RU Sport Psych Podcast // Dr. Paul Wylleman

[Music] Kommen sælg i etetad er Abson, hverd 8 års nömede salfraðet elt hauskonnose regeik. Paul Willemann er klinisk og salfraðiður og profesorðið vri hauskonn í brüsser. Han er mjöl frumstðað fraja manna í hemi, kveð varða rannstodna og lis fertli í þróta volks og heltraðið nálkun í þálvun og Øppeltetess. Han er hverd fraja grinnar um salfraðiðlað fertni, antleða hælsoð og veljjan og þværa fagljjan stundin kveð árað eksyður það þvórsk og Ølumpjófara. Han er stáraðið sælfraðið og fyrða hólensk og veljjjó Ølumpjófaraðið sampöntin, men er lannasum ledaðið í þróta salfraðið og Ølumpjófaraðiðum. Og veit og tal Ørðum þvíðum raldgjóðum kveðnéja beigjóf stundin esnéð þvíð Ølumpjófara. Ørðum þvíðum raldgjófaraðið þvíðum raldgjóf stundin esnéð þvíðum raldgjóf stundin esnéð þvíðum raldgjófaraðiðum. Ørðum þvíðum raldgjófaraðiðum þvíðum raldgjófaraðiðum þvíðum raldgjófaraðiðum. Hello Paul, great to have you with us. Can you begin by telling me about your own pathway towards your career, and what motivated you to embark on a career in sports science and research? Okay, well, no, thank you for having me here. How many days do we have to talk about my own career? It's very simple. I mean, when I was studying at the secondary education, I had no idea what to do. And on television there was a documentary on sports psychologists. So in the 1980s, working with managers and going to the embellish the audience to do climbing and so on, like management training. And so they thought, oh, that's interesting, sports psychology. I did some judo and track and field. So I went to the university in Brussels, and there was no tutorial with almost students. And the professor was asking why would you like to study psychology psychology? And somebody said, I want to work with children. Okay, somebody said, I want to work with addicts. Okay, and you, I want to work with athletes. And I said, you're in the wrong faculty. You should be in sports sciences. I said, no, no, because I came prepared. I had an article in German about psychomotoric development. I showed him from way up high in the auditorium. This is a psychology. I said, okay, next. And by chance, we stood in the same elevator, and he turned around and said, oh, you're the guy with the athlete. Okay, you know what to do? I said, I have no idea. I said, you study clinical psychology. And at the end, you do your master thesis on athletes. And that's what I did. And that's how I rolled into sports psychology. And the field has developed rapidly since you started your path. And you've been on the forefront of it. Well, yeah, it has developed very rapidly, especially the last, let's say, 10 to 12 years. At the beginning, it was a really a challenge because coach thought, oh, you're trying to take out of my job because mentally, I'm also the mental coach of my athletes said to coach. The organizations did not know what to do with sports psychologists. And the classical one was, oh, yeah, but psychologists for those who are crazy. So we don't need you except when there's a problem and then like a fireman or fire person will send you somebody. So at the beginning, let's say the first 15 years was really not a challenge, but you're really working very specifically now. It's going to the organization of the sports Federation or the Olympic Committee nationally or even now at the games, the Olympic Games, we have now what we call the function of the welfare officer, which is newly created by the IOC. And it's very important to understand it's a full accredited position, which means you have possibility to be with your athletes, with your staff, with your coaches everywhere in the Olympic Village. And most of the countries will now have probably psychologists or clinical psychologists take up. So at that point, it really changed a lot. And it's now going from top down from the IOC International Olympic Committee to the National Olympics. And so in the next five to six years, it will be no discussion anymore that you have a sport or sport clinical psychologist in your organization. Have you seen a change in athlete and coach's perceptions or attitudes towards psychologists? Yeah. And as I said at the beginning, it was really like a rivalry. We don't need psychologists because that's my job. And you're taking away my job. And I must admit that some psychology sports psychologists were too close with athletes and trying to do things that the coach should have been doing. So when I had the pleasure of working for the Dutch Olympic Committee, the Netherlands for eight and a half years, as professors, so they hired me in. And the question, the objective was really simple, organized for the whole country, a psychological support system. So they have five Olympic centers. And that was the challenge I got the wonderful with the support. And then the first thing I did was having master classes for Olympic coaches and pedaling coaches to just talk about psychology, what is psychology, what can we or not do. But more importantly, what can you as coach do even better with our support and not as working directly with your athletes or teams, but working with you. And that's why coaches said, OK, I can learn something from you that I can use tomorrow. Yes. And that's where the attitude of coaches changes. And sometimes they say, well, coach education determines how we psychologists can work. The more better coach education, the more coaches will see, OK, we can ask you specific questions. You can you will not try to replace me. You were going to make me stronger as a coach. And that's where I think the next cycle should be. We need to support coaches. And we're now looking at supporting the experts like the medical doctor, the physiotherapist, the nutritionist, because they all always have the same question. I want to change behavior. So again, like going through the codes that the coach feels like he still has the you know, or of control really is important. Well, as long as the organized sport, competitive sport puts the coach in the center, then it's useful to work with the coach. And I cannot see at this moment to replace the coach by somebody else. It's only when we talk about specific cases, for example, if there's a case with an eating disorder, then it would be nice to have the psychologist or the medical doctor as case manager. And the coach is in the team, but the coach do not take the lead because her or his skills are not at that level. So but in essence, the coach is still central. So why not make the coach stronger in what they do, especially with the psychology, changing behavior, and so on. And as I said, when I worked with the Dutch Olympic Committee, I saw the beginning were a little bit like, OK, we need to learn about psychology. I said, no, what you would like to learn is changing behavior of your