🇮🇪🇿🇦🧑‍⚕️ Overcoming mental health hurdles with High-Performance coach John McGrath

“You are beginning a journey. There are just two points you need to know; where you are right now, and where you want to go.”

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The sole purpose of high-performance coaches is to enable athletes to achieve their best, both individually and (when applicable) with a team. Effective coaches also work with athletes to develop goals - for example, shaving time off a run or swim.

Ireland-born John McGrath, according to his website, is a high-performance coach who boasts two decades of experience that has enabled him to help professional athletes be at the top of their game while impacting their lives in the process.

In essence, the Cape Town-based coach firmly believes he can help anyone transform into their utmost best regardless of who they are or what they do in their respective lives.

"That means that regardless of who you are I can help you to reach your highest potential in what you do. Not just in terms of fitness, fitness is a component of health, which is not necessarily your most significant component, supposing you an athlete it is a large part but even so… still not," he told The L.A Dosage.

"I play between the spaces of the physical, the mental, and the support systems around your life. Even an element such as the word spiritual - so there are many different things I would bring in order for them to become the highest person of themselves."

Considering the fact that McGrath has an array of clientele at his disposal; I asked him what his focal point would be when he has to work with athletes and he affirmed that he has an analogy that he works with, that being “you beginning a journey, there are just two points you need to know; where you are right now, and where you want to go”. In all fairness, that is a wise place to start but how many people can answer those two questions, and even if you are sure, there is usually that self-doubt nagging in your subconscious. 

How does a high-performance coach like McGrath help someone overcome those hurdles particularly athletes that we admire whether it is on television or live at games if granted the opportunity to do so? 

"Once you know those two points, there is a whole other series of things and then you can figure out the journey. Like roughly how far it's going to be, where your journey has to be towards that goal. These are very important things and if you don’t have the clarity you won’t know your weak points. I also always say you also need to make your strong points stronger, you don’t want your weak points to break you down in the long run."

Image: Intune Communications and Entertainment

Every sporting code has its own pressures whether it comes from the athlete themselves, teammates, or coaches; there is always underlying anxiety brewing behind-the-scenes and so often one can reach a breaking point more so if there is no room to speak up. What does an athlete do when they feel like they can not speak to anyone precisely when management has not created that environment to speak up about their struggles that potentially affect their performances on the pitch, field, court, or wherever they ply their trade.

It is understandable that coaches/managers want results and they will go as far as pushing athletes to the ultimate extremes but at what costs? We have often seen how bad performances in sport and have the media and fans alike have been quick to judge and almost vilify these athletes, overstepping boundaries and erasing the fact that they are humans before sportspeople.

So how does McGrath tackle this continuous cycle that is still a work-in-progress? He affirms that professional athletes should be able to get to the stage of coping strategies not so much mechanism especially when facing pre-game jitters and it seems that the world is about to cave in on you with all the mounting pressure from management, teammates, and fans alike.

According to the coach: "If you don’t know what you are dealing with at that moment then you can’t frame it properly and if you don’t have a strategy to be able to deal with that particular hurdle; it can easily be something that can take you out. So having coping strategies is a way of having to deal with pre-match jitters. You have to get the athlete into a routine. Like how do you do this?  How do you do that? How do you get to sleep?.

"You try not to think too excessively about what is ahead too much, you do what you always do and find rhythms in what you normally do. Try as much as possible to stay away from people who are going to bring you down, but all that depends on the athlete's mental strength. So in a performing space, your vision is very narrow, you not ready to give the ball or ready to receive the ball, it becomes a lot of pressure instead of just giving the player that space. As a coach, you have a responsibility to know who responds well to this and who doesn’t respond well, who do I need to calm down, and who do I need to rev up all depending on the athlete. Coaches need to be aware of their athletes, that is a very important skill set," he told The L.A Dosage.

Image: John McGrath website

In the same breath, it has emerged that there is an obsession with harnessing the physical attributes of an athlete regardless of their sporting code and ultimately it leads to turning a blind eye to mental health and we continue to see this pattern despite athletes slowly starting to come out and have those difficult talks about mental health.

"In my experience, particularly in this country [South Africa] it is not something [mental health] that people give enough time to because of the hard level of the competition while coaches generally come from a number of backgrounds," as told to The L.A Dosage.

