It has been a while between posts but Thorpe has inspired us. We are so proud of this incredible Aussie champion. Without doubt, we were more interested in listening to him talk about competing and in particular the pain and the mental strength he has. Who rips their suit 5 minutes before hitting the blocks to race at the Olympic Games and can focus enough to win gold?! Best part of the interview by far: Michael Parkinson: You mentioned there somewhere, something I meant to ask you about before, let’s just talk a wee bit about it and that’s the pain of it. I mean, people see what is an effortless motion in the pool but you know better than anybody the kind of torture your body goes through. The lactic acids and all that, just quickly explain to me what happens to you after exerting yourself like that in that extent? Ian Thorpe: It varies by race. The feel of the pain so the sprint pain feels different to long distance pain. But there’s a point in every race, where you get to, your body has so much pain, it’s the build-up of lactic acids, your muscles starting to turn off and this is when it becomes completely mental. You train for these moments. Where you have to navigate around your body, to convince yourself to do what your body does not want to do naturally. It’s like does the head or the heart control what you’re doing? And at this stage it’s the initiation of the head to tell your heart, push on. Push for everything. And so for myself, I try and extend to be longer. To kick harder, to produce more pain and more and more and more. And this is how I get to the wall. It’s just let’s take this beyond what I’ve experienced before. And this is why we do it countless times in training. So we can prepare for it, but there’s always something more that you have. That you can give. Whether it be in training or in racing. Michael Parkinson: Can you quantify the pain, I mean what is it? I mean does your body seize? Ian Thorpe: Yes, I watch swimming and I can see someone being hit by a piano, it breaks down so much that you swim and you’re barely moving. And it’s horrible to watch when it happens to some of the best athletes. It’s horrible. You see it and that’s what you want to see in training, not in racing. But you know your arms do seize, but mostly, it’s legs. They’re big muscles and they just suck up a lot of oxygen and the pain is there. And I don’t know what to compare it to because I don’t have anything to compare it to. But you know I train for the pain as well.
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 11:49:41 +0000
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