athletes. So I did not start by talking about emotions and conditions. I said, what do you see on the pitch, what do you see in the swimming hall, and so on. And how can we change that behavior? So we're moving the coach away from being the all knowing, you know, unicorn to be in sort of a generalist monitor of people. Well, yes, but not to general because they need the skills to do this and they also need the skills to understand now this is a challenge. That's where I may now have the support of psychologists helping me, but not like, OK, it's a challenge. I call the psychologist you resolve the problem because the only thing the coach is learns is that the number, the telephone number of the psychologist and that's not where we were looking at. We could spend hours discussing all the various research topics that you've been involved in, but it seems like your work converges around examining and constructing systems, environments where the athletes involved are safe, nurture those persons and being prepared for top class performance. But this is why I want to embark with you on a journey sort of through the lifespan, the athletes lifespan from entry into sport through development achievement and an exit. So starting how should sport ideally welcome and inspire young kids at the initiation stage. Very good, very good question. The point and I need to take a step back why are we looking at the lifespan because lifespan is not something that you usually work with in training sessions or coaching sessions, but lifespan allows you to reflect on the development of athletes. And that's where the model comes in which we use its optimal development for maximum performance within mental health, those are the three elements. So you need to understand how your young athletes have developed, did they play sport, what's the support system they got from home, what are the expectations from parents. Do I as coach working with young kids, do I have the skills, do I know something about developmental psychology, how is the school looking at their athletic career and so on. So the lifespan means you need to look a little bit back to understand better what the next steps could be. But at the same time, that's the second point, we need to look at it holistically and holistically means yes, you are an athlete, but you're also the child, you're also a friend, you're also a student, you're also a different role you have. So we need to understand what the different roles at the same time are. So for example, you have a young athlete go into secondary education while the school will have an impact on training hours more or less on schoolwork on expectations from parents, so you need to understand the holistic levels to understand what the consequences may be for the athlete. So in the initiation stage where young children come to competitive or organized sport, it's good to have just a wonderful talk with parents, listen to the kids, even have seven or eight years, very simple questions and they start to talk and blah blah blah. So you learn a little bit about their background, what they are hoping to do in sport. So in that sense, I think the initiation stage for coaches is really understanding better the children and then have a good solid education to work with young children. It's probably to motivate their inner drive and two session towards the sports. Excellent remark, but not because children are always motivated, otherwise they're pushed by their parents and yes, they happen. And in my experience, one out of ten children will be pushed by their parents, but that's general, that's not for Iceland or only for Belgium, but most of the kids have the energy they want to move. They want to do things. So the energy that they need to do the training or the sessions is already there. Now it's good to understand what does it come from? Are you motivated because your best friend is here and you want to play together and do the same sport like in judo, for example, or do you want to become an Olympic athlete and that's why you go for swimming. Understanding what the energy and motivation comes from is much more important at the beginning than trying to motivate them. That's a great reply. I've coached probably a couple of thousand kids and I don't remember a single one who didn't try. You know, who didn't want to try. So that's a great reply. Moving into the development stage, what ages and how should talent development be introduced and where athletes must move from the sampling and stage to specialization? The developmental stage is actually the one where we talk about your entering and talent development program, generally run by the federation. So the initiation is the club level. Then you've got the talent development. It may be still in the club, but at a higher level, more training, perhaps other coaches, more competitions. One of the challenges I faced was if I look at talent development, I can give you one thousand articles about talent development. They all have a little bit of different view on what it should be. Is it physical? Is it technical? Is it physiological? Is it mental? Once again, we go back to the holistic. It's all of those. But what I did was I just asked the question to coaches in talent development. What is a talented youngster for you? Do not look at the literature. Just tell me what you think. And on average, they say, well, first of all, it's very simple. They show up. Really? Yes, they show up with motivation, with energy to want to do the things, even twelve, thirty, fourteen years old. Secondly, if I explain the exercise I'm going to do or the training program, they understand and listen. Okay, that's where also the coach needs to communicate at their level. But then thirdly, the extra level is we do an exercise, we have a little break, and then you see that the young athletes will try out new things, which we call creativity. And that's a sign for most coaches that they're working with talented athletes, not what they just reproduce, what the coach asked, but they think about how could I use this in another way. So an example from tennis is you could learn to do a backhand cross court. That's a direct line, bang, bang, bang, bang. And during the break, you see some of them trying to do it diagonally. They have never done this, but they try it out because they think, oh, that would be interesting if I could do. And for most coaches, that's talent, using their knowledge and skills to build up a little bit, an extra step. So we use this in tennis with a young players from 10 to 12. And the coach was asked just to explain the exercise, but not stand every second next to the place. And yes, this is good. So we did this and the young players were waiting. Now what do we do coach? Well, the explanation is there. So it started very difficulty because they were trained