Paul Thompson Edit
Tue, Mar 21, 2023 3:14PM • 25:20
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
rowing, coach, sport, people, athletes, moving, coaching, boat, piece, racing, australia, olympics, good, world, bit, finish, performance, stroke, paul, rhythm
SPEAKERS
Paul Barnett, Paul Thompson
Paul Barnett 00:00
Paul Thompson Good afternoon, and welcome to the Great coach's podcast.
Paul Thompson 00:05
Thank you, Paul. Well, very
Paul Barnett 00:06
excited to talk a little bit of rowing with you today. But I want to start with something really simple. Where are you in the world? And well, what have you been up to not only today, but potentially in the last week as well.
Paul Thompson 00:18
I'm in London at the moment, to be fair, but I'm the performance director for rowing Australia. And we've just finished our our world championships that were in Prague and the first of the post COVID World World Championships to be fair, so it's great to get back to a proper season of racing, as well as a proper, a proper World Championship, we had some some good results and a few things that we're still going to work on. So that's all part of the game, really. And that's part of coaching and high performance sport, it doesn't stay still, it just keeps moving. It's in perpetual motion.
Paul Barnett 00:50
Well, I'd like to start this conversation about perpetual motion and coaching and all things leadership, but just name dropping some of the great coaches that you've been involved with this, you're gonna Grobler, Peter Shakespeare, and Danny Carey from hockey. And I'd like to ask you, Paul, what is it you think the great coaches do differently? That sets them apart?
Paul Thompson 01:13
Yeah, look, I think that's a really good, a really good question. And fundamentally, you need to be able to see the performance that you want to get before you're even close close to it. So you can either intuitively or with the support of others be able to look ahead and see where those performance gains gains can come from, and also how you can engage and connect with people because I Performance Sport isn't a comfortable thing. And most people try to be a bit comfortable. So you've got to sort of pull them along in a area that can be challenging and confronting to be the best version of best version of them. So the same theory applies, applies for the coach. So in essence, I think you'll find most of the great coaches, it's got a good vision of where they want to get to, they're very authentic, you generally know where you stand. They're resilient, because you don't go like great athletes, you don't go through a career without some wins and some losses and some, some interesting times. And they're also very reflective, because that's how you improve[SB1]
Paul Barnett 02:17
talking about reflective and resilient. You've coached crews at a seven Olympic Games. But then it gets even more complex because you've coached those games with three different countries. And I'm really interested to know what this experience over the arc of time has taught you about the vagaries the undulations, perhaps of human motivation.
Paul Thompson 02:39
Yeah, it's a really good, good question. And I guess makes me sound like a bit of a bit of a journeyman to be fair, but I've had a pretty good, pretty good run, I've had three Olympics for Australia to start with four for UK, one for China. And now I'm back with with Australia, the UK is not Australia with the sun. Every country has got their cultural pieces and politics and different systems that you have to adapt to. And for previous question about what's a great what is a great coach. And if you're able to get results with different athletes in different environments, or different countries, it gives you an insight and confidence into knowing where you need to lead with that. Yeah, look, I think the the the lessons that you get from each of the different systems, and you look at your own country and system a little bit differently, you know, the strengths of the states, and having that sort of little bit of competitive tension there all all the time, and being able to be able to harness that which Australia needs to do. And then with UK, they're really an innovative society, geographically, it's very different. So you've got a lot more connection into into what you do there and the teamwork that's developed there in the receiving end. And the system that's been developed over the last 25 years is, is outstanding. And then the Chinese system, which is very different culturally, as well as structurally, and occur, if we just talk about motivation, there are differences and people do the sport for different reasons. In China, it's it's a lot more transactional. It's a way for people to earn an income and come out of their situation that's different, but no more different than when you're dealing in a different way with the Western athletes having their sport but also making sure that they've got a career to move on to afterwards and being able to harness what they've learned in the sport to be able to use it in other in other walks of life. And, you know, from a coaching sense, my Mandarin would say is rudimentary. I can order a drink, and I can tell someone how to push their legs a little quicker and take a bit more time on the recovery of the rowing stroke, but we work through a translator. And so in a coaching sense, it's a really An interesting conundrum because you have to build your relationship with with them. And then you need to be able to teach a translator how to get your message across. So how you set the the training session up, then the delivery of the session, and then the debriefing is really important. I've got a good friend who's a skeleton coach. So he used to draw, and he found out a really effective way of getting all the athletes to draw, you know, the lines, they'd taken the technical changes they'd need to make. And in in the rowing world, we'd have the whiteboard up, and you know, it'd be in English and Mandarin, and being able to just have as much clarity about what the purpose of the session is, what the objectives are, what we wanted to get out of that session and what they needed to do. And then there's probably a little bit less when you're on there. So if you wanted to introduce something new, you'd have to do that on the land before he got on the water. So there's definitely a lot more preparation.
