Anxiety and Elite Sprinting

[Angela Coon]

writing or wrote or could write the book on this but I am going to see who if anyone has anything to say about it and shut my mouth for bit... but first....let's throw out some bait and see if this snags any comments of value.

Coach Charlie Francis for sure, without any doubt in my mind suffered from high levels of undiagnosed anxiety. Why the heck has it taken me this long to say that, bring it up and open the door for discussion. ( maybe soon I will tell you but not ready yet and might never be ready )

I wonder why? ( I have a few theories) ......

Oh, one more thing... cause you know this might save someone...

Angie Bailey my friend, she told me years ago she had severe anxiety. What did I do about it? ZERO. ( she was so fun and so cool and talented? OMgosh.

[Brett]

Interesting that I am up at 2:30am reading this, I know the feeling lol...

[Angela Coon]

Everyone knows or should know that sleep is the corner stone of any kind of performance.

Let's put it another way. We are able to learn all sorts of things about one's performance by looking at and learning how one sleeps.

I have been a fabulous sleeper and worked hard to ensure excellent sleep.

Sustainable performance in any area requires a person to know how well they are sleeping, resting and regenerating otherwise the training might look like someone is literally running around or sprinting around in circles.

[Juggler]

Re sleep, I din't realize until recently how much I was messing up my sleep and how much that has done to me. Hopefully I'll do better.

Regarding anxiety and elite performance, I'm actually reading Touched with Fire right now. It's about how many great writers have had serious mental health issues annd it was a part of them that they couldn't turn off. People have a lot of advice for normal people with anxiety and for people who do regular work those tips might work fine but it's not fine if it takes away your ability to soar. I'm a writer and I can say that my best writing comes on days when I'm on the edge of sanity. Then things find me that they don't when I'm in a placid state (oh, I should weep for us all, if the placidity of the Cow, or somesuch, were the Ideal we must seek!). I take modafinil for my anxiety and it works well but I can't do good creative writing on it.

I've only personally known one elite athlete and her anxiety drove her coach crazy.

[Angela Coon]

Sleep is the cornerstone of high performance that is sustainable over time.

severe mental health = multitudes of chemical imbalances stemming from a variety of discussed and not so much discussed causes ( abuse, trauma which is physical and or emotional intentional or otherwise the list goes on...... BRAIN HEALTH and TRAINING HEALTH = this is what we are going to start talking about more of

[Angela Coon]

No one wants to talk about brain health and training health but guess what? It's happening anyway.

here are some business that are addressing neuro chemical needs of our gut and brains for human health and there for the new frontier of true elite sprinting and elite performance of all things we wish to pursue including writing and juggling and sprinting and loving and staying married and not dying at 61 years of age because of preventible STUFF.

MOSH ( who owns it and runs it? Super cool business )

ERGOGENICS ( an athlete with a very good idea)

BULLETPROOF = some fake performance stuff in this imho. good ideas on anabolics LOL ( ironic right?) We were putting oil in our shakes to do fall and spring training

Metabolic diet = Mauro was always anti culture and likely still is. He was talking about diet and performance when no one was

[Angela Coon]

Let's use information of the things we know for sure to accelerate knowledge about training health for elite sprinting. NOW we are talking about sprinting fast, breaking records and not only living to tell about it but learning to talk about how to enjoy all of the journey and extend the journey and share the journey.

[Angela Coon]

Re sleep, I din't realize until recently how much I was messing up my sleep and how much that has done to me. Hopefully I'll do better.

Regarding anxiety and elite performance, I'm actually reading Touched with Fire right now. It's about how many great writers have had serious mental health issues annd it was a part of them that they couldn't turn off. People have a lot of advice for normal people with anxiety and for people who do regular work those tips might work fine but it's not fine if it takes away your ability to soar. I'm a writer and I can say that my best writing comes on days when I'm on the edge of sanity. Then things find me that they don't when I'm in a placid state (oh, I should weep for us all, if the placidity of the Cow, or somesuch, were the Ideal we must seek!). I take modafinil for my anxiety and it works well but I can't do good creative writing on it.

I've only personally known one elite athlete and her anxiety drove her coach crazy.

Everyone is messed up on their sleep. Well, lots of people.

Read Matt Walker's book and he talks about caffeine and it's role. It's half life and 1/4 life might help some understand to find alternatives.

It's also not Phd ( papa has dough lol ) content to learn, practice different. I love coffee but guess what? Coffee does not like me.

[Angela Coon]

I have not read Touched with fire. The book sounds interesting and thanks for sharing it Juggler.

Writers are cool and interesting people. They might be some of the only humans wandering about that are in the right kind of mind space.

Charlie was an amazing writer and so is his son. I wanted him to re-write a next version of Speed Trap and his manual but we just ran out of time.

Dr. Daniel Amen points out the importance of knowing if you are able to adopt certain habits regarding your performance.( coffee is one example only) He's one of a few online people who have been around for a long time and been doing amazing work educating people with his content about functional health and medicine. Check him out because his contribution is notable.

[Oldbloke]

severe mental health = multitudes of chemical imbalances stemming from a variety of discussed and not so much discussed causes ( abuse, trauma which is physical and or emotional intentional or otherwise the list goes on...... BRAIN HEALTH and TRAINING HEALTH = this is what we are going to start talking about more of

Chemical imbalances for mental health: Not proven, look at articles like those below. Commonly, in biological matters, it is necessary to consider - Cause, Effect, Correlation, Coincidence. Along with placebo and nocebo these dimensions are incedibly difficult to unpick even for medical interventions. Let alone for supplements.

We are all better off sticking with more widely accepted, simpler and cheaper alternatives. Drink more water, eat a diet that does correlate with long term health, eg Medditeranean or Japanese, supplement specific likely defficiences such as vitamin D in winter etc.

Brain health interventions beyond medically proven ones are a waste of time until proven otherwise, unless you are a big fan of placebos.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326475
https://www.healthline.com/health/ch...e-in-the-brain