to listen to coaches and not to take initiative. And so when they started to do the exercise, suddenly you see that their development was more rapid than what the coach education program gave to coach. So at the end of that study, coaches said we had a couple of challenges. First of all, especially in tennis, parents were saying, but you as a coach are just standing and do nothing. Why do we pay you? There was a misunderstanding. Secondly, at the beginning, it was very slowly. The coach wanted to take action. We need to do this. No, no, wait until they take initiative. But thirdly, at the end of the program, the coach said they're coming now with question, which I cannot answer because that's already in the next level. So the development was going rapidly, more rapidly, and coaches were not prepared. So we actually had to give more coach education to lower levels. So when I go back to your question about Dalin development or the development stage, it depends really on on once again the organization. Is it in a school top sports school, for example? Is it in the club and in the federation? But I think it's always driven by what's the next step in the creativity and the self deployment. That's where we need to go because those are the skills they will need in the next stage, the mastery stage at the national level. At least who have only learned for 10 years to listen to the coach will have a lack of autonomy when they become senior and the coach is not there or they have to take initiative. So one of the things in the talent development stage is learning them how to think for themselves, analyze, come with suggestions with questions to coaches, but you need coaches to be able to do this and permit that to ask your questions. Not why should we do this, but if we do this this way coach, can we go one step ahead? That's the challenge. So once again go back even for the development program, the quality of the coach is essential in there. The final point is that's where parents become a little bit hassling sometimes because I can understand I mean it's like education also. You have your child go into secondary education, prepare and perhaps for higher education. And you want to have good grades because maybe a scholarship there may be I don't know a selection procedure. So sometimes parents get involved, over involved of counter involved. And that's where I come with my little average eight out of 10 parents are positive. As long as they have any information they understand you as coach what are you trying to do. Okay, that's fine. Do we need a little bit of money to support travel? Okay, we know we're prepared. Now number nine, that's different. Number nine, that's fine for the other eight, but my kid is a little bit special. Or I'm in a special situation. I need more support, more of your attention, perhaps more financial backing from the federation. Okay, we can solve this and generally after a period of talking with each other, it's resolved. Now number 10, number 10 is where the young athlete is deselected because of the parent. The father or the mother or the the guardian is so over involved wants to take charge of everything that the organization cannot cope with that kind of behavior. So the final solution is if we do not want to put the young athlete in the middle with deselect them. The only point is that sometimes we think because number 10 is that way that all parents are that way and that's not the case. So I don't want to spend too much time on talking about the parent involvement, but so we could agree on the experience that in most cases parents just want the best experience for their kids in sports. So it's probably the few difficult ones who color the whole thing badly. As always, in society it's the extreme negatives who sometimes spend the picture for the rest. Do you feel like there can be a tendency to focus elite sports environments more towards quantity of training and direction rather than the quality and play? Yeah, once again, an excellent question and I'll actually go at the end of the what we call the mastery level. Those are the elite level athletes who are doing the final, let's say two or three competition seasons and then prepare to retire. And generally they are at a physical level where they cannot augment once more more hours of training. And that's why you see that if they have learned to think about their own sport, as I was talking about with young athletes, they suddenly think, well, I may increase the quality of what I do without increasing the total number of hours. And actually the effectiveness is as great or even better than just doing number of hours because my body physically cannot cope with number of hours. So at the mastery level, the highest level, we strive to have athletes who think and reflect about what I'm doing, having a good relationship with the coach and talking about perhaps changing hours through a little bit more quality. And the quality can be in very, very small details, okay, but that gives confidence to the athlete that gives control back to the athletes and they suddenly feel opening a new door. Okay, I'm not at the end of my career. I'm actually learning to do more with my career. And that's where I think when we go from talent development into the highest level. So European, the continental world, Olympic, we need to help them to become much more empowered about their own career and then need information. A good coach, but also athlete education and a support from experts, not only in psychologists, the medical doctor, the physiotherapist, the performance analysis, suggesting how to think about their own sport. So that they take control of their own sport and that's where I think is the future of a lead sport. So we agree that 5,000 hours spent with you is better than 10,000 hours spent with me. No, no, no, really, I really love it, but 10,000 would be a little bit too long, yeah. So we get from transition from youth and development to elite sports in the mastery stage. You've been working a lot on dual career and it's a relatively new concept in Iceland. Combined sports and career in studies or working career and sports career for those who don't know. So why is it important to combine the two and make the athlete's study as well as two sports? Okay, it's a choice of words. We do not make them study. They want to study because they come from secular education. They think about vocational development, a profession perhaps after that career. So they want to be prepared. Now, if they want to be prepared by studying, how can we manage that they also can still do their athletic career? And it's not a balance. It's choices. Sometimes you can invest more in your training because there's downtime for studying or you have more online work you can do. Sometimes you need to focus more on your exams for one week