But in returning to the west, and going out with some coaches, it's quite interesting, because you have to make it, you just have to be short, succinct and clear that your message gets across. And then you go out with other coaches. Oh, my God, I hope I didn't talk that light that much. We're okay. And you have to think through what's the what's the nice to have what's what are the key one of the key messages that are getting through? So in that sense, it's been quite quite an interesting process.[SB2]
Paul Barnett 06:27
Rowing is a very measurable sport, Paul, lots of data, lots of time splits. But I'd actually like to ask you about a time you looked beyond the data to improve performance. Yeah, I
Paul Thompson 06:40
look, I think it's the stock worse doesn't lie. I said, as any truth coach will say, and data is really important. But you can't forget. It's people are British. And we had a fabulous home Olympics in 20. In 2012, and a squat I was looking after we got three golds and a couple of Silver's out of that and part of a team with the men's team, we got got nine, nine medals out of that. We always knew psychologically, how do you prepare for that? I don't know if you've ever heard of Tony Roth itself. And David Tanner, we're going up and we're getting them to Mexican waivers, we're going to go right?
Well, the moment in those athletes careers, where it's the most so our team doctor at the time engaged with one of her old or her old medical colleagues. And he'd worked into some business and he was a surgeon and just about how your physiology drives your psychology. So if you're if you're what stage fright? Well, that's part of the flight and fright response. Yeah. So if you can control your physiology, and your heart rate variability, then you can control your psychology. Yeah. When you're in front of the world's cameras at the start line, you can hear the crowd roaring down there, and you're about to have the most important moment of your race. And there's just this right is two minutes silence before the the flag drops. And what's going through your, through your mind there, what's the most important thing because that that can be at a point that you miss?
So some people need to be high up on the arousal curve, some people need to be closer. So how do you how do you balance that out? So we did a real piece on on managing your emotions, apparently, there's 34,000 of them 17th of human emotions 17,000, positive 70,000 negative. So I'm led to believe some Tibetan monks counted them, I'm told that was a really good way to be able to teach the rowers about themselves, and about what they needed for peak performance. And that connection between the physical and, and the mental to get the most, to get the most out of themselves. So there has been some really interesting pieces on that had a crew the following year, that base that whole race plan on their emotional state, so didn't have any of the technical bit ended up coming forth in the world. But that was really effective and work for them.[SB3] [SB4]
Paul Barnett 09:09
Is there anything in those lessons that you've been part of or been, you know, been privy to, that could be applied to the person getting ready to give a presentation or a parent about to have a difficult conversation with their child?
