Actividad del Grupo

(STORIES FROM OTHERS) (HOW PERSON FEELS)

Figure 12. The interplay between messages received, and an individual’s internal feelings and psychological health, if these messages were taken on board. Comments from a male and female player reflect the potential for coach comments to influence their PSH and WB. Puzzle brain (2015) retrieved from Imgkid.

I went along to a camp and [the coach] said ‘you’ve got alot stronger. I need a good 1 pointer so keep going’.... He said he wanted to keep me on more long term.

I scored a last second basket to win a game off someone else’s missed free throw. The guy was congratulated for making me look good and I was just called a lucky cunt.

I was a bit of a nightmare to be around. I’d be shorter- tempered. From other people’s observations just didn’t seem myself, I didn’t enjoy playing basketball....I don’t know if it was a health thing or a confidence thing.

That was awesome, what I was aiming for. I was like ‘right I want to get as good as I can’...It’s made me alot more driven. It has boosted my confidence. I probably get more enjoyment out of it now. REJECT

Figure 13. The coaching conundrum – PSH/WB v Performance Gains

Figure 13.Illustrating the balance between player PSH and WB and performance, seen within the men’s and women’s squads and brought about by the coaching philosophy. Scales (2012) retrieved from psdgraphics, copyright 2009-2015.

coaching styles, equally they saw the benefit of their opposite number’s. That is, just as the men envied the softer style of the women, the women appealed for the more single- minded approach of the men. Essentially they craved a style that enabled them to realise their performance potential without crucifying or mollycoddling their PSH/WB. They deemed this a tricky balancing act, but winning formula. Figure 13 summarises:

The men’s style?

PSH/WB Performance

The women’s style?

PSH/WB Performance

The balance?

Stress and sacrifice - The perks and pressures of being a Paralympian

Keegan, Harwood, Spray and Lavallee (2014) explain that “elite athletes train and make tremendous sacrifices in order to reach the pinnacle of physical condition, technical prowess and human achievement” (p. 97). Robbins et al. (2010) elaborate, commenting

 Performance the priority.  PSH/WB can be very

challenged

 PSH/WB is protected  Can lead to performance

mediocrity

 Performance & PSH/WB cannot be considered in isolation.

 Both must be championed, and yet at times will be challenged.

game; (b) strive for distinction; (c) accept risks and play through pain; and (d) accept no limits while pursuing the possibilities of sport” (p. 44). Indeed it has already been shown that being a GB WhB player could be uncompromising, a rollercoaster. And yet, there were many more twists and turns which tested player PSH and WB, and made for a ride which they would relish and resent. Player comments provided an insight into this:

You are in a bubble...the majority of my time, if it’s not spent actually training it’s being affected by the training. It affects what time you go to bed, it’s what you eat, what you drink, it’s more consuming than 99% of jobs are because it has to affect your lifestyle so when there is a low that low is more extreme than it would necessarily be in another job....‘Why have I been eating healthily for the last three months and denying myself all these little pleasures, why have I done that?’ It makes everything affected by it. (Kane, pc, December 14, 2011)

I do think it does bring a lot of emotion to your life that you wouldn’t necessarily have over a job otherwise. You know, I don’t know many people that have cried at work whereas you cry a lot on camps sometimes out of frustration or out of joy or that kind of rollercoaster of winning, losing. Um, it’s very addictive and it makes your life interesting rather than flat....[It’s an] emotional ride. (Lucy, pc, April 16, 2012)

You have so many ups and downs. In Athens we lost our first two games so we couldn’t get any further down, so you’re mentally just drained....The next day it was even worse cos we got beat. Then the next day we won, you go up and you’re happy again, and then we won in the quarter-finals, then lost in the semi-finals. Your brain, as an athlete you’re just up and down. It’s like a rollercoaster you don’t have no control over....Every day [London] gets closer, it gets ramped up. (Coach Will, pc, July 9, 2012)

In asking the players to quantify the factors which contributed to this rollercoaster, they spoke of ricocheting between fitness and illness, selection and rejection, winning and losing. Additionally classification, schedules and sacrifices were highlighted as stressors, just as kudos, opportunities and conditioning were noted as perks. Figure 14 summarises this:

Figure 14. The journey to London 2012: A health rollercoaster

Figure 14. The health rollercoaster experienced by the GB WhB players as they made their way to the London 2012 Paralympics. Rollercoaster (2011) retrieved from SecuraCoin, copyright 2014. Rollercoaster cart (2011) retrieved from Pixshark. Wheelchair basketball figure (2011) retrieved from Clker. Orbit (2012) retrieved from Urbanfile, copyright 2015.