"Sometimes these coaches were ex-great players, who played the game well and they had a certain temperament that if you have something naturally, you don’t think it is something special because they don’t play the game very well perhaps. So because you were in that perfect space you don’t have the realization that the others don’t have that at all, and if there were technically good players you would give a high degree of coaching. You also need people who are comfortable in the sporting context, people who can give you advice on this problem. It is easier to speak and advise on something you have been involved in.

"You can learn almost anything equally, you can learn how to pass a ball, you can learn how to run but it doesn’t mean that you going to be good at it you know? So it is important to know about some sport who knows what athletes are going through, so in a nutshell, we don’t give enough time to this in this country, and it is worrisome. If you don’t have someone who believes in you, a teacher, a parent, a grandparent your chances are very slim. You know we take a lot of gifted athletes out of the township, and we often remove them from some support system that they would have, you know that must support that they need. This may seem insignificant but that’s what these players need."

Image: John McGrath website

As the conversation continues, we also revert back to the previous point of mental health issues still being a taboo in South Africa and the fact that it is still regarded as a weakness, in particular making it difficult for athletes to be vulnerable. 

McGrath insists that it is of utter importance to create a safe and trusting environment for athletes specifically paying attention to 'empathy' while appealing to everyone else to be onboard with sportspeople being open about their battles that can potentially affect how they perform in their respective sporting codes.

"Well it takes courage to really come out and say it, we should be okay with that, we should create an environment in this country where it’s okay not to be okay, and that seems to be frowned upon. Almost half the time all it takes is for someone to have a little bit of understanding, just be quiet and listen to the person's problems and be empathetic towards that person," he said to The L.A Dosage.

"That is why it is also very important to create an environment where teams hang out in big groups and have fun instead of small groups hanging around and discussing players. Create an environment where coaches and players feel comfortable around one another because if the mind is right the body is never far behind."

Image: John McGrath website

McGrath, who as previously mentioned has years of experience on his belt, also touched on the several ways he can help an athlete remain motivated in their sporting code, all while avoiding the occasional burnout. For some, it can last for a short while, and for others, it lasts a lifetime. How do we overcome this?

"I try to use the word discipline. Discipline is more important than motivation. It is not a very popular word, particularly amongst millennials; it is a bit misconstrued and it is a bit like your mother lecturing you about something," the Irishman affirmed.

"Actually, I view it in a very different way, you can’t reach your truest potential without motivation but you need discipline on both sides of that. So you need the discipline to train hard but you also need discipline not to train hard else you going to burn out, so there needs to be an element of balance.

"It is impossible to stay at any fitness level for a long period of time, so you have to bring it to a semi boil for a few weeks, it depends on the sport. Like look at the springboks this year, they didn’t play at all," he said.

In the same breath, I went on and asked McGrath a question I have been yearning to have answered. We know of athletes who have been playing whatever sport they have been involved in from a very young age and we have seen them grow in their various codes.

It gets to a point where they have to retire whether it is through injury or they have reached that stage of their career where they have to pass on the baton to the younger generation. However, the question how do they transition from that routine they have been used to for most of their lives to what would be deemed the 'normal' world for them. How does one avoid the risk of falling into depression of which there is a high possibility of that happening if the former athlete in this instance has no set plan per se?

"What I would say about that is that if you only want to intervene after retirement, you are 3 to 5 years too late. So in life, most jobs work in a way that you get paid less when you are young and as you move to 40 which is probably peak," McGrath told The L.A Dosage.

"Sport works the opposite, you get paid top when you are at a young age, and from there on income is going to come down, if you don’t know that which most people don’t. The vast majority, 80% of sportsmen and women go broke in three years, more than 80% actually.

"But then again if we know where we are right now and where the destination is you going to end up with nothing worse than what you experienced, doing what you loved to do and getting extremely well paid for it. 

"So these are things we need to be having conversations with athletes about, like get an education, that is one thing. If you don’t have a plan for your life, someone else does, if you don’t have a plan for your money someone else will have a plan for your money.

This interview has helped narrow down the importance of using the services of a high-performance coach such as John McGrath.

​In closing, high-performance coaching is about helping people to achieve their very best. It's particularly useful for long-range career or life planning, for dealing with career change points, for making changes to performance or behavior, and for dealing with major life setbacks.