Paul Thompson 09:24
Yeah, 100% when you're going to do your presentation, and however, whatever level your businesses they're getting that deal is going to be really, really important. Well, you need to be able to be coming through and be the best version of you to deliver that. So yeah, it's all about human performance. So when you talk about the data, we like to think of rowing as the the denoble sport, it's the horse is not the chariot. So in so in rowing, the equipment's quite is restricted. So any new innovation that you make on the equipment has to be affordable and available. Well to everybody in the world in January of the year of the Olympics, so your advantage is in the person. So, so how you train them, how you get them working together, how they can handle that moment in time is really key. And a lot of those skills are transferable across into the business world and into the into the performance and other words,
Paul Barnett 10:19
Paul, it's just me and you talking, nobody else is listening, what would be a secret that I could apply tomorrow? Well, I'm not sure
Paul Thompson 10:27
if it's a secret really is you mentioned, you need to be able to have difficult discussions when they need to be need to be had, you need to be able to build trust and communication and relationships. Because even for a single scholar in our sport, they've got a coach and a physio and a support team around them that they need to bring bring with them, you need to be able to exploit personality differences in that crew to be able to get the sum greater than the whole lot of parts. And confidence is a key thing. So you've got to be committed to action to take that we spoke earlier about resilience. And that's how you build the confidence in you thing to do.[SB5]
But in essence, Demetra, I still keep coming back to and this is the secret, the more gold medal quality strokes that you take in training, the more gold medal quality strokes you'll take when you're racing. So what you do, and whether that's in the business or or in sport, the more your daily, your the quality of your daily work, is going to equal the output of what the outcome that you that you want. So it's just really about staying and getting the most out of what you're doing at this moment in time.[SB6] [SB7]
Paul Barnett 11:37
He said a minute ago that Rowling's a beautiful sport. And there is actually a beautiful rhythm to rowing, especially when you watch it every every four years when it comes on the Olympics. And there's this synergy between the teams bodies, the oars and the water. It's it's it's very beautiful to watch. And I was wondering if I was to ask you to take a group of people who have never rode, and through the course of one afternoon to try to teach them this rhythm. What would you do
Paul Thompson 12:05
that I think first of all, you if you want to create a team, you have to find some connection, you have to be able to get the people talking and give them all the roles so that they've got clarity in what they do. Because in the rowing boat, you've got someone in the stroke seat who sets the rhythm. And that works really inside that with the person sitting behind in the seventh, if we're in an eight, yeah, and then you've got like the powerhouse that come together. And then you've got the people that are really quick to be able to pick up the boat to catch in down in the bow because it rides a little bit higher, higher a bit catch. So you'd have to get those people together. And then we try to connect them together and just see if you can run because that's that's what rowing is like, it's like having a 1500 meter sprint is it's about the same time and tying them all with a piece of rope and having to work walk and running racing stuff around. So So communication is a big key. But we can get them on the Ergo first get them swinging together and then get that moving together and then moving outside and you do that get that entrainment like the birds flying around around together, you do get that quality when when it's in sync, because it's not in sync with each other, you have to be in sync with the boat. Because you've got the drive then the recovery phase, it's rowing is a bit like golf, you take a swing, and then you get one stroke right now that feels good because you get the run of the boat underneath you. And then you try and do it again. And it's not so good. So that's how that's how you end up developing that together.[SB8]
Paul Barnett 13:34
I'm actually fascinated by that. You just talked about that stillness. It's almost like, I mean, I'm gonna use my layman's language. It's like a micro recovery. And it happens after every stroke. And I and I wondered whether you had any learning about the balance between intensity and stillness or work and recovery?
Paul Thompson 13:54
Well, that's the essence of your rhythm. When you were talking about your rhythm, if you want to say it's like no sport, if you want to see a good, a good crew racing, it always looks like they have more time during their recovery. And that timing with the boat. And so as much as and the best way to get that is relaxation. So you've you've got to be going as hard as you can in one direction and then basically switching off letting the boat do the work in the other. And if you don't time the entry and your force on the spoon, if that's out, you just keep the boat backwards. So you can get a peak speed but you can't go the distance. It's technically it's quite a difficult sport. If you look at the men in the single skulls. They're up around 100 kilos 105 You know, 98 205 kilos. The boat weighs 14 kilos. So So you're really you're really there on a wafer thin piece of carbon. So the skills skills involved as is is more than like the layman thing.
