Tokyo Olympics: Of expectations and dealing with pressure
CHENNAI: The archery broadcast on Wednesday gave a little peek into the heartrates (beats per minute) of elite athletes during the Olympics. Archers from South Korea, considered as the sport's gold standard, always had their bpm anywhere between 70 and 90. That's extremely normal. That reading is what a healthy individual is likely to have after a good night's sleep.
But a few archers had readings that fluctuated between two extremes. One elite archer, when leading, had a reading of 75bpm. The same archer, when needing a good shot to remain in the contest, had a bpm of over 160 (it is what you would normally have after completing an intense 20-25 minutes on a treadmill). The inference is that the archer was feeling stressed and putting too much pressure on themselves.
This once again highlighted the kind of pressure and stress some of these athletes come under during the Olympics. A day after Simone Biles was forced to withdraw from the gymnastics team final -- she has since pulled out of the individual all-around final slated for Thursday -- this question really has to be asked now. Just how much pressure is too much pressure? Is it even healthy for athletes to feel this much pressure? Can weight of expectations become overwhelming after a certain point? Is it even right that fans of athletes expect their icons to go out there and win multiple gold medals in such a high pressure environment within a few days?
Mugdha Bavare, a sports psychologist, who works with many of India's current athletes including a few who are currently in Tokyo, says athletes shouldn't look at it as pressure. One of the ways where we can try and manage pressure, she tells this daily, "is start looking at them as challenges. It has a positive connotation."
While pressure is something that is second nature to athletes at the Olympics -- it's a part of the job description -- Bavare, who also works with Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) to counsel athletes, says 'training the mind' should start in training. "Athletes should train out if their comfort zones, they need to start training the mind as well."
Divya Jain, head of psychological services for department of mental health and behavioural sciences at Fortis, is intimate when talking about the link between elevated heart rate and stress.
"That is the body's natural fight or flight response," she says. Fight or flight response is the person's reaction to danger and threat level. At some level, failing to hit a 9 or 10 in an archery contest isn't the same kind of threat level as, say, being confronted by burglars. But some of the responses is similar, independent of the situation. Increase in heart rate is a classic example. Rise in blood pressure. Breathing at a quicker rate. Multiple archers who had a bpm of more than 120 will have felt some of this on Wednesday. It may sound like a health hazard but Jain, who also advises some athletes currently in Tokyo, says that the pressure athletes feel at the Olympics is something else. "The pressure related to the Olympics is something else," she says. "Athletes don't feel that pressure while taking part in other international tournaments."
What both Jain and Bavare maintain is that the pressure need not be unhealthy. Not anymore, anyway, because of the number of mechanisms at play that enables competitors to manage pressure, expectations and so on.
One of the tools, of course, is to actually prioritise ones own well-being and walking away, like Biles did, on Tuesday. “It’s a very positive development,” Bavare says. “There used to be a stigma associated even speaking about it. Not just (Naomi) Osaka and Biles, even people like (Virat) Kohli and (Sachin) Tendulkar have addressed mental health concerns in the recent past and that can only be good.
Jain agrees. “There will be more conversations around mental health and that can only be a good thing.”
When the archery event continues on Thursday, watch out of for that small ever-changing number on the left corner of your TV screens.