This is an introduction to the New Secret Gem Series that will be launching next week. As we head into another ‘lockdown’ the three blog series that follows this aims to look at some ‘secret activities’ that not only support the mental health of those players and exercise participants you work with in their daily lives but also have a huge effect on their actual performance within a session, and support those at the very lowest level of participation to move up another level and actually access something that is more structured and tailored around their needs. We’ll scroll through some visualisation, relaxation and Art/Craft, utilising the Marginal Changes Theory devised by Sir Dave Brailsford, which has been used successfully in elite level sport and business, so why not health, well being and lower level participation?
As we head into another lockdown we will be launching the new ‘Secret Gem’s Series’ based around The Marginal Gains Theory. This is a process developed by Sir Dave Brailsford which focuses on improving everything by 1%. The purpose of this introduction is to explain the theory and present you with some examples of unusual and inventive, out of the box thinking from the great man himself, people involved in top level sport and share with you unusual changes and ideas which have allowed them to be so successful. These are fascinating and some actually link in very nicely with the current COVID-19 guidelines and restrictions.
Then over the coming weeks we will progress onto those ‘Secret Gem’s’ that can all be practiced at home and utilised to improve health, mental well being and some additional resources that you can not only utilise during this difficult time but also integrate into your ‘normal’ return into the sports and exercise environment once lockdown ceases. Be prepared for some extreme examples!
So What is this model all about?
Well, plain and simple it’s all about improving everything that you do 1% better. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about segmenting and then looking at how you can implement a change. This has been applied successfully in Elite Level Sport for years and also applied in Business settings, so why not health, mental health, exercise beginners, regular exercisers or those sitting just below the elites?
This short video Road To Glory is a brilliant way to understand this theory. It talks heavily about focusing on the outcome and not the process. Developing knowledge about everything the sport requires to perform and then picking it apart and making adjustments.
This article Should we all be looking for marginal gains? (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34247629) by Matthew Syed he states that;
‘The doctrine of marginal gains is all about small incremental improvements in any process adding up to a significant improvement when they are all added together’.
He continues with a great example which takes us into our first focus sport in Cycling since that is where this process stems from;
‘Perhaps the most celebrated example of this is through Dave Brailsford who revolutionised British Cycling as it was his belief that it was possible to make a 1% improvement in a whole host of areas, the cumulative gains would end up being hugely significant’.(Matthew Syed, BBC)
Sir Dave Brailsford explained the idea of marginal gains to the BBC way back in 2012 although the process started well before that when he took over British Track Cycling in 2004:
"The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.
"There's fitness and conditioning, of course, but there are other things that might seem on the periphery, like sleeping in the right position, having the same pillow when you are away and training in different places.
"Do you really know how to clean your hands? Without leaving the bits between your fingers?
"If you do things like that properly, you will get ill a little bit less.
"They're tiny things but if you clump them together it makes a big difference."
Who would argue? Take a look at the article below and you can see the power that this process has, the attention to detail and the open mind to successfully identify and put into place the right changes to improve performance and success.
Something that is definitely a poignant scenario right now in the bid to encourage regular hand washing and sanitising! In a world where ‘wash hands’ is part of our everyday ‘mantra’, the theory was just ahead of the game. So here transference of knowledge from a sporting context to a health one that could give those with LTHC’s some comfort and have the potential to improve health by that 1%. Looking to recap or just interested here you watch a Surgeon scrubbing up! Not suggesting that you wash to this extent but worth a watch to see what surgeons and Doctors go through. The pivotal one at the moment is this official COVID-Handwash and the NHS have also produced Kids Handwash . So these should get that one moving.
Now we delve further into Sir Dave Brailsford himself and his drive to transfer his thinking and innovation to the road with Team Sky and now The INEOS Grenadeir’s as well as a change of sports! Success speaks for itself on this one. In his time with Team Sky the team achieved an incredible seven Tour de France wins!
12 Ways Team Sky Develops Those Marginal Gains by Mat Brett (THU, APR 21, 2016 https://road.cc/content/feature/187025-12-ways-te) explores areas such as ‘all aspects of training, physiology, recovery, nutrition, equipment, psychology, racing strategy, and everything else that has an influence on results, and tries to improve every little thing’.
Highlighting again that;
‘Each improvement might be very small, but it’s all about the cumulative effect’.
This article looks at travel, comfort, colour coded water bottles, those mattresses and pillows, the flags by the side of the team members names, bike and helmet manufacturers and waterproofing are just some areas that were utilised to achieve the success they did.