or two and hopefully not in a competition period and so on. So I'm really surprised that it's not developed as long as we've done in Belgium or in other countries because we already started in 1980s with a dual career. And my career actually started after studying clinical psychologist by my best friend who was a professor who was asked by our vice chancellor. He received a request from a parent who father said my son is a good swimmer and the American university is now giving him scholarship to go to America. But the father who was a manager said that's fine, but why can't we do this at home? Why does he need to go to the United States, which is fine by the way, but why not? So our vice chancellor said, oh, really, we need to think about this. So my later boss got the task of developing a system for elite athletes, commit to university and how do you flex the flexibility facility? So as a university, we also did a research on this and we did the field was growing and suddenly the European Commission, the European Union, they have what they call Erasmus funding. Projects, suddenly they decided to have a seven year, a seven year program on dual career in a lead sport. We will totally surprised positively because Europe is not in dual career. Now the background was before they were thinking about the dual career of women in society. And how can we allow them to do a professional career and not just stay at home, because that's stereotypically not what we want to. But they said we have no idea how to do this. What are the models of the development? So somebody said, can we not do this in sport and learn from them? And that's how it grew in Europe and Europe invested millions of euros in very different programs in dual career. So going back to your question, do we make them study no, but we facilitate if they want to study that they can as best as possible combine it with their athletic career. And the same with dual career sports and working because not all athletes have a full time contract. So yes, the dual career was also growing, how can we facilitate that somebody has a part time contract as athlete but still has to work. Now from a psychology point of view, you would think, oh, that's too much, that's pressure and so on, to some extent, if it's not organized, it can become too much. And one of the other sides will break or you stop with sport or you stop with study, that's not what we want to. But we learned how to manage with our elite athletes at university, preparing them with workshops, time management, planning, support from parents and friends, from other students. And we've researched showing that if you're able to do something next to your athletic career, it defocuses problems. So instead of you have an issue as an athlete and your little fly becomes an elephant, you now have the possibility to focus on something else like the studying or your work part time work and it actually helps them to develop their own career. We see that in studying, our elite athletes have a higher grades than general students. And that they learn, and that's something I'm going to talk about tomorrow at the conference, that they learn what they learned in athletics to use it in studying or in other parts of their life, lifetime management, like communication, like relationships with the experts. So there's an added bonus if you structure it well and give a good support. So yes, Iceland, go for full dual career. And even if you're a world-class talent, you know, who's likely to earn your living as an athlete, isn't there also something gained by learning how to expand your knowledge and your life skills outside of sports? Absolutely, absolutely. And first of all, the fact that you have something else which motivates you to do something outside of your sport, it helps to defocus, it helps to reduce tension and so on. Secondly, most athletes generally at the end of their career are thinking, oh, what would I like to do? Or perhaps they are studying or they want to do something special? They say, well, I would like to be a beauticianist, for example. So the last two years I'm going to invest in learning that skill. I think it's good, but it would be better for their time management planning that we can plan it ahead. And that's where in Belgium, we already have a service talking to final year students at the seconder education, just talking about what would the end of your career mean? And you see those youngsters saying, why should I think about them, not yet even at the national level? No, but let's think about this. What would you need? What support? What would you like to do? And so on. So the career ends the retirement. The mistake is making, oh, the last day of Paris Olympic Games, that's where it starts. It should start at the beginning of your career, because you prepare, you have time, you have time to do your network and so on, learning skills and so on. That's where we need to go. So in essence, if I bring it back to one words, it's education. Plus athletes career, especially in professional and elite sports, it can be tedious, it can be, have a lot of challenges. So being a well-rounded person must be another bonus for you. I think so. I think that's what society is looking for. And that's something perhaps, and that's a point we worked on in the Netherlands. We sometimes do not look at retired athletes from their other skills. She was a gold medal swimmer and you stay gold medal swimmer for the rest of the year. But perhaps she is now a physiotherapist with skills, what working with athletes. But we don't see it. We see it as a formal athlete. So I think as society, we need to understand that most of our athletes in one way or the other contribute in another way to society after retiring. And that's what we call about identity development. We sometimes feel that athletes are only thinking about their own career, but sometimes it's society that pushes it back in their career. So we had a wonderful story about South European country. I will name which one. And they gave four positions in the bank to retire athletes. Fully paid. The number of years you were an athlete, you were also paid excellent. You had no specific qualities you needed. So wonderful. Well, after six months from the four and two on the left. And nobody ended to fool the air. And the bank manager went crazy said, this is the best opportunity. Everybody would like to do this. And you have four athletes not doing this. Well, some of them said, my colleague sports psychologist talked to them. And some of them said, well, we started in the bank the first day. We're sitting at the teller. So people clients come to you to ask for money or services. And they said, oh, but you are that well known Olympian. Yes, I am. Yes. And they started to talk with you. And then the second came, oh, really? Or you're that