Inside Ben Stokes' mind & lots more — coach Paddy Upton talks about mental health in sport

Excerpts of the interview are below:

How will you define mental conditioning in the context of sports?

Paddy Upton: Obviously, the mind is one of the pieces of the equation along with physical skill, physical fitness, planning, strategy, and tactics. So an athlete, for example, can arrive at a final in great shape, with great skill and plans. But if their mind happens to falter in those key moments, all those months and even years of planning and fitness and strategising can actually fall over in those key moments.  So it's probably the most intangible, the least measurable, the least spoken about, and the least understood aspect of performance. But very often whether we train and how well we train boil down to attitudes. So it's that intangible aspect of performance that is pervasive in all areas of professional quest.

Why it is so important to talk about mental health so openly?

Paddy Upton:  It is such an important facet of sport. For some reason it has been stigmatised as someone who is struggling with mental health or has got doubts or insecurities, fears or vulnerabilities or negative thoughts. It's perceived as a weakness.

It was okay to say someone has pulled a hamstring or they have gone down with flu. But everyone of us has negative doubts, fears, pressures, anxieties. When we often feel overwhelmed because there's so much on our plate or we feel stuck — that's perfectly normal. Every human experiences it, but for some reason it's has not been spoken about.

I have never worked with an athlete in my life who doesn't have some form of insecurity or doubt, or hasn’t experienced pressure around the high moments. It is perfectly normal. So it’s important to talk about mental health openly.

In your book, The Barefoot Coach, you have talked extensively about failures and losses…

Paddy Upton: I am a big proponent of keeping things real, and the reality is we all lose. We don't want to lose and most of us don't feel good when we do lose. So that is part of a reality of life is losing. And if we're not addressing and having conversations about losing, then we are not being real or being honest with ourselves. Popular psychology has made negative thoughts, doubts and insecurities and vulnerabilities a bad thing. We told you only think positive thoughts and don't think negative thoughts. I don't think that's very realistic. I actually think that's a load of rubbish. So let us keep it real. Let us talk about failure as much as we talk about success. And both of them are great learning opportunities, one as good as the other.

What are the kind of mental health challenges that a modern day athlete faces?

Paddy Upton: The amount of eyes and scrutiny on the players, largely because of social media. So there are a lot more voices, criticism, negativity, and exposure that players have to deal with today than yesterday. Also, the volume of sports being played is too much. That translates to the amount of time away from home, particularly (affecting) people with young families.

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A cricketer will spend upwards of 11 months of the year sleeping in a different bed to his own. The players who have the most pressure are those who are most influenced by things outside of themselves and beyond their control. People who choose to pay attention to the media, social media, what other people say, to results, whether good or bad, are placing their happiness in sources outside of themselves, like compliments versus criticism or success versus failure.

In a country like India, where most of the athletes come from humble origins, how can mental health be made more accessible and relatable?

Paddy Upton: We already know a lot of the most valuable mental health tools.

There has been ancient understanding of breath work, yoga, of being present. So many of the things that spirituality teaches us is about finding a source of power from within, finding a peacefulness, becoming fully present, and using various skills to be as present as possible. It is really just paying attention to the universal wisdoms that have always been around. We just got distracted by too many of the modern day things.

I want to pick your brain on one of my favourite cricketers, Ben Stokes. I am amazed by his mental resilience considering the lows that he has experienced on and off the field in the last few years. Now he seems to be at the top of his game? Could you give us a sneak peek into how the mind of Ben Stokes works? 

Paddy Upton: What has happened with Ben Stokes is not that unfamiliar. This happened with a lot of other people. When you go through large life experiences like deaths in family or real threats to you or people very close you, it puts cricket and winning in cricket in perspective and you realise that it's not the most important thing in the world to score runs, to make a team or to win games.

There are things that are more important and when you do not place an over-importance on results, it frees you up to actually go and play the game. And the more freely you engage in the process of playing the game, the more the chance that results will follow. So people who make cricket and winning and scoring hundreds or taking wickets the centre of their lives may end up overthinking and putting pressure on themselves to succeed. They suffer the fear of failure, which undermines their performance.

When there is a desperation or a need, that desperation undermines performance because it creates pressure, fear, nerve and anxiety and mental health issues.

From an individual to a team. I am excited to know what makes Australians such champions in cricket. I want to understand how the Aussies approach their sports from mental aspect?

Paddy Upton: They are very, very good at pretending to be extremely confident. And they've done it so long and they pretend so well that they believe in their story. There are a couple of genuinely tough, confident, aggressive Australians and back the Australian ways. Quite a few of them then go and follow that lead and they act like that when they don't actually have a genuine aggressive, confident nature, they're just acting like their team mates and sometimes it does instil some fear into opponents. But when you attack them hard you find that the cracks start forming. As every team, they also have the cracks in their confidence and their outward bravado.

You have worked closely with the Indian cricket team and very recently you also worked with Indian men's hockey team. Did you find some changes in the nature and the team environment of the two teams? If so, did that affect your way of approaching the two sets of players as well?

Paddy Upton: The cricket team has been professional — there is more money, visibility, popularity of the cricket team than the hockey team. So there is a difference. The cricket team plays under more scrutiny of the public eye than the hockey team. Cricket is also more of an individual game, while hockey is very much a team game. You have got to run patterns of play. So the team element in hockey is greater. But the individual mental approaches and requirements — whether it be cricket, hockey or even an individual sport like badminton — are the same. They just apply differently in those different sports.

For me the only thing common to the two sports is to open my ears, pay attention and shut my mouth as much as possible to understand and learn before I seek to understand, to be understood, or to teach.

If an athlete is struggling to cope with his mental health issues and is struggling to express himself, what would you advise him to do?

Paddy Upton: The most important thing is to know that you are not alone or unique in your struggles. I will reiterate that in my 25 years of work I have never worked with an athlete at the highest level who has not struggled with doubts, insecurities, negative thoughts, with being scared of the unknown. Every single human being goes through mental and physical difficulties in life, and that in itself is not a problem. It is normal. It doesn't mean that you're broken or faulty.

I would like to end this with one of my favourite quotes. It is that  ‘life is difficult. And when you fully accept that life is difficult, it is no longer difficult.’