by Coach George Bole
Perth, Australia, was the venue for the World Swimming Championships last month. As well as the Olympic events, there were long distance ocean events included.
To the concern of intended competitors and coaches, there had been a spate of shark attacks in the area of competition. To allay the obvious fears, the race competitors would have a support boat as well as back-up crews with rubber dinghies. Also, there would be helicopters in attendance, a spotter plane looking for sharks, and a team of scuba divers armed with spear guns.
The coordinator said that all these precautions were to stop the swimmers from experiencing fear.
The question asked by a famous zoologist was would the swimmers move faster with the fear? This man, Dr. Murray Watson, was convinced that a fear-enhanced event would beat a drug-enhanced performance. To back up his conviction, he recalled an occasion when he believed he broke the world high jump record. This record is not recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.
In his early studies in Africa, Watson's Land Rover broke down and he decided to walk back to camp rather than stay with the vehicle. Within a few hundred yards, and with the light fading, he found he was being hunted by a pack of hyenas. When the pack leader snapped at him, he decided to seek a hiding place. In desperation, and with the hyenas snarling at his back (one even took a bite out of his shorts) he jumped for the lowest branch of a tree and swung to safety. He sat in the tree until dawn.
At dawn, he was amazed to find that he was 12 feet from the ground. Once down, no matter how he tried, he could not get within four feet of that limb, nor could any of his colleagues.
There was another case of the distraught Florida mother, Maxwell Rodgers, who lifted a station wagon off her trapped son and held it long enough for the child to be pulled free. Mrs. Rodgers weighed 123 pounds and the vehicle 3000 pounds. Trained strongmen, steroid-loaded, failed to match her feat. No drugs for her. Instead she was making use of the great resources available to any sportsman the power of mind over matter.
There are many sports scientists today who are of the opinion that physical conditioning has reached its limits -- that almost all the modern fitness developing machines have made it possible for anyone to acquire tip-top fitness. And so, improvement, or further improvement, in the opinions of these experts, lies in physiology. What they do know is that the human who attempts the impossible because he is being chased by wild animals is mobilizing an innate fear or fright reaction and dosing himself up on one of the most powerful and ancient of stimulants -- adrenaline.
Adrenaline is the most remarkable performance enhancer. If athletes were offered a stimulant that promised to increase the rate and depth of their breathing during competition, boost heart rate and mask pain, the international Olympic Committee would want to ban it. Yet it already exists. When the adrenaline kicks in, it can fire freak performances from the untrained and spark barrier-breaking records from sportsmen providing tantalizing glimpses of what is possible without drugs.
Sometimes we are privileged to witness the untapped potential of the body within a stadium or a pool. Bob Beaman shattered the world long jump record in 1968 and put it out of reach for nearly three decades. Other examples are Jim Montgomery's sub-50 second 100 meters and Janet Evans fantastic 800 meter record. David Hemery, 400 meter gold medal winner in 1968, stated in his book "Winning Without Drugs" that everything a human might achieve with drug enhancement can be matched using natural and legal training procedures by harnessing the power of the mind.
As Shakespeare said, that is the question. How does one harness the power of the mind? Make believe sharks, snarling hyenas in the mind might unlock amazing powers to run, jump or swim? To our ancestors, such sport was really a matter of life or death. Today the consequences of failure are not so dire.
But, I believe even at our own level, we could do some mind harnessing. Not with great white sharks or fierce laughing hyenas, but with some forethought.
Desire to be the best, if fierce enough, can produce this marvelous stimulant, adrenaline. The will to win, the need to help your relay to win, the search for gold, the yearn for recognition, or just plain dislike of the opposition -- there are many ways to "pump up" the adrenaline.
But, oh -- please be sure these adrenaline producing thoughts are developed before competition and forgotten afterwards.
Do not ever get on the starting block free of adrenaline -- that's the way to flat performance. How you get the adrenaline flowing is your choice -- sometimes with a little help from your coach. But one thing is for sure, that without the sharks and the hyenas, you will be dead last.