Tokyo Olympics 2020: Indian athletes have become more open to mental health, says John Gloster-Sports News , Firstpost

John Gloster first came to India in 2005 to become India men’s cricket team’s physiotherapist. Back then, he says, there was not much knowledge here about sports psychology or sports medicine. But in his 17 years of stay in India, he has seen the country advance as a sporting nation, and a lot of change has happened.

Currently, he is the head of Sports Science at the GoSports Foundation and has worked with many of the Tokyo-bound athletes as well as grassroots athletes on sports psychology, medicine among other things. He is also the head physio of Rajasthan Royals since the inception of IPL.

Firstpost caught with Gloster to speak on the challenges that India’s Tokyo-bound athletes may face at Olympics, rising mental health issues during COVID, and how the pandemic is helping bring out more resilient and durable athletes.

Excerpts:

For starters John, can you speak a little about your role with GoSports? 

I have been very fortunate to be associated with GoSports for a number of years now. Six years at least. My role is to try and support the athletes in the allied health field, which probably without the foundation would be very difficult for them (athletes) to find or access. I have been responsible for building this network that we can tap into pan-India, in all the relevant disciplines, that could be nutrition, sports science, orthopaedics, imaging, sports psychology. Anything related to health and wellness and performance of the athletes.

I have also been there to try and guide from a policy perspective, and also try and and build the education platform around the foundation. What we believe is the legacy, you know, we all talk about leaving a legacy, and I hope our legacy will be through education.

If you look at India and sports based system in India from the outside, it is often seen to be disorganised. Perhaps fragmented. A bit chaotic. So ultimately athlete suffers at some level. So our aim is to, through our foundation, drive that agenda across the larger scale to support all sports and sports people pan India.

For those who don’t understand what is sports science, can you expain it to them? What are its practical implications on the sport? Can you cite a personal example to explain how can sports science help improve a player/team?

I think sports science is still a bit of a loose term in India. It is not as recognised in this country as much as it is in United Kingdom or Australia. It is bringing knowledge to help an individual, that could be any athlete. Bringing a collection of knowledge based on science, based on research. All our learning through all the various disciplines that entail, like I said that can be in performance, in training, in recovery, in data analytics, in medical support, nutritional support. Sports science is an umbrella term and sitting under the umbrella, are all these components that can contribute positively to the success of an athlete.

So we are trying to take science to the forefront of performance and using analytics to best form relationship with the athlete. The way I look at it the more information I have about an athlete, the better I will be able to help them. Things like blood biomarking. Why do we do that? In sports science, we take a whole series of blood tests from an athlete. By taking these blood biomarkings, we have an intimate look inside the athlete. What their deficiency is, any red flags, we look at what is the best fuelling system for them. It allows me to work with the athlete more efficiently and more effectively to get the best out of them and in a safe manner.

Another example could be the use of Athlete Management System (AMS) to track athletes remotely because athletes are spread all over India. Through AMS, we can remotely monitor health, well-being, and performance. They feed the information to us through a platform. We analyse that and then we send it back to them with ways to change red flags regarding training, influence in nutrition inputs, habits and also starting a dialogue with their coach.

Gloster with Rajasthan Royals players. Special arrangment.

I think we have never really considered the importance of relationship that a coach has in this entire ecosystem. People in sports science and sports medicine need to have a better equation with the coach. Because the coach has been the person who is 24 hours, 365 days with the athlete. We may spend five or six days with that athlete. So your key person in this whole equation, particularly when your are implementing new strategies like data, analytics, you know through these platforms, introducing new technologies, introducing new nutritional practices, advice on load and training ideas, the coach has to buy them in as well.

Can you put more light on it, in terms of how it helps athletes? Also, for the ones preparing for big events like Tokyo 2020?

We monitor and analyse with the help of the coach. Take inputs from the athletes and make adjustments. The biggest area of change or the biggest area of intervention they ask for is nutrition and with nutrition comes supplementation. And physio support. We ask them at the beginning of the cycle, what are the areas you want most help with? Where do you think you are lacking, which could be inhibiting your performance. Most of them say physio support because that is one of the things that they don’t get in remote areas. So having an ecosystem of medical and physio support is critical for these athletes. We allowed our system to penetrate further into the athletes’ lives perhaps more than ever before.

With Tokyo-bound athletes, fortunately, they have been quