This video gives an insight into the work and was filmed at a recent coach development day.

Despite being only 20 herself, Kinsella was the most experienced member of the young GB team and had to not only shake off her disappointing qualifications performance from two days previous, but also lead and support her team through their first Olympic Final. Overcoming any feelings of doubt in herself, Kinsella had a stellar Team Final performance, improving all her qualification scores and leading Team GB to a Bronze Medal!

So, how did she do it? How do you overcome failure and replace it with success under such pressure? The key here is resilience.

Gymnastics is known for its graceful, powerful, and spectacular nature with young gymnasts performing impressive skills on a range of apparatus. Historically, the image of very young, slightly built gymnasts performing extraordinarily challenging skills springs to mind; inevitably that means top gymnasts have to be training with considerable intensity from a very young age.

Although gymnastics is slowly moving away from that idea and forming a more holistic approach along with a number of other sports, it is true that some sports do need to have a certain degree of specific training and skill acquisition before undergoing puberty to help them be successful. However, these sports are few and far between and certainly do not encompass as many sports as people believe.

This poses several challenges for coaches and parents; not least how to help them succeed without mental or physical harm.

Due to the nature of gymnastics, young athletes experience challenges they may perceive as stressful or as failure; a sub-optimal competition, suffering a skill block, or even managing injury can have profound psychological effects. As a coach and parent team, part of our job is to teach athletes early on how to bounce back from worrying events, how to cope when things go wrong and how to celebrate smaller positives in sport.

So, what is resilience, and how can we help our young athletes develop it so that they stay mentally healthy in their sport and develop the psychological strength to remain comfortable throughout the inevitable twists and turns of a competitive sporting experience? What develops resilience and how can we, as coaches and parents, support our young athletes in gaining this core life skill alongside their physical training?

Unravelling the Mysteries of Resilience.

Resilience is defined as “the role of mental processes and behaviour in promoting personal assets and protecting an individual from the potential negative effect of stressors.” In simpler terms, this means the personality traits an individual displays that prevents them becoming overwhelmed or discouraged by stressful events, for example a bad training session or the death of a family member.

Resilience falls into 2 broad types – robust and rebound resilience:

• Robust resilience refers to a protective quality that allows an athlete to maintain their performance and mental wellbeing under pressure.
• Rebound resilience refers to an athlete’s ability to bounce back and return to a normal state of cognitive functioning following short-term disruptions to training or mental health.

So, what does a resilient athlete look like?

We now know what resilience is, but what does it look like when in a day-to-day setting. Well, resilient athletes:

• Are better able to challenge negative thoughts and ideas, improving their belief in themselves and their ability.
• Are more likely to be able to focus on tasks without becoming distracted. This is particularly important during competitions!
• Will display characteristics of optimism and competitiveness, meaning when they have pre-competition butterflies, they will view it as a positive experience that will help them perform well.
• Will be proactive and take matters into their own hands. These athletes will be more likely to do extra conditioning or practise in their own time to improve performance.
• Are perfectionists (but not the “I’m not good enough type”)! They will set themselves high standards and expect that they meet these standards, but they won’t beat themselves up if things go slightly pear-shaped.

Resilience is key not only for training and competitions, but also for a young persons mental health. A happy athlete will want to learn, improve themselves and succeed. An unhappy athlete will be afraid to try in case they fail.

This sounds very important, but how can I help as a parent?

Although resilience is a personality trait, it is also process which individuals go through in response to their environment. This means that there are things that parents can do that influence internal processing and external environment to set young athletes up for success.

Influencing the Internal:

Encourage positive behaviour: help your child practice the behaviours above. Encourage them to be proactive and set themselves high standards. Try and set a good example by practicing the behaviours yourself, your children will copy you!

Reassure them when things go wrong: there isn’t a straight line to success, plans change and sometimes things go wrong. Turn the threat into a challenge, for example if they have a knee injury use it as an opportunity to develop their understanding/tactical awareness, rather than seeing it as lost time!