Fitness v Injury/Illness. Schnell, Mayer, Diehl, Zipfel, and Thiel (2014) comment on the complex relationship between health, injury and performance:

Good health is the basic foundation for peak performance in elite sports, yet athletes are often conflicted between protecting their health for the sake of being able to compete and risking their health in the form of potential injuries to achieve even higher levels of performance (p. 165).

Upper body injuries in wheelchair sports are readily reported in the literature (Ferrara & Peterson, 2000; Martin & Wheeler, 2011). Indeed Nyland et al. (2000) in examining US Paralympians (Atlanta 1996) highlighted the prevalence of soft tissue injuries to the shoulder, arm, elbow and wrist of wheelchair athletes. Whilst Derman et al. (2013) reason that this is not surprising, given the propensity to rely on their upper bodies, this was also reflected in the comments of the players. Both Max and Sammy spoke of their love affair with shoulder injuries. And whilst this PhD was not concerned with the physical health implications of being a GB player, there was an inevitable play off with their PSH and WB. Sammy’s words reflected this:

not played for] nearly three weeks. [It’s] hell. It feels like three months. I want to be fit. I want to be training every day... You automatically think ‘well I’m getting unfit, I’m getting fat because I’m eating more.’ I don’t know why I’m eating more. I feel like I’m, I’m missing out on what they’re doing and you’re thinking, you know the camps are so precious, so you know, they’re going through so much and I can see that everyone’s improved so it’s quite frustrating. (pc, December 4, 2011)

Similarly images Kate took, when combined with her explanation, revealed her injury woes and the toll on her PSH and WB.

Images 7 and 8. Wrist Injury and Hospital Treatment

Kate’s words mirrored those of her teammates and researchers. For example Wheeler et al. (1999) also found that, for disabled athletes, sport was their world and thus not training left a hole. In becoming injured, players became temporarily lost.

Saying that, the players acknowledged that this was the price they had to pay for being an elite athlete. They supported Theberge’s (2008) notion that injury is par for the course and they were willing to “subordinate their health to performance” (p. 207). Whilst Sean talked of training until it made him sick or rubbed his stumps raw, Max mused “the lows, injury now and again, over well 20 years in a chair, a few operations, obviously just part and parcel of elite sport” (pc, February 1, 2012). Lucy agreed:

Going to hospital, did

something to my wrist, nothing major. It’s fine now but at the time, it was really ‘oh my God, I’ve hurt my wrist, oh my God, my life’s over.’ It was horrible. You want something so badly. You put your heart and soul into something and that is your everything and then you have an injury through no fault of your own. I was a bit nervous about it really. (pc, December 4, 2011)

had a tear in my rotator cuff, didn’t stop me, I just taped it up until I got home so yeah, so no it would have to be a serious thing that would stop me. (pc, January 31, 2011)

In this way being injured was not damaging to the player’s PSH/WB, provided they could play on. As Theberge (2007) asserts, it is a misconception to presume elite athletes are ‘healthy’, for in reality they play on the edge of a precipice, flirting with injury and compromising health for performance. Pain may be synonymous with disability sports, but it is a nuisance rather than grounds for performance cessation (Bernadi et al., 2003). This perhaps explains why Tsitsimpikou et al. (2009) found 45.8% of WhB athletes at Athens 2004 to have used NSAIDs (see Footnote 2, p. 27). Players had no qualms about playing in pain. Their PSH/WB was only affected when injury forced them to stop. It could be argued that this is nothing new, for all elite athletes are sidelined by injury. However this is compounded as a disabled athlete. That is, they are more prone to illnesses associated with their disabilities (Shakespeare & Watson, 2002), lose more training days than AB athletes (Martin & Wheeler, 2011), and recover more slowly (Spencer-Carvaliere & Peers, 2011). Mike’s comments reflected this:

