?

- Support. A conscious and thoughtful decision always comes from the so-called “adult” part of a person’s personality. Emotional and spontaneous - from the "nursery". It is not always easy for athletes to understand from which part of their personality they make these decisions. External support is needed precisely in order to somehow bring a person to awareness of their own actions.

- Why is this differentiation necessary?

- Good question. Then, so that the same Loginov decides absolutely deliberately whether to stay with him or leave. I think he should be very sorry for his work. If this work is forced to be interrupted long before its apogee, before its payback, this does not seem right to me.

- Or maybe it's time for Loginov to leave? After all, an athlete is extremely rarely able to clearly sense the border beyond which he is no longer able to show results.

“Why can't it?” To show good results for a long time and steadily is a skill in modern sport, and it correlates with a developed ability to process negative emotions. When does the athlete feel them? When he is under heavy training load, when he cannot achieve the result, when the body does not obey, when he is criticized. And what is the usual reaction to these negative emotions? That's right, avoid the situation in order to stop feeling bad. But it is possible in a different way.

Therefore, we teach the athlete to withstand anger during a high training load, so that he does not lose the load. We teach, regardless of defeats, to remain in the task until a certain degree of good automatism and the required stability appear. We teach you how to process discomfort: notice it, consider negative feelings normal, breathe, relax, focus - there are special techniques for all this. It's just that they are not very fast, because it is a matter of creating new brain structures.

The latter, by the way, always annoys trainers: everyone wants to see a quick result from the work of a psychologist. And emotional regulation, especially in the form of biathlon, takes a long time to build. But she lines up. When an athlete has this characteristic, there is no need to end his career at 28 years old ...