Olympian? So at the beginning, it was nice. But you're pushed back into your former athletic identity. And the bank manager said, yeah, but you're not working effectively because clients are not progressing. You're just talking to them and taking initiative like another one set of the four sets. That's a long time ago. Why not set with important clients, not at a teller, but at a table with coffee and so on, like we do now. And they said, you know, you cannot do this because of security. So their creativity of thinking about the job was stifled, stifled by the fact that the bank did not allow it. So from the four, the first two went back one to university to study one as assistant coach. And the two last ones, one started a new, let's say, a little shop. And one tried to get back as a former athlete. So why that story? Because if you do not prepare them, but also the organization for the retired athlete, you may say, you may see that it doesn't work. Not because of their lack of skills, but because of the society organization does not allow to do is. Could be forgiven for, you know, going into a duelist thought where there's two main schools of thought in talented element. One is the standard one where. Sort of the Anglo-Saxon tough and competitive and conservative athletes are selected through the pyramid process. The other one would be something that I feel is, you know, advancing more rapidly at this moment, the holistic method that you're talking about. Am I right in describing as this softly progressive scantinoric, Northern European holistic method that won't as many people as possible to be in sport for as long as possible. What are your thoughts on this? Well, if the Nordic countries do this, it must be correct. We are the rest of central South Europe, do not know what we were doing. There's a, and as I said earlier, there's I think an educational value of the how the Nordic countries look at development of young athletes or youngsters. And yes, they want to have all possibilities for everybody to do sport or movement, so because it's it's healthy, it's good. And sometimes they focus more on specializing in one or more sports. And that's what I learned early on in my career, that having the possibility to do some sports, different sports. When you're between age, let's say 8 and 10 11, it helps you to find for yourself what is the one I really want to do, what is the one where I really got support. And they develop skills that they need when they specialize because if you play, let's say soccer, you do cycling and swimming because the three sports you love, you have to plan this as a youngster, you have to go for the swimming and so on and so on. You learn skills when you then specialize for swimming, for example, you have learned time management by yourself, so you bring something. So doing more sports at the beginning is not only the physical, but also what we call the psychological competencies, which you can then use when you choose for one specific sport. So in that sense, I would not call it a soft model, I would call it perhaps the holistic model, which I think is an added bonus. It's very difficult to show this in research, because you cannot have an experimental group saying you can you should do this and the rules you cannot do this. So it's always a retrospective research. So it's a cultural thing, obviously. Yes. And I think when we look at cultures and especially health as a society, I think the Nordic countries have a very specific view. And for example, when we are preparing the Olympic Games, I was invited to join our medical staff. We have a little group of five countries working together. So our chief medical officer said, can you join us for two days, because we'll have colleagues from Sweden for no way and so on Switzerland. And we're going to talk about medical provisions for the Olympic Games. And one of the things I learned is that the Nordic countries almost, well, not almost, but do not use medication when they're sick. They have a multitude of, okay, we need to have and it's only my words, a more natural approach. While more in central southern Europe, they would say, I don't know, we need to intervene here. Okay. So perhaps something you can recognize, but that's something. That's it. And I was really surprised because I thought, oh, but if you want to have somebody not being ill, you need to give pills. No, no, you don't. Oh, very interesting. And why is that? Because we have the culture of, like you say, the positive and negative, the stress and so on, coping, learning. So it's, I think, a cultural attitude. So if you're asking young people to devote almost all of their free time into your sport, isn't there responsibility to do so responsibly? And are we preparing coaches and clubs to do so sufficiently? Yeah. Well, we need to go back to, isn't there like a duty of care? Yes, yes. And I wanted to say, well, let's go out on sport, let's go to education. If you're a parent, you will never accept that the teacher is not prepared, that the teacher does not know how to teach, that they do not take care of your child, even if they are 12, 14, or even a student at university. Or that they would say how that you for not doing something. For example, so in that sense, it's very logic that we also have the same demands for organized sports. And the duty of care, to some extent, was forced upon us because there were many situations, especially at the lead level, where things went wrong, very wrong abuse cases. And suddenly they have to introduce almost a law saying you're responsible not only for the development, but also for the health, the well-being mentally, physically, socially. So the duty of care came about after the London Games, the concept of duty of care, after the London Games 2012, where track cyclists were saying that they were forced by the coach and the managers of the GB team into, let's call it abuse situations, not sexually, but mentally and so on. And so after the Games, it was decided that really almost the government was saying we need to take responsibility and say that elite sport is not only about medals. It's first about the well-being of the athletes. Yes, of course, in view of maximum performance and medals, but not the other way around. And that's why the model we developed in London is optimum development for maximum performance and not maximum performance and we'll see how they develop, but within the mental health attitude. So the duty of care was actually a concept which was developed and had a great impact on some of the NGBs, the national sports covering bodies in the UK, because you needed policy, you needed somebody responsible and so on. Now, if I take it to the international level, the Olympic level, as I said, the welfare officer came about due to abuse cases, due to Corona, the mental health challenges