Strawberries and Pimms. Boaters and blazers. The entertainment and gazebos on the banks of the River Thames at Henley this week mask the tough challenges of Olympic-level competition.
Over tea with Steve Williams, Captain of the world-renowned Leander Rowing Club and holder of gold medals in the coxless four from the Athens and Beijing Olympics, I learn Steve’s take on building self-confidence.
“The start line is the most powerful place to be. This is where you need to be in control of your confidence,” Steve tells me. Of all the skills to race at this level, he highlights mental resilience as number one.
“The moment when you’re drowning in your thoughts is when you need to make sense of the mess.”
Steve’s journey from school and university teams to the glory of the Olympic honours as part of Team GB is not for the faint-hearted. His graphic tales of the physical pain to all parts of the body, the daily 5.30am alarm calls to a cold boathouse, and just one day off a month from training demonstrate the tough regime.
As much as Steve always desperately wanted and trained extremely hard to become Olympic Champion, he now sees that, in the early years, self doubt was eating away at his confidence and holding him back from achieving his dream. "I could see how Steve Redgrave and Matt Pinsent, with long arms and legs and big heart and lungs were 'born winners' but I'm just a normal guy. Even though it was just tiny, that self doubt was there".
Steve's first Olympic experience was missing out on selection for the Sydney 2000 team and instead he had to go as only a 'travelling spare'. A very painful time even now; Steve's lowest point was also the turning point for his career. He spent the time on the sidelines watching and learning from those that were winning Olympic Golds. "The most important thing I took away from Sydney was that not all Olympic Champions had superhuman physiologies - some were even smaller than me!" Steve came home with the mantra "Even normal people win Gold Medals" and all the barriers were gone. Nothing could stop him now.
Steve’s first major lesson in building his mental resilience was to truly believe in himself. “You need to be able remind yourself of how good you are, your personal best, when it gets really tough.”
Fast forward a few years. Steve was picked and succeeded in Athens (the medal is beautiful). Yet a few years later he realised that self-belief is not enough to continue to win. In the run up to Beijing, the competitors were catching the British team up until by 2007 they were dropping to 4th place in the world. “We could easily have lost all confidence.”
The plan was good; the execution of the plan wasn’t paying enough attention to detail – a second learning in building confidence. So the team re-aligned itself to one big, shared purpose: everything they did was geared to ‘make the boat go faster’. Instead of focusing on the massive end goal of winning at the finish line, the team set smaller milestones and measures until it could consistently race to half-way mark in record time – achieving its personal best of 1000 metres in 2 minutes 47 seconds.
Another key change encouraged all in the team to give positive, critical feedback. “Anything could be said, so long as it focused on our shared purpose – to make the boat go faster.”
Steve says that you can’t afford to have good days and bad days; every day, you need to be ready to receive the medal. By now, the team had bullet-proof confidence at the start of every race. “We focused on our personal best and went out to perform it like any other regular day on the river, the only difference was that, in competition, the stakes were a mile higher.”
Steve’s top tips for building self-confidence that we can all apply are:
- Develop your mental resilience through believing in yourself, knowing that you are good enough.
- Have a strong plan to win, yet execute it with attention to the smallest details.
- Get regular, critical feedback.
- Start every day focusing on being the very best you can be.