Be supportive: make sure your child feels like they have someone to turn to whenever they need advice or just a pep talk. Figure 1 shows the different types of support athletes of all ages may need throughout their career.

Changing the External.

Below are some things coaches and clubs can do to create a facilitative environment conducive to success:

We’re all in this together attitude: without trying to sound like the cast of high school musical, coaches need to encourage everyone to work together. This means coaches, parents AND athletes all working together to create, work towards and achieve goals.

Safe risk taking: Athletes should be free to take sensible risks in training and push themselves out of their comfort zones. Create a safe and supportive environment they can do this in, don’t get angry or punish them if things go wrong, it’s all part of learning.

Accountability and responsibility: encourage athletes to be responsible for their actions, don’t blame poor results on just luck (if you lose because of luck, then surely winning is luck too?). Help athletes be accountable for their actions in training, that way when they do get the result they want, they will know it was because of their hard work and dedication.

Develop coach-athlete relationships: your athletes are more than just small machines who come to training 3 or 4 times a week. They have hobbies, likes and dislikes so try and take the time to get to know them or ask them about their day. They are more likely to seek feedback and reassurance from you. They want to know you care about them, make sure you show it!

To round it all up.

To sum up, psychological resilience is a mechanism that allows athletes to overcome stressful events and quickly return to normal functioning. Resilience can help us appraise threatening situations and turn them into something challenging yet manageable.

Resilience is important, not just during sport but throughout life. Most people will encounter failure a lot more than success, so we need to give children the tools to manage this without compromising their mental health.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of ways to improve psychological resilience, instead just some ideas to implement in your sport or home setting that will help your athlete work towards their goals and be the best they can be.

Having done some work recently with the WSL academy staff around the ‘Retain and Release Process’ recently I got thinking about how sports present their programmes to parents and young people.

Deep down I am pretty sure that we know that the chances of young people becoming Olympians and professional footballers or sportspeople are incredibly slim, but many sports parents still do dream and have those expectations.

“There are about 10,000 athletes in the Summer Olympics. With the world population at about 7 billion, the chances of making it that far are about 1 in 562,400,” says Bill Mallon, past president and co-founder of the International Society of Olympic Historians.

In the US, surveys show that 67 percent of parents hope their kids earn college scholarships while 34 percent dream that they make the Olympic team or play professionally.

It’s one thing to fantasise — it’s another to be convinced. Fully 40 percent of parents with young athletes are “certain” or “fairly sure” their gold medal and pro contract ambitions will come true.

According to NCAA statistics, only a minuscule percentage of high school athletes go all the way to play professionally.

• 1 in 610 (.16%) will get drafted by a Major League Baseball team.
• 1 in 10,399 (.0096%) will get picked by an NBA team.
• 1 in 12,873 (.0077%) will be chosen by a WNBA team.
• 1 in 3,960 (.025%) will get picked by an NFL team.

I have always been very open in the WWPIS workshops when talking about my own children and how I know that I have more chance of being hit by a meteor than my son playing professional football.

This is despite signing a Category 1 football contract at the age of 9.

This is in no way about stunting dreams and children should be encouraged to reach for the stars, it is better for young people to have their dreams than none at all.

However, it is our responsibility as the adults to ensure that we always have these statistics in the back of our mind when making decisions or supporting our young children.

Whilst I used the meteor analogy, I enjoyed something said by Tony Fretwell (Barclays FAWSL Academy Manager) who described it slightly differently, but it certainly painted another very clear picture.

When we are sold a holiday and we get the brochures it is 99% about the glamour of the trip, the hotels, beaches, sea, swimming pools and attractions and then there is a very small disclaimer that tells us of some of the potential issues (the plane crashing etc.), the package is a fair reflection of the chances of this happening.

In sport and specifically in football, we have very similar odds of children turning professional, but we sometimes sell our programmes in reverse. We sell the dream and the glamour when actually would we be better selling the journey and the wider parts and benefits of our programme?