in the Tokyo Games, not because of the Japanese, but because of the Corona, the pandemic, and the IOC decided we need to have very much specifically responsible for welfare. And not like we're going to wait until the Olympic delegation themselves choose this, we're going to almost put them forced, you have to have, and that's the system for Paris now. Every IOC, every delegation needs to have a welfare officer with a very specific responsibility on well-being. I won't say that's a follow-up or a consequence of duty of care, but the concept of duty of care is there. So we need to have somebody who's opening the eyes for possible cases where mental health is challenged or social health exclusion. It's not always about abuse, and that's perhaps one of, I think, a little bit of a skewed view we have now, welfare is about abuse cases. We know from research that, let's say, 20% of athletes, elite athletes, will be in some form of abuse. It may be mentally, socially, not always physically, but the 80 other percent is about development, positive development. So we need to avoid that we only focus on the abuse cases, we also need to understand the 80% what our dad needs, and so on. So the field of duty of care on our welfare approach will take time to develop. And I think in the Olympic Games and Los Angeles, we'll have a better functioning system. So Paris is really the first step. But I think it's important to have that kind of perception not only, but also system. Then again, to reach a level of high performance, you also have to assume that some risks are necessary to assume high performance. So that doesn't give more importance to the competence of the coach and the team working around the athlete, because you have to take some risks physically, even mentally, if you want to exceed your performance level. Well, let's go back to the philosophical point. Why? Because I sometimes say, I understand that these questions are raised in sport, but the questions are for you as a professional, also playing in your own profession. You're not an elite athlete, but you always have to think about, do I want to talk to this guy? This Belgium guy, well, we have a good podcast or not. Do I want to go somewhere else and work at an other radio station or whatever. So each of us and our development in society will have the same issues. We need to be prepared. We need to take chances. We need to have support from other people. We want to develop our own goals. So what we talk about in sport is not unusual. It's unusual because sometimes it's more in the media than in other domains. Your career, if I may say so, will never make the headlines. But the swimmer who's now in another country says, I want to stop and do not want to go for Iceland to the Olympics. That will make the headlines. So in that sense, I think we need to avoid to think that sport is the only domain in society where those things happen. So which means that what do other societies, other sections of society like education, like the military, like police, like professors, how do they tackle the challenges that their own members or professions have. And try to avoid that we only talk about this like it's only a problem in sport. And that's the same with abuse. So isn't it important that we develop in the athletes that they have ownership of their own career, that they are the ones, you know, sort of setting the course? Yes. At the same time, you cannot take everything in your own hands. There's an organizational level. There are policy laws. And the risks, you know, involved. Of course, but they are ready to assume them. But also that they have the possibility to prepare for those risks. Because otherwise it's very cheap to say, oh, you need to take responsibility. But we do not give you the possibility to learn about how to prepare. So that's something that we call about transitional challenges. If you go from secondary education as an elite, little to university, and you're not prepared to think about how do I study, how do I do a career. And the first year will be a challenge more than a challenge. So we need to prepare everybody. So yes, if we prepare them, then they should be able to take more responsibility, be empowered to do things. But our challenges, how do we prepare them? Now, you have experienced in building support teams around elite and Olympian athletes. Can you elaborate on the lessons that you learned, and what you emphasize in construction, these kind of teams? Broad question. So what I've learned is that we are now going through systems. And I'm talking about elite sport. And I must say, I'm also talking about Olympic elite sports, because the power Olympic system is different. And maybe we have a little bit time to talk about this. But if we talk about the Olympic system, we see that more and more organizations have now better experts, experts in the different domains. So the challenge is, how do you make them work together? So for example, as I said, eating disorder or challenges with eating. Is this now a medical issue? Is it a nutritionist issue? Is it psychological? Well, it's one and the same. In the case where we as experts need to talk to each other, to have a good assessment of diagnosis, and then determine what kind of support we need to do. Perhaps we first need a medical examination. And then perhaps nutritionists will come in at the same time, the psychologists will think about changing behavior and so on. So the step we're now trying to take is not having those individual experts, but make sure that they're able to work together. But the challenge is, of course, if you're an expert in your field, why should I listen to somebody else? So what does this kind of a team need to include? Like if you're building a team for the Olympic Games? Well, first of all, you need to have what the Olympic Games requires. You need to have a chief medical officer. You will have now the welfare officer. Those are the two required functions. And even for the welfare officer, it's not only stipulated what kind of competencies you need, or your mental health carrier recognized in your country, like a psychologist or psychiatrist, or you have done a course on safeguarding with the IOC. It's a little bit different those two, but for the rest, it's the Olympic delegation, your own country who will decide, do we need physiotherapists? Do we need physiologists, nutritionists, and so on. So most of the countries, well, certainly have at least more than one medical doctor. They will have some physiotherapist, not always for the same period. They come in for one sport, go out. Some may have a nutritionist, but especially at the beginning, for example, for Rio and Tokyo, you had a nutritionist flying in before to know what the diner would serve, what kind of menus, and so on. And then all the bases of that, we had the