Paul Barnett 14:57
Or I've got this quote from you. You say You've got to walk down the corridor of mirrors and take a good hard look at yourself and be reflective, and come back and change. You mentioned self reflection earlier when talking about great coaches. But I'm wondering, could you tell us about your self reflection practices? Yeah,
Paul Thompson 15:17
And other times when you when you don't, you know, I think you need to be able to as a great coach, it's not about you, it's about them. So you have to be able to reflect, and you have to be able to be agile as well, because as you get older generations change and society changes. And you have to make sure that you're keeping relevancy, you need that agility, mentoring of got a group of trusted critical friends, if you like that I've had for many, many years, that are also coaches in other sports, executive coaching, the athlete feedbacks always, always good good review processes, and also a diary. So out of all that just keeps you on your toes, and you always try and be the best version of you.[SB9]
Paul Barnett 16:28
The other interesting thing about this self reflection, and this focus on your individual on you as an individual is that in rowing, you can't control what your competitor is doing, you know, you can only influence your performance. So I imagine that this focusing on the self is actually a key skill. How do you help the athlete look inward, so that they can perform better outwardly,
Paul Thompson 16:53
you're 100% correct there. When you're racing, it feels like someone's moving away. But actually, you're probably just slowing down. Like I said about, okay, before the start of the race, where you need to focus in on I guess, the way I describe it, and a sports psychologist that I had years ago, you've got your heart eyes, which is what's happening in here and now and you have to concentrate on you're moving. And then you've got yourself dice, where you can be you can be reading the race, because if your focus gets taken out to the other boat, you lost because you're not concentrating on what you're doing. So being able to stay in time and do that step. Like I said, in together three, really key, remember, fortunate enough to coach Kay Slagter and Megan Steele, who won in 96 in the pair, and okay, we knew that one. But moving across the line, she had no idea where any of the other crews were, because she was just head down and tail off. That's obviously not an extreme, but that's a very focused bit that work worked for her. But if you're worrying about what other people are doing, you don't have your full focus on on you. So that's, that's a really key skill. And what's difficult is you get in writing, ever since it was in 2000 meter rowing ever since it was invented maybe 200 or so years ago, you face backwards. So that means you've got to sprint out so you go into oxygen debt that's not repaid until you finish your lactates might go up to 12 to 16 millimoles. In emergency services, someone has a heart attack, they're pretty much dead. By the time it's three or four millimoles, the lead may change three or four times and then we've had six or seven photo finishes here, you know, the finish might be a few tenths of a second or hundreds of a second, when the margins are so fine and intensity so high, if you get dragged away, you're not going to get the ultimate, you're the best out of best out of you because it's quite an uncut, no no selling sport too well, that's part of its alula in that environment, you need to really be focusing in on what you're doing. And you have to be able to, to have done that in training to be able to deliver that in racing,
Paul Barnett 19:10
support, you are part of the UK Sport elite program. And I know that you ran many research programs through through that and they covered multiple countries and multiple sports. Just wondering as you reflect back on that experience. Now what were some of the things that surprised you,
Paul Thompson 19:24
as I mentioned before, UK Sport, very innovative in their approach, and they had a team of a team who will see that in their cycling their cycling team with groups of engineers. And so it was a privilege to work with some of those people. I remember going in one one meeting because they're all smarter than me. It was like the brains of Britain could manage to manage to keep up that they looked in, in a lot of areas. Now they developed a book called I think there's one book out called the talent Lab, which which shows about a lot of the talent ID and they did a really good bit of research into What's the difference between a gold medalist and a medalist? What's the difference between medalist and a high performing a high performing athlete, one of the things came around around the resilience piece early on in their life, they've had to overcome some sort of challenge to be able to dust themselves off and then get them better. And there's also a lot of research there in a lot of sports, to top sports people. This is probably something for us all over the world was the talent comes from small and medium cities rather than the big the big cities. And whether that's, you know, access to resources. And to coaching, the numbers are smaller, the distance is less. So yeah, so they've had some some really, really good to have had another study on. Yeah, they have certainly done some really interesting work.
