So how do we build resilience?

A mental fortitude training program was outlined a few years ago, identifying challenge mindset, personal qualities and a facilitative environment as key factors of mental strength and sustained success^[8]. Pressure Inurement Training aims to build the facilitative environment factor, creating ideal conditions for resilience growth. As the matrix^[9] below shows a facilitative environment is built from high challenge and high support; too high and/or too low and the environment becomes less desirable^[10]. A high challenge environment stretches people out of their comfort zones with high expectations and aspirations. An environment with high support provides athletes with assistance appropriate to their needs and enables and motivates them to operate effectively.

The general idea is to put someone under pressure similar to that of the competition environment so that when the race day rolls around, dealing with the stress becomes less of an issue as we’ve already built the resilience to deal with it - somewhat akin to how a vaccine works. If we can increase the levels of both challenge and support, resilience can flourish.

"Pressure is a privilege - it only comes to those who earn it" - Billie Jean King

Increasing Challenge: Demand & Significance

1. Demand

Increasing the demand of training (or practice) can be done by controlling the type, property and dimension of stressors. Below are descriptions of these components and a few examples of how they might be managed. It’s worth noting that a lot of this will be dependent on the individual perception of a stressor from a given athlete. One individual may find something more stressful than someone else. Athletes and coaches can get creative here in coming up with methods to increase the challenge of training.

Type: Here we are looking to find and apply competition-related stressors. It may be useful for coaches and athletes to split these into: mental, physical, technical and tactical^[11]. For example, competition stressors are often related to perceptions of inadequate preparation. Competitive training against higher-level crews physically and technically can simulate this (ie. setting up fixtures of a junior boat against a university level crew). Athletes will then be more resilient against potential thoughts of being on the back foot come race day.

Property: the race day presents a lot of novel situations that you don’t come across in regular training. Your warm-up may be more extensive, there will be a crowd and you’re nervous. For example, the media coverage and the infamous roll-call of Henley Royal Regatta is a unique part of the event and mimicking it before pieces, or training with cameras set up will reduce the pressure of these stressors on the day, as you are now resilient to it. Recreating these novel experiences of race day will aid in adaptation to the stress.

Dimension: this essentially just means how long, how often and how intense a stressor is^[12]. A competitive stressor may only last a short moment, like a negative comment from the crowd when boating or warming-up. Increasing how long it usually lasts for and how often it occurs (provided the athlete is aware that pressure training is happening) will develop an athlete’s resilience to such comments. Another method may be to increase the intensity of a session by mimicking the pressure of racing side-by-side through mental imagery^[13] of rival crews training next to you.

2. Significance

Increasing the significance of a stressor involves ensuring demands are relevant to performance goals and using performance-based consequences.

Relevance: this comes down to the individual perceptions of stress from athlete to athlete. One rower may find the large crowds of Henley Royal or National Schools to add to the pressure they experience, while another may thrive off it, seeing it as a challenge. This means the increased demands must be significant to individual athletes, otherwise there is no gain in resilience.

Consequences: increasing the challenge of a session can be achieved by having an athlete set a goal with a reward or punishment as incentive, mimicking the attributes of a regatta. Rewards may include, money, free food/drink, or kit. A punishment could be buying coach a coffee or some kind of forfeit. That being said the athletes must not be ridiculed in making mistakes or taking a risk and failing leading to a fear of failure. A facilitative environment supports as much as it challenges

Increasing Support: Learning & Practice

While increasing challenge is a key element of pressure training, challenge on its own creates an unrelenting environment, where there is little care for well-being and it’s either sink or swim. Building resilience requires support so athletes are able to feel confident in dealing the challenges of pressure training and developing their personal qualities.

1. Learning

A supportive environment allows athletes to learn more about themselves and how they individually cope with pressure at their own pace, and with which psychological skills^{[14, 15]}. These skill are important to learn as they protect an athlete’s well-being and enhance performance^{[16, 17]}. One method athletes and coaches could utilise are workshops delivered by experienced rowers, coaches, or practicing psychologists to facilitate learning^[18].

2. Practice

Similar to learning, athletes must be able to practice the relevant psychological skills of their coping. A session brief and debrief is useful here. In rowing it’s a commonly used tool but the focus (at least in my experience) is on the technical and physical properties of a session. Having the coach facilitate a discussion about the mental elements, or psychological purpose of a session (particularly the purpose of mental stressors in training) could facilitate the learning aspect of support.

Balancing Challenge & Support

A key feature of pressure inurement training is a consistent monitoring of athletes’ responses^[8]. If the pressure imposed is greater than an athlete’s ability to cope, negative outcomes occur. This may be behavioural (ie aggression), or psychological (ie anxiety), which may compound and lead to burnout^[19]. In this case, the athlete requires more motivational feedback and support, or possibly a decrease in the challenge factor^[20]. Motivational feedback involves encouragement and may look like: “well done today, we worked on x skill today and you dealt with the challenge well”.

Ideally, challenge and support will be well balanced. This leads to positive responses (happiness, motivation, determination), representing successful adaptation to the pressure. Here, developmental feedback is required^[21]; informing the athlete how to further improve in order to cope with greater challenge. This may look like: “…what’s one thing about your front end you could have done better?”.

Take home messages:

• Resilience to stress is key for performance, particularly in rowing

• Pressure inurement training seeks to develop resilience by building a facilitative environment which is high in challenge and support

• Challenge is developed by gradually increasing the demand and significance of stressors in training

• Support is developed through learning and practice of psychological skills

• A balance must be found between challenge and support so that optimal growth of resilience can be attained, and negative outcomes avoided