Gymnastics superstar Simone Biles stunned the world when she removed herself from the 2021 Summer Olympics competition to focus on her mental health. Soon thereafter, swimming sensation Katie Ledecky won a gold medal in a 1,500-meter freestyle event but was nevertheless visibly distraught by her performance. When former competitive swimmer Lauren Ammon witnessed these two athletes, her heart sank.
“Though Katie was clearly upset, she was doing everything she could to hide it,” says Ammon, who was heartbroken that Ledecky felt compelled to hide her true feelings for fear of what people might say.
Later that night, Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, earning 28 medals, commented on air, “We [athletes] just want someone who will listen to us, who will sit with us, who will let us be vulnerable, and who doesn’t want to fix us.”
Ammon, who swam from age 5 until she graduated from college, connected with Phelps’ statement and started crying.
“Here’s the most prolific Olympian telling the world that we have no one to support us on the mental side of this game when we’re under pressure,” says Ammon, who at that moment realized what she was destined to do. She pivoted her leadership development and career coaching company to focus on working with both current and retired athletes, emphasizing the message that mental conditioning optimizes mental health.
“Now I support athletes in training their minds like they train their bodies because mental training is just as important, if not more important, as the physical training,” says Ammon, whose company name is Performance Reimagined. “Athletes give 95% of their time and attention to maximizing their skills, strength and speed, but the truest performance differentiator lies in how those athletes are trained to deal with the pressure to optimize their confidence and utilize their resilience. It’s what goes on between their ears before, during, and after a competition that counts.”
Ammon works with high school and college athletes, along with their coaches and parents, to support the athlete from all angles.
“The parent and the coach are two of the most predominate figures in a young athlete’s life,” says Ammon. “They can have a great amount of influence on their performance based on what those relationships look like.”
Some parents are not past competitors, so they struggle to relate to their son or daughter athlete. Other overbearing parents create tremendous pressure on their child to perform in a certain way. Ammon maintains that the healthiest course of action is to simply keep the lines of communication open.
“Ask them, ‘How did you feel during the game? What was the predominant thought running through your mind?’ rather than asking, ‘What the heck was that? Why did you pass the ball that way?’ You want to create that safe space so athletes feel comfortable opening up about what’s going on inside of them.”
Ammon admits that it took her 40 years to get out of her own head. Her a-ha moment came when she realized that she has a choice in how she approaches a performance.
“I don’t have to go in, guns blazing, feeling like I have to win at all costs. Every day I get to wake up and change the definition of winning to fit me,” she says. “That relieves a lot of the pressure of trying to be what everyone else wants me to be.”
Ammon’s message to her clients is to not tie their credibility to their performance because that sets them up for failure when they don’t reach a certain performance level.
“How realistic is it to expect a person to be on the top of their game every single day?” Ammon asks.
In addition to current athletes, Ammon, whose ultimate dream is to work with Team USA, has clients who are coming out of college and trying to wrap their minds around no longer participating in competitive sports. She knows that the transition from competitive athlete to everyday Joe can be overwhelming, scary, lonely, and difficult.
“What you loved so much in your life for so long no longer exists,” says Ammon, who asks her athletes to consider the mindset behind that transition. Thanks to Ammon, her clients have experienced plenty of their own a-ha moments. They say, “I never thought of it like that before,” or “I didn’t know I could think in a different way.”
“A lot of times it’s the simple act of reframing a thought,” she notes. So, in a swimmer’s world, for instance, rather than fixating on the thought that a competitor has better turns than they do, she encourages them to flip the script and concentrate on what they, themselves, bring to the table.
“A lot of athletes put other athletes on a pedestal,” Ammon says. “You can recognize the strengths of your competitor, but recognize your own strengths, too, and ask how you can tap into those strengths and use them to your advantage.”
Want to learn more about reframing your thoughts when it comes to athletic competition? For more information, visit laurenammon.com.