Rugby and Surfing. What’s the connection?
What can rugby learn from those crazy surfers?
Pushing the boundaries of human potential is something that we all strive. Sportspeople are at the forefront of those boundaries and often exceeding. We can learn a lot from these sports stars, outside of rugby, that can be applied to our game. From tactical and technical standpoint, it’s important that we don’t progress in isolation, but alongside those various areas. We can also learn a lot about mindset and mental strength from the other performance domains. Perhaps the most intriguing is the world of surfing. These sports demand success. In fact, in most cases, you have to be at your best or there will be serious consequences including injury or death. So the people who are able to perform spectacular feats of athleticism in super high risk environments can teach us a lot.
To the outsiders it can seem impossible, how can people seem to manage their fears to be able surf outrageously big waves, keep balance and not let fear override your emotions? For most of us, the fear that we might experience in these situations is difficult to even imagine. In surfing, it’s almost obvious that the most common emotion that athletes must deal with is fear. It can be a hugely unpleasant emotion that paralyses so many.
Fear, or how we fail to deal with fear, can overwhelm and cripple when it comes to performance in extreme sports. So how do these people still perform when death is a realistic consequence of poor performance?
The pressure of taking a last second penalty kick when trailing by two points is one thing, but staring down at your own potential death is probably even more daunting.
Sports psychologists have examined these types of athletes and uncovered some interesting findings. Firstly, the way in which fear is spoken about as a healthy and productive experience. If these athletes are fearful, then in many ways, they know they are doing something that they’re passionate about. Fear as an emotion is normal. Allow it to exist and concentrate your efforts somewhere more valuable rather than trying to suppress it.
Feeling fear is a natural human experience, and for many surfers, they welcome, and often accept that if they are NOT feeling it, then something is wrong.
Believing that fear shouldn’t exist before you do something primes you for an avoidance mindset. Avoiding the activity gets rid of the fear altogether. So we get stuck, we live lives where we don’t do things that are new, uncomfortable or even important to us, because we think that we shouldn’t experience fear.
Taking this mindset back into our rugby world; imagine promising young rugby player avoiding putting himself in the position to make effective tackles in a game due to fear of injury. A traditional approach is to advise them to “not be afraid” or become “fearless”, try to push fear out of their brain (how many times does that actually work?).
Or we acknowledge it. Talk about it out-loud, become aware that fear might pop up every now and when it does, bring it along for the ride. Discuss what it will take to feel fear and move forward with what is important to them (such as improving tackling skills). We can welcome it, show the player that it means they are testing themselves, which means we are getting better at the game we love.
We can learn a lot from surfing, even if we don’t catch that 30ft wave. We can learn that if you work on developing a mindset that embraces and welcomes fear, you can truly get the courage to go out and do awe-inspiring things.