I landed on my big shoulder....I had to have it operated on. Then I went home and recovered for three months where I picked up two pressure sores...so that contributed to another four months out so I was out for a total six, seven months....I can’t even get in my chair and go for a push. That’s the low for me....The fact that I couldn’t use my legs and I lost an arm as well.... You know, the wife was trying to help me and she was bless her...being at home for that length of time, not being able to do a damn thing, not even drive the car, you know, laid on the bed ‘cos the pressure sores.... feeling useless. ‘What’s everybody saying about me at the camps’, the insecurities then coming out... ‘will they think I’m shying away, will they think I’ve done this on purpose ‘cos I didn’t want to train?’ (pc, October 10, 2011)

As such the players did what they could to remain injury-free, be it consulting physios about ‘a niggle’ or responding to data from their heart-rate monitors to address fatigue. As Hockey and Collinson (2007) propound, the body can provide feedback and athletes can respond to their senses. It was just that they would not listen if performance was the cost. Ultimately injury in the lives of the players created a trade off of different types of health. To play through pain, something Theberge (2007, 2008) heralds an occupational

Figure 15: Selection Stress of GB WhB players – a decade on

(Campbell & Jones, 2002a)

(This research – 2011/12) Figure 15. Selection stresses encountered by GB WhB players, revealed in Campbell & Jones’ (2002a) research with the men and a decade on (in this research). Section adapted/reprinted from “Sources of stress experienced by Elite Male Wheelchair Basketball Players,” by E. Campbell, and G. Jones, (2002a), Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly, 19, p. 86. Copyright 2002 by Human Kinetics

in choosing to stay on-court they could sustain themselves, their PSH/WB feeding off their participation. When injury or illness became so chronic as to relegate them to the stands, whilst physically they could heal, mentally they suffered the undernourishment of being denied the very thing that fuelled them. Consequently players lived in fear of injury, for worse still, it could disqualify them from selection, and this was key to their PSH/WB.

Selection v Rejection. Naturally being selected for a major tournament was a great high. It vindicated their efforts and recognised their abilities, boosting their PSH and WB enormously. As Max said “it’s brilliant. They’ve got faith in you...so it is amazing” (pc, April 20, 2011). Sammy also revealed the outpouring of emotions:

For Beijing we were in Manchester....We were called in, told and we had to go straight back to our room....My mum and dad and my friends were all waiting in one hotel room and I knocked on the door ...and I just burst into tears and they thought I hadn’t been selected.... ‘Oh my God, I mean it’s good news!’ (pc, February 14, 2011).

Having said that selection also created a lot of stressors. Interestingly some of these were found by Campbell and Jones (2002a) in their research with the GB WhB men’s team ten years earlier. However Figure 15 offers an updated picture.

Past Bad Experience of selection

De-selection/non-selection Insufficient feedback

Process of selection

Player bias

Timing of - the waiting game Procedure for cutting players

Current selection

Doubting selection/fearing non-selection Expecting selection & then disappointed External issues affecting selection

Teammates yet rivals Concern whether selected

Whether done enough training to be selected

Thought of not getting selected Sel

ect io n co n cern s

it could be that as the profile of Paralympic sport has grown the desire for selection has followed. Sammy also explained that increasing numbers meant more scope for de or non selection. Eleven players had experienced this. They labelled it a real career low:

I was selected for The Worlds but then got dropped for dropping form....We were in America at a tournament and [the coach’s] reasoning was a lack of confidence....It was probably only a month before the tournament if that. That was horrible. I wasn’t interested, I was done with it. I thought it was out of order to do it that late. I think although I’d been dropped, um and his reason for doing it was right, I think [he] created the situation.... I had no reason to be confident because I don’t think I was treated well. He would obviously disagree and he had his reasons but that’s how I found it. (pc, May 4, 2011) [See Footnote 11; p. 69]

