Thread by @narceducator

The physical part of being an elite athlete in sport is nothing compared to the psychological component. Anyone who doesn’t know this has never trained 30+ hours a week, sacrificing diet, education, social activities, and career for years to compete with the upper echelon.

The strive for perfection is exhausting. The lows are far more numerous than the highs.
My own personal experience, and that with young elite athletes I coached and parented, is that absolutely no one can put more pressure on them than they put on themselves. They need support.

It’s complete lunacy to expect the best in the world to stay on their A game for extended periods of time without falter. Sure a few do it but it’s much more the exception than the rule. For every star there are millions who trained just as hard as the best but never “made it.”

We like to live in these fairytales where we want to believe the best in the world are invincible and they aren’t prone to mental health struggles like everyone else. They are and likely more so. The dedication and time commitment to excel leave little room for balance.

We focus on physical skill and winning but very little of youth coaching supports development of psychological tools. This is ironic because isn’t really the point of youth sport? Later it can be what ultimately makes or breaks an athlete. It shouldn’t be left to luck.

Our daughter fell victim to psychological abuse, pressures about body weight, and unrealistic expectations like competing injured. Her personal narrative started with the sentence, “I could have been the best runner in the NCAAs or I could be dead.”

She walked away and lived.

Let’s lift up the athletes brave enough to share their psychological and mental health struggles, and put more onus on the governing institutions and sports bodies to support and protect them.
The lack of empathy for Naomi Osaka is our societal mental illness, not her’s.