Team INEOS (Previously Team Sky)
There is still hope though for all of us as Brailsford’s INEOS team fell away in the 2020 Tour De France. This article explores this scenario. Alex Ballinger quoted Brailsford as saying;
'We continued to work with our heads down, we didn't notice other teams were overtaking'. (October 8, 2020 Cycling Week) openly admitting that he and the team as a whole need to go back to the drawing board for the 2021 Tour with huge changes to the team and personal.
Marathon Running
Not content with working in one sport this documentary with INEOS is about how Sir Dave Brailsford used his theory to meet the INEOS 1:59 Challenge to achieve a sub 2 hour marathon run.
‘Beyond the Kenyan’s brilliance, the mastermind of the operation was Sir Dave Brailsford, the Principal of Team Ineos cycling, who served as CEO on the Ineos 1:59 Challenge, spent five months leading a project that proved a triumph of human performance, science and technology’. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdRaoLigijw&feature=youtu.be)
The programme looked at varying factors such as weather, altitude, training programmes and orchestrating the pulling together a team of sporting leaders and experts to achieve one outcome. The podcast may be long but also fascinating and a treat to hear!
BobSledding.
Canadian bobsledder Lyndon Rush credited imagery with helping him keep his head in the game throughout the long, arduous four years of training between the 2010 and 2014 Olympic Games.
RUSH: “I’ve tried to keep the track in my mind throughout the year. I’ll be in the shower or brushing my teeth. It just takes a minute, so I do the whole thing or sometimes just the corners that are more technical. You try to keep it fresh in your head, so when you do get there, you are not just starting at square one. It’s amazing how much you can do in your mind.”
A simple implementation of this theory is that we all shower/bath each day and so the potential to use a few minutes in a hot relaxing bath or shower seems perfect to have a go at visualising yourself doing a current yoga move or dance step, cricket bowl or golf swing. It could be as simple as thinking about your morning routine to help it become easier to remember.We will go into more detail on visualisation techniques in much more detail next time. But an easy way to get that 1% in place without you needing to make any additional time for it.
Football
Arsene Wenger is a highly successful football manager. An article in the Sunday Times on October 4th, 2020 gave an insight to his beliefs, ideas and openness to try anything to get an edge on their competitors as an insight into his new book.
Here we will touch on a few things that he introduced to sceptical players when he took over at Arsenal in 1996. He wanted to look beyond the standard training and showed a great interest in nutrition. Also he brought in Doctor Yann Rougier who is said to be a leading pioneer in the nutrition of athletes and as important, selling his ideas to the players. He revolutionised the eating habits of the team at a time when this area wasn’t always the focus. An example from the article states that;
‘Instead of the famous chocolate bars and fizzy drinks at half time, we (Wenger & Rougier) gave them caffeine drops on a sugar lump. Of course they were hungry at first but they soon got used to it’.
A small change but the start of a real change in peoples belief that improving diet can have an impact on physical performance and is more prevalent now than ever. That doesn’t just have to be in the sporting context, this is for everyone to think about and there is now plenty of support in achieving small gains in nutrition for health and for performance.
In the same article an extract from Tony Adams book (From Addicted) who recalls this session;
‘The first time he introduced us to his stretching routines was at Blackburn when he called us down to the hotel ballroom and put us through the routine for half an hour. There was some joking among the boys, who were all pretending to be still sleepy and putting one the tiredness, because we probably feared change’.
Of course the reasoning behind this was injury management and giving a greater range of movement and perhaps some relaxation once over the embarrassment of tight hamstrings, something that again would now be common place. But if professionals are scared of change and not willing to try then you never know. The success of Wenger is phenomenal and his endeavours to gain more advantages for his players was what lies behind that.
Formula One Racing
Now we move onto something that is highly technical and really works with the marginal gains theory. This was brought to the forefront to us watching the Mercedes Team win their 7th constructors title in 7 years with 4 races to go at Emilia last weekend. Mercedes have earned the right to call themselves F1 greats is a great article by David Tremayne.
Team Principal Toto Wolff was interviewed on channel four and they said he was the lead of this win. He was quick to say that there were actually 2000 chief architect’s involved in the teams performance, citing all of the people watching and working in the Bracknell factory, the mechanics, test drivers, sponsors and business managers to get two cars out on track and winning. Talk not of being ‘perfect’ but finding improvements in a sport which is worth big money and this is where business, industry, technology and marginal gains are key to success but merge together. Lewis Hamilton also recognises the contribution of the ‘whole team’ in every race he runs either congratulating, thanking or apologising to the ‘team’ whatever the result may be.