We must do and show more about how we are going to develop young people with perhaps the final 1% saying there is a chance of becoming a professional footballer at the end of the journey.

In a number of the clubs that we work with, many are being proactive about this factor. Speaking to parents early in the journey, talking about release and encouraging parents to almost expect to have to deal with it at some point in the future is really helpful. In effect, trying to help pave the way for the disappointment that may follow whilst assuring parents that they will work hard to develop both the person and the player to the best of their abilities.

Both sporting organisations and parents have a key role to play.

There is something extremely powerful about sporting success, how we see it as a population and how this is fuelled and portrayed by the media.

Do we place too much emphasis on it as parents?

I am sure this will differ from household to household and sport to sport, but if we realistically know the odds of success and are supported positively – does it give us a better chance of managing our own expectations and those of our children?

Many involved in sport often cite parents having unrealistic expectations as a major issue within the groups that they work with. I am afraid that it is a parent’s prerogative to be slightly biased towards their own children, that is human nature.

However, do we do enough as sporting organisations particularly early in the sporting journey to help align their expectations?

We want parents to have expectations of the right things, progress for their children both physically and holistically, character development, life skills and positive interactions with coaches and their peers.

When we buy a lottery ticket, we know the chances of winning the jackpot are slim so when the results come through and we get the email or go into the shops we are excited for that moment. The build-up and moment when we click on the email or hand it over at the counter in the hope that we have won millions.

More often than not we have won £10 or less and we are able to move on extremely quickly as our expectations of winning the big one was in perspective to the chances of being successful.

Yet in sport our reaction to similar odds can be very different.

Parents – there are many great reasons to play youth sport that don’t involve scholarships, Olympic medals, or professional contracts – focus in on those and I am confident that you will celebrate more wins on the way and not run the risk of being disappointed by the final outcome of the journey, whatever that may be.

I am also pretty confident that your children will get far more from their sporting experience if we can adopt this approach.

There were certainly plenty of things that we all learned from the games and has been eloquently put together by Martha Brook in the graphic below.

The Olympics provided so much of what is good about sport with many amazing stories, plenty of new sports for us all to be inspired by, the usual highs and lows, the topic of athlete mental health being brought firmly into the spotlight and probably more than ever before the media highlighting the personal stories of the athletes and the families behind the performers. For us the often unseen ‘village’ behind the athletes.

Behind every Olympian is an army of people whose help – whether in encouragement, chastisement, parenting, coaching, funding, or friendship – has shaped their character and provided stepping-stones to Olympic success.  The coverage on the television and social media channels showed us this more than ever before. In the past the parent’s story has been covered in the media but the intimacy of the scenes we saw this time around in people’s homes really struck a chord with viewers around the world.

This was so refreshing to see as the support, commitment and sacrifice made by parents is often unseen by many yet on the whole they are the most influential people in their children’s lives.

This support network is not just limited to parents, however, the village behind an athlete goes way beyond that. Grandparents and other relatives play their part, the story of Welsh boxer Lauren Price springs to mind with her grandparents such a key part in her sporting success.

There were the amazing scenes at the house party in Maidenhead as wider family and friends got together to support Tom Dean as he won Olympic gold in the pool.

Dean’s mother, Jacquie Hughes, told the BBC, “We didn’t invite anybody around until after the semis. Yesterday morning we just decided, because we couldn’t be there, how nice would it be for Tom to know that some of his family and his friends were watching him.

Tom went on to acknowledge the key role mum played and said that she deserved these golds as getting him up to 5am training was an epic feat in itself.

It wasn’t just in the Uk where families gathered to celebrate historic family moments. This is the moment that American wrester Gable Steveson won Olympic gold in the 125kg mens freestyle wrestling.

Sports clubs, coaches (including backroom and medical staff) teachers and friends also make up this group working together to help children and adults achieve their dreams and reach their potential.

