Designing for Chaos: Embracing disruption to drive innovation - Paper - Page 5
Foreword
Greg Cackett
GB1 Bobsleigh Olympian
Life is chaotic. We all know this. Professional sport
is not exempt and can take a huge toll on the individual.
Physical and mental injury and ill-health can abound for
myriad reasons.
To keep ourselves at the top of our game we need to
be exceptionally present in the reality that elite sport,
for all the joy it brings, balances heavily with intense
difficulty and setback.
Preparing for the chaotic nature of sport is essential.
Ruthless occurrences such as catastrophic injury
during a major event, or having your funding cut,
can set back a career by years or end it entirely.
‘Planning for Chaos’ was a more evocative term I
coined to nudge me a little harder when it came
to planning my training regime. (I have scaled-up
the approach even further now I’m in my sporting
twilight!)
I could put together the most beautiful five-to-sixmonth programme, taking me from early phase
general conditioning all the way to peak performance
for national selections. It could encompass all the
training required to hit speed and power peaks, but
what if I tore my hamstring 2 weeks into the first
month? Or put my back out a week before selections?
What can I reasonably have in place that becomes
an auto-reroute instead of a performance existential
crisis so that I never lose momentum? If I tear my
hamstring for example, depending on the severity,
placement or cause of the tear, I have about four or
five different reroutes I can use.
Injuries are part and parcel of sport, but the mental
toll can be more debilitating than the physical.
Sustaining as much forward momentum as possible is
key and the root of that starts with ‘Chaos Planning’.
As you can see, it’s not just a physical approach, a
pen on paper action whereby you have different plans
of attack for different eventualities, most importantly,
it is a mindset.
Accepting this challenge is an essential prerequisite
for any budding athlete and it’s where we coined
the term ‘Chaos Planning’. Accepting and planning
for chaos in the best way possible, puts you in the
strongest position to navigate the rough seas of
Olympic endeavour.
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