information when we went into the Olympic Games. You will have a strength and conditioning coach. Most of the bigger countries will have now in their own, what we call a lot, but the building where they live, they'll have a floor where they have strength and conditioning training possibilities. So you probably have one for all the sports there. The psychologist is now becoming, as I said, more and more accepted. So that's, let's say, the core team, and then you have other experts in the same field, but coming in because it's now a handball competition, and that specialist will stay until the handball team is out of the competition, all has reached the final. So you have a core team, and then you have other experts flying in, flying out. That's a little bit of the flexibility. What about building psychological support for athletes? What are the needs that must be met if we dive into that? Well, it doesn't start the day before we go to the Olympics. It starts long, long before. That's why most of the national Olympic comedies work with the federations who work with the athletes. So building the psychological safe support is actually something that is done by the national federations, or should be done by the national federations. What's useful is that we give them tools to do this, a framework so that not one does it completely different than the other, because it has to come together once again when they do a national team or an Olympic team. So most countries are now trying to work actively with the federations. What do we mean with duty of care? What do we mean with safe sports? What is the role of the welfare officer? You see now deploying very specific guidelines and sometimes very good tools so that federations can then work with their clubs and actually they should start at the beginning. So that's the transition period that we're working on. That's why the basis should come. If that's not the case, then the national Olympic comedy will certainly, let's say, six to eight months before the games, try to bring athletes together, although you're not always sure if they are selected or not. Some of the sports will only be selected, even what two or three days before the Olympic games, but they try to to bring them together with the coaches. For example, we have embellished the Olympic coach platform every month. We bring Olympic coaches together around one specific topic. One of the topics was how will we cope with heat if Paris becomes very or Marseille or Lille in the summer. The other one was on communication. The other one was on if expectations are not met. So what do you say your athlete starts the first day of the Olympic Games. Does not win. That's the end of the game. So post Olympic Games is not after the games. It may be the first day of the Olympic Games. So how do you cope with this? There's various different challenges that athletes are experiencing. And that's where I think the added bonus of experts comes in, not only thinking about what the psychologist should do, but also think about the broader picture. And that's why I was lucky to do this for the Netherlands and now for Belgium, thinking about the broader picture, not only for my field of psychology, but on the basis of the experience, what are we looking at? And sometimes I come with questions where they think that's not psychology. No, it's not about psychology. It's about the environment. It's about how we work together, how we prepare together. For example, normally when we go to the Olympic Games and it's not in Europe, for example, it has been a real Tokyo, but something happens at home. And you're there as a physiotherapist and suddenly, let's say your child becomes very sick. What will you do when you say I want to go home, when you stay? It's good to prepare a little bit not the decision, but to talk about this before we go, because at that moment when you receive the call and you were in Tokyo and saying, you're also child is very sick, is now in hospital, to make that decision at that moment is too late, too much emotions. So that's a point which we are now introducing and we did also with the Netherlands. It's opening the question about if something happens really very hard at home, how will you react and not only as athlete, but also as coach. As a coach, you're there, your team is progressing, suddenly you get the, as we had a message from home, your father is dying. - So training them for the possible events that they might encounter? - Absolutely, absolutely. And that's what I think that the added bonuses of having different specialist working together not on their own specialty, but on the concept of what does it mean to go prepared for the Olympic Games at the Olympic Games? What will we do after the Olympic Games? That's why I think that's the added value that we're now creating. So as the Olympics are only every four years, just this one month can be where everything is on the line. There's a lot of pressure on the athletes. How has this looked from your perspective? Well, that's a wonderful remark because it's totally wrong. If I look at my own specialty, so let's say that the first Games I did was Rio in 2016. Almost, I think one and a half years before, it was announced that the next Games would be in Tokyo. So one year before Rio, we actually went to Tokyo to prepare the Tokyo Games. At the same time, you have the Winter Games. They have the Utah Olympic Games. So in essence, almost every year you're involved in some kind of senior or Utah Olympic Games. So you're never working for one Olympic Games. So now we're looking at Paris, of course, but we already talked about LA further away Brisbane, the Milan or Cortina Winter Games, the Utah Olympic Games. The next Winter Olympic Games, which are not yet announced, could be Europe or outside of Europe, you're already thinking because that's in six years. These are the talented athletes. So what do you need to give them to prepare for those Winter Games and so on? So in that sense, from an expert position, you're never working for one Games. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you're just cruising down the road. What a wonderful Icelandic motor just cruised down the road. But you have to be very flexible and adapt. So yes, today we're going to talk about Paris. Tomorrow, we look back at the Utah Olympic Games. After tomorrow, we're going to talk about the Milan or Cortina and so on and so on. So what about Tokyo, where you had something totally unforeseen like in Covid? How does that hit you? That was a wonderful challenge because it sounds too positive. When I went to the Olympic Games with the Dutch Olympic Committee, most of the work when I was at the Olympic Village was with athletes at home front, because some of them were still testing positive. I could not travel to Japan. Even we had a coach and an athlete who were not able to come to the Games. And then how do you go with this preparing five, six, seven years? And suddenly, because your values are too positive for the Japanese or for your own country, you cannot travel to Tokyo. The second point was that with the pandemic, we had a case where we had, I think, seven members of our delegations, athletes and coaches, suddenly at the Games testing positive, not only once, not only twice with three times. And they're shifted out directly into quarantine hotel. So you're at the training session, suddenly your chief medical officer comes and we have your result, your tested positive, you need to go to the quarantine zone in the Olympic Village. They test you three times. And if you're still positive, they put you in a taxi and directly to court, you cannot go back to your room. You cannot go anywhere. And of those members of the delegations, we had one who was in competition. So it ends. And another girl, a skateboard. She was preparing for her next day competition. She couldn't compete. She had to stay in the quarantine hotel and watch at the on the computer. So those challenges is not something you're prepared for, but luckily, and not only me, also the medical doctor and someone, we have enough expertise to help them. But there was no scenario one year before the Tokyo Games. Let's think about quarantine hotels. So in that sense, I think experience helps. But once again, because we talk to each other, that's where you need to work with your colleagues. So in that sense, yeah, Tokyo was on the one hand, a very restrictive. On the other hand, I must say, some athletes who were injured, suddenly got the idea, oh, I've got one more year. Because the games are now one year later, perhaps I can come back and so on and some and some of them actually did. And we're able to get selection. The final point, and it's really, it's not positive, but it's a learning point, the lesson learned, because we are so restricted in what we could do with training. You could not have social interaction. You had to work on distance or online. We now have learned things that we used to do, which were not efficient, but could be more efficient. Do you have an example of that? Well, training your team. Do you always need your team at your service next to you to talk about tactical issues, or can you do a session online? Your athlete is traveling at the other side of the world. They're training there. Well, online you can follow, you can give feedback, you can directly work. Okay, it's a different time zone, but we have learned how to be much more flexible during the Corona period. One of the, what I feel one of the best coaches I ever worked with said, well, we're going to focus now on the mental development. I'm going to do workshops online. We have a web tool. We have the afternoon, so she worked with her team, and then in little groups coming back and so on, so she used the time in a very flexible way, very positively. I will not say that it helped, but it probably helped that we also want the gold medal. But sometimes it's not about the medal, but yes, it's sometimes related. So finally, like question about Iceland, we're a small country, and depending on who you ask, we either have very limited resources or highly optimal ones to develop competitive athletes. How would you suggest we prioritize our support for high performance athletes as a small country? I'm just a psychologist. What do I know? I brought you in to solve the big issues. Yeah, well, first of all, and I know it's a little bit baseline, but stop talking about small countries. Yes, there are the games of the small countries. Actually, it's a really competition. So smaller, countless separates, Belgium and so on, participate. Let me go back to the example, and I will not always talk about the Dutch, but you would say that the Netherlands is also, to some extent, a small country. It's not about smallness, it's about the dynamics you have in your country. And let me go to the final point of Tokyo. The final point of the Olympic Games is generally the Olympic medal table. So where are you? So you're ranked on basis of gold medals and silver medals and bronze medals. Now, in Rio, the aim for the Netherlands was top 10. They became number 11. It was not good enough. We Belgium would say, yeah, we're there. We need to improve in Tokyo. They became number seven on the Olympic medal table before bigger countries like France, Spain, Italy and Germany, with one bronze medal different. Now, how can you say that the Netherlands is small country? If you're seventh in the middle table, they have a system where the dynamic interaction in the organization of elite sport is really strong. And yes, it's not always the case, but sometimes centralization may help. The fact that you bring your experts together, that you bring some of the financial means together, but that you have people who are not incredibly better on job, but working for the federations with the federations, it helps to create the dynamic development. Secondly, to some extent, it's also culturally. The Netherlands, but also Belgium and other countries like Portugal, for example, in the 1700s, 1800s, they explored outside of the country in the world that learned how to be proactive. Yeah, we want to sell goods to Japan. We need to go to Japan in the 1700s with the selling boats. So the attitude of always trying to make it better helps until it's become too much. And that's perhaps a point after the games in Rio. And also in Tokyo, we're sitting in the bus on the Monday. So Sunday is the last day. The Monday we go from the Olympic Village to the airport. And one of our good colleagues, performance management sits through next to me and says, Paul, what do you think we can do better? We're just sitting one minute in that bus going home. I thought, well, sleep. And then I said, no, no, what can we do better in the next four years? I said, are you really are you joking? No, this is the best time to do it, he said. And that kind of attitude, looking not for the 1% but trying to lessons learned, analyze, and then perhaps have some suggestions of the 10 only one will actually happen. That kind of thinking creativity and so on always helps until they reach a point where even I, as a Belgium had to say to my Dutch colleagues, but you need to have also time to develop things. You cannot always look for new things. You also have to learn to plateau, then develop and then but that attitude of looking for new solutions, new little things. And then selecting now what we can do and you have the means and the expertise, it helps the system. And that's not only for sports, that's for education, that's everything in society. Well, Paul, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure having you here and yeah, thank you. No, thank you. [Music]