Parents are the most critical supporters of any elite level performers because they are the ones who make the critical sacrifices to help them succeed. Most accomplished athletes discover their passion for their sport at a very young age. This is partly because parents are the ones getting their youngsters involved in sporting activities that fuel their love of sport whilst they also help to facilitate their children’s desire to be involved by providing all the tangible and emotional support required in the best way that they can.

This is something here at WWPIS that we care deeply about. Our passion and commitment is trying to support members of this village (organisations, coaches and parents to work effectively together to help young people fulfil their potential both in sport and beyond).

Parents certainly require help, support and encouragement. It is such a challenging role being a sports parent and just like parenting in general, many of us do our best based on our own experiences and learn from our mistakes as we go. However, we can do more in providing this support and it is great to see the large number of sporting organisations recognising the valuable role that parents play and beginning to improve and facilitate effective parental engagement programmes.

If we can help in any way to support your work with your parental engagement programme, then click here to get in touch.

However, I cannot help feeling that the motives behind the original messaging have become severely misinterpreted, just like a very poor game of ‘Chinese Whispers.’

Encouraged by this latest video with Steve Hansen, we finally decided to put pen to paper. Steve immediately dispels the myth around No. 2 ‘work ethic’ on the list based on his experiences in coaching. He reflects on how it is an important skill but acknowledges that it needs to taught and developed.

My guess is that the original message was very much based around 10 things that we perhaps have a greater control over than some of the things that we can’t control.

In our workshops we talk to parents about investing our energy on things that we can really control and not on those things that we are not in control of. We cannot control if our children are going to become professional sportsmen or women as there are too many factors so far out of our control.

Both parents and children are not really in control of injuries, selections, genetics, how we go through puberty, peer pressure within a group to name but a few but can perhaps influence the environments that nurture some of the skills that have been listed above.

The problem is that all of these skills that so call require ‘zero talent’ need effectively nurturing by parents, teachers and coaches and are supported by the environments that they create for young people. No one doubts that all of these are extremely valuable skills that we would all want our children to have and would allow young people to thrive in whichever walk of life they choose to go and are vital in performance programmes to ensure that we are creating multi-faceted individuals.

Our initial reaction when reading the list as parents or coaches is that this makes sense, but do they require talent? Of course, they do.
Anything learned is a skill both physically and mentally and if people think they are easy to learn, why does everyone not possess these traits?

Neil Warnock the Middlesbrough manager in the press when discussing bright hopeful of current Tottenham Hotspur player Djed Spence said, ‘Djed could end up playing at the top of the Premier League or in non-league.’ He says the full-back has “all the tools” to play at the top, but “application and dedication” will determine how Spence’s career plays out. Yet we expect young players to just instantly possess these traits.

We would all like to see young people with a great attitude but what does that mean to them? Have we ever spoken to them about it.
Everton manager Sean Dyche discusses his views around attitude here and what it means to him and for those that he may coach.

Sport undoubtedly provides one of the safest and best opportunities for a lot of these skills to be developed if the emphasis is also being placed on them by coaches and reinforced by positive messages around them coming from home. Many of these skills may fall by the wayside if everything is too results focussed and not enough time is invested in the processes making up the performance.

‘First ask how much passion and perseverance you have for your own life goals.  Then ask yourself how likely it is that your approach to parenting encourages your child to emulate you. Your children will be watching you.’ (Grit by Angela Duckworth)

We often talk about how parents on the whole have the biggest influence over their children and their behaviours, whilst recognising the impact that can also be made by teachers, coaches and relatives.  We also know that the biggest achievements made by young children are when coach/parent or teacher/coach are working together to deliver the same consistent messages and behaviours.

If this is the case, the responsibility we have as parents around our children’s sport is huge as our children will be watching and listening to us.

All of the behaviours that we exhibit, what we value, what we say and how we deal with situations will be taken at face value by our children and likely repeated.  How many times in sport have we heard statements come from a child’s mouth and we think, ‘you can’t have come up with that, who has put those words into your mouth?’

Children inherently take their cues from parents.  We help them develop how they should feel about the world and others, the manner in which they interact, and the beliefs they carry. We shape their system of thought and action with our own.