Paul Barnett 20:52
Oh, you said earlier, you've been coaching now for over 30 years. And I wonder if I could take you back and introduce you to that 14 year old who was being introduced to rowing at tilapia High School, knowing what you know, now? Yes. What would you say to him?
Paul Thompson 21:07
Okay, that's a that's a that's a good question apart from listen to your parents and behave. I've had a I've had a fascinating, fascinating ride, I must admit, my, my father did sit me down at one stage and say, well, this rally is good, Paul, that really. So I've stuck stuck to my guns. But lucky in reflecting on my own piece, I started coaching when I was young 24, I had a good rowing career, not to the heights that I would have liked. And I got knocked off a push bike. And so I had a moment there to say, right? Well, this is good, but I better go and finish my degree and see, see what happens there. So. So actually, to the 14 year old, I'd be saying, Look, you don't make sure you stick at it. And some of those lessons were spoken about today to apply to my own writing to be able to to have taken that a little bit, a little bit for further forward. In the coaching and the leadership piece. Look, it's all about people getting your messages across building relationships. And I know, I know, I guess this is more lessons than just for the 14 year old, just how supportive those peer groups are, how good those communities practice are. [SB10]
And that doesn't really matter whether you're in business or you're in sport. And there's so many similarities around around that. And I've been really fortunate to coach with people one was a emergency medicine doctor with London air ambulance, he's now down in Sydney, working there and went out for a night with them when you got life and death in your hands. And when you're having to you're a doctor, there's one lightning one doctor covers London, when you arrive, and you've got the ambulance here and a critical injured person. And then you've got to take leadership over a small team. It's real life and death decisions. And so that shows that when you've got the theory, that actually it comes into practice, and it needs to come into practice when it really counts. So back to the back to your question really, would be to make sure you you develop those and make the most of those and the opportunities are there, you need to just go and find them.
Paul Barnett 23:05
Pull one last question if I couldn't. Before I ask you what I'd like to read a quote. And it comes from the announcement that went with your new position when you were announced as the performance director for rowing Australia. And you say, I am passionate about engaging athletes, coaches and support staff at all levels of the pathway to prepare our programs for success in the long term. There are first in our sport that Australia is still to achieve. I want to see rowing Australia win its first Paralympic gold medal, and our first gold medal at a home Olympics when the games come to Brisbane in 2032. Sounds like a pretty good vision statement to me. But I wanted to finish by asking you, when you do finally retire in the distant future? What's the legacy that you hope you've left behind? Beyond the medals?
Paul Thompson 23:54
Yeah. Okay. And that's a that's a really good, really good question. And look, I'm hoping that we're able to develop a system where we're people genuinely really want to be a part of it. So we've got a great great system in, in Australia, but to be able to get to the national team, and achieve their achieve their capacity, but then also be able to move on and apply those things in other in other areas of their life that moves on and you can see that you can see that in the UK, they've got some real movement through as we do in Australia. To be fair, this extra was in some really leading leading positions and I think that's the quality of the program and the quality of of our sport, that you're in it for life. And that you're able to give back when you have when you have learned all those lessons that you're able to give back to the community and give back to the back to the sport so you know I think if we can develop that we've got good good people in their good capacity that we can we can grow and be a real world force in in rowing.[SB11]
Paul Barnett 25:00
Paul Thompson it's been great chatting with you today. I love hearing an Australian accent on European Time. I wish you all the best for the road to not only Paris but on to Brisbane and I can't wait to see the Australian success at those Olympics and those Paralympic Games.
Paul Thompson 25:16
Thanks cool and fabulous to talk