Wolff is quoted as saying;
“what stands out is the camaraderie that we have in the team over all these years, the right values I guess. And when I think about our achievements, supported in Germany and everyone in Brackley and Brixworth, I just have a smile on my face.”(Wolff says he has a successor in mind after blood, sweat and tears of 7th title)
We Knew We Had To Keep Our Edge - Lack of Complacency Key To Mereceds Seventh Title is a great read. Technical Director James Allison is a pivotal member of the team and lays out the mindset of the team and the success by ensuring the team don’t become complacency.
‘Allison said that that approach had been evidenced by the team’s 2020 W11 challenger, which featured several significant changes over the previous W10, despite that car having won 15 out of 21 races last year.
“We faced a choice with where to go with the 2020 car,” said Allison. “We had a good 2019… we did well and the regs weren’t very different, so why not keep chugging along in the same fashion for 2020?
“But we chose not to do that; we chose to take some different directions with the car, specifically on the front brake drums, on the bodywork around the air intakes and on the rear suspension, all of which were quite significant departures from previous, and all of which bought us the fertile ground on which to build the subsequent development of the car, which has been strong.”
This working ethos and determination is what has driven the success of the team way beyond the other teams, despite their best efforts. What marvel’s us is qualifying! Broken down simply as the technological content of this sport is too detailed for us right now! (Although we will bring you some of that as well!)
Step 1 - Set a good lap time to build on,
Step 2 - Make it green, improve own time
Step 3 - Analyse the lap and feedback to the team
Step 4 - Driver to make adjustments based on previous lap
Step 5 - Team Input
Step 6 - Apply the changes
Step 7 - Make it purple, to be the fastest.
So a lot is down to the driver so his feedback and feeling is fed back to the team, those trackside and the performance team back in the UK are all analysing performance, looking at other cars, the weather, how the tyres are working. This is then fed back to the Principle team and lead engineers with lightening speed so there is time to feedback to the driver and improve track placing in qualifying and then connect that into a pre-prepared race strategy.
Tech Tuesday has some fascinating videos that claw deep into the way teams approach the development of their cars and make those 100th/10th difference on track on a race day.
Red Bull has demonstrated over and over this season their ability to perform pit stops at lightening speed, under-cutting the other teams in some cases by seconds. Mechanics breaking down every little segment and drilling each one enable them to gain that advantage that could be so vital in leaving the pit lane and coming out in a good position. Again one thing where the actual speed may not be able to match the leaders but they have identified a key area where they could make marginal gains.
Clearly most of us won’t be looking at what we can do driving at 200mph but it does demonstrate the requirement to constantly look for something that we can improve on and be willing to have an open mind, lease with your coach / participant or even as a participant ask questions of your coach / instructor as to how they think you could improve and then get the support you need and give it a try.
Essentially this approach to sports performance means relates to the fact that an individual, team, coach or participant that reaches a high level but changes nothing will plateau and then fall. However, those that look upwards, are open to change and prepared to try all options will make improvements.
So in terms of that we’ve looked at the performance level and taken some examples of how this theory might be implemented into your everyday life. It may not help the ‘physical’ side but mentally you can come out of lockdown stronger, happier and healthier athletes/exercisers/coaches/instructors with clear goals, small margins of improvement, plus something to fill the ‘void’ and ‘time’ that now exists.
Our Secret Gems Series
So, now we understand the theory, it’s over to us at Time To Heal to give you a three blog series. In each we will look at how each of the focused activities could give you that 1% increase that you need to stay ahead of the game, fill the void of lockdown and offer you some sound advice and guidance in areas that can be backed up scientifically to give you support at whatever level you participate in or want to participant /coach in.
We’ll get started along this pathway with a look at Visualisation and how it can be easily utilised to give sports people an ‘edge’, exercise instructors a new activity to try and support those at the low end of participation who face barriers to access sport and exercise, especially those with LTHC’s and disabilities.
Following that we will look at bringing relaxation to the forefront of investigation! In the modern world as it is there are many worries and mindfulness is regularly referred to for our mental health and that is where we will begin to launch us into something that could have significant effects on the ability to participate and the ability to improve performance through some simple techniques that can be implemented easily and efficiently to even the most sceptical people!
Then finally we will ask could art and craft give you the edge or the first tentative steps into the sporting environment? Perhaps it could help even your higher level athletes. Not expecting you to turn up to a football coaching sessions with card making kits but there are some things here to explore, not only are they good for mental health but they can have a knock on effect for many.
Look at each of these three blogs as 3 tiers of a Rainbow Cake! I.E. There is something for everyone, doesn’t matter what level you are at. Could be Professional, perhaps performance/club level or Home / non participant. The easy format allows you to read the research first and then you can start where you like as we entice you into this deliciously different sequence of blogs. You can skip to whichever area you wish or read them all through. The choice is really yours to digest, enjoy and hopefully try!
Comments