Think about what you want your child to see and hear, how you want them to behave and how you want them to perceive the world.  Remember they will be watching and listening to you for their cue!

As our children grow, become teenagers and end up in sporting environments, some in performance pathways or in the professional game then we would hope to see a lot of these traits on a regular basis. However, even then it can be more complicated than that as we will not see it from everyone every day.

Dan Abrahams a sports psychologist sums this all up beautifully,

‘Don’t you know these things require zero talent? How dare you not adhere to this list every day. How dare you experience low mood, anxiety, a drop in confidence, self-consciousness, perfectionism, vulnerability, frustration, doubt, worry, confusion…come on, you MUST do these!

As coaches you can certainly expect them but due to their complexity you won’t see them every time. You’ll see them more when players develop the skills (eg life and mental skills) that improve their ability to demonstrate them.’

We are often asked by parents, ‘how do I know if it has all been worth it?’

Well we have finally come up with the answer that if our children are equipped with the following set of skills and that is our focus as parents during the sporting experience, we will have certainly raised some very well-rounded individuals.

In our workshops we discuss how we can help support these skills as a parent and that is a blog for another day but the reality is that as parents as we watch a week of training and a performance in a competitive situation that if we see these skills more often than not there is a good chance that their performance will have been of a really good level regardless of the outcome.

I challenges parents, coaches and teachers that the next time you see this list ‘10 things that require zero talent’ and think children should just have them to spend some time and explain what they are, what it means for them in their context and how by developing these skills it may have a positive impact on their life, well-being and what they go on to achieve.

Most importantly, model these behaviours on a regular basis and when you see your children or the people you coach display them, reinforce and celebrate them from the rooftops! These young children will then know that these ‘talents’ are important and that you truly value them and see their importance as a key part of any sporting experience.

He asked me to write something on patience. He just wished parents could be more patient with their young athletes and the process. He wished parents could understand that some kids are not skilled or mentally tough enough for professional baseball. They maybe more suited to different levels of college or even being content with being a valuable player in a state team or a club team.

It’s very hard to see clearly where our child sits in the big scheme of things—next to impossible, actually. I find it hard. I like to think I have an understanding of my son, but I know I’m blinded. If I applied the odds to my son making it to the top I should be locked up; fancy allowing him to throw away many years of his life striving for a goal that only 6% of those signed professionally will ever run onto a major league field. That’s why young athletes are encouraged to have backup plans.

I justify my son’s position: he’s an ‘all or nothing’ guy. I know that’s my characteristic so I don’t know how much it’s me being ‘all or nothing’ for him or him believing it himself. I tell others he’s shooting for the stars and when he falls—as everyone falls at some point—that though the fall will be hard and discouraging, even depressing, family will be there to support him.

This is his reckless adventure.

If my wife and I aren’t patient we will be of no help keeping him on the rails. And if we are not patient he will not listen to our words when we do have something to say.

There must be calmness and a resolute smile about our long suffering. Yes, long suffering, an old English interpretation of what patience means. A fellow sports parent once said to me, we need to happily suffer together on the sideline.

Be realistic. This sounds hypocritical coming from a parent who encourages his kid on a reckless adventure, but I’ve sought feedback of where my kid sits in comparison to others, skill wise, mentally, and with his work ethic. I’ve been offended by some truths and wanted to be defensive. Fortunately, I chose to say nothing, feel the internal suffering, and take it as positive input for my son to learn from.

Bottom line, if I don’t show patience, if I don’t seek realistic input from outsiders who can observe my son better than me, I am not helping him and am only holding him back. Hard truth to swallow.

Allow your child to become a better you.

Allow your child to find their way.

With patience they will listen to you. With impatience they will ignore you.

This is part of a mini series called ‘Dad – it doesn’t help!’ written by Australian author Mark Maguire, whose son Soloman Maguire has recently signed for the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball franchise. To read all of the blogs in the series become a member today.