Heartbroken. I spent like a week just crying. I was devastated. After The Worlds I knew I’d not done enough and literally the week after I started training again and I didn’t give myself a break. I worked so hard. I moved to live with Dee who I train with 15 hours in the first three days of the week. I lived on £200 a month. I have no idea how I managed to survive. I completely sacrificed everything. I didn’t see my friends for like 4/5 months at a time. I devoted myself completely to basketball and it got to the camp and I didn’t get selected and I didn’t understand what more I could do really ‘cos I had given up my life for basketball. I’d done everything that they wanted me to do. It was horrible. (Bec, pc, March 1, 2012)

Players reverberated from the decision and contended with many emotions; anger, frustration, disillusionment. Similar findings were achieved by Martin et al. (2011) whose research with female WhB players found that those not selected had more anxiety,

depressed mood and confusion. However one male player in particular had suffered more than most. His comments and those of his coach revealed the toll of selection:

It was just devastating to do that to him. We ended up both crying in the selection meeting so the rest of the meeting was virtually wiped out...devastated ‘cos you’re talking about his third Paralympics he’d missed out on...so it was tough because you’re crushing somebody’s dreams. (Coach Will, pc, September 2, 2011)

and Will told me in the meeting, they were both crying ‘cos I was, I was gutted. I was crying my eyes out and Will was crying. I was like I would have put anything that I was, I was in the team. I was that confident. I would have thought I would have been the first few names put down and I didn’t get picked, so I was like ‘fuck’ I thought, ‘am I ever gonna, is it ever going to happen?’ (pc, September 2, 2011)[See Footnote 11; p. 69]

With the coaches only too aware of the emotional nature of selection, they tried to make selection meetings easier, players entering by one door and leaving by another to avoid crossed paths with teammates. It was simply that there was no easy way to have your dreams shattered. The fall-out on PSH/WB was inevitable for players and coaches.

It’s got to be an absolute body blow. That’s just so almost traumatic I’d say to the point where you’d probably want to give up. We had selections for The World

Championships last year and during the course of the week... it started to transpire that this particular person may not get selected and he sort of found out from things we’d said and done, so that final day of training, no commitment, no enthusiasm and just sat on the side, half-hearted. (Coach Doug, pc, May 25, 2011)

Next year when I select the team that is going to have a mental impact on me....I didn’t select two girls who went to The World Championships last year. I didn’t select them for The Europeans this year ‘cos I wanted to try new players out but both those girls retired on me. (Coach Fred, pc, October 10, 2011)

Having said this, Ben did suggest that the process of cutting players prior to final selection could be handled more sensitively. He commented:

Three people got cut last month. The only thing I don’t like is when... we have a meeting at the end of the camp. Everyone comes in together and he says ‘thanks for coming, blah, blah, blah’ and at the point he’ll say in front of everyone, ‘this person’s cut, this person’s cut, this person’s cut.’ They know already. It’s just a public thing so everyone else knows. It’s good because then there’s no hearsay. I just feel for those players. (pc, February 1, 2012)

What’s more, just as Woodman and Hardy (2001) found with elite AB athletes, (three) players pointed to favouritism, certain names too readily etched into the selection sheet. An interview extract with one player sheds more light on this:

core group of players who are favoured by the coaches?

Player: Yes, massively, massively so.

Interviewer: Can you elaborate in what way or how this manifests itself?

Player: I think rightly or wrongly it’s just a mindset thing. Some people because of

what they have done in the past are seen in a favourable light which makes sense. If you’ve been to countless Paralympics and you’ve scored important baskets before, even if you’re not playing so great now and you’re not as sharp as you were you’ve got that history behind you that says given a big match he’ll perform even if recent history suggests that’s maybe not the case.

Interviewer: From your point of view do you kind of accept that they have the right to

be in that position or does it breed a bit of resentment, frustration?

Player: To a point you have to accept it but at the same time if you’re going head to

head against somebody and you’re fitter, you’re playing better it can be frustrating...in previous times I have been playing better but history has been weighed in their favour and quite openly in their favour.

Interviewer: And so in terms of your health and those of your team mates, can that be

a source of irritation or conflict within the team with each other or the coaches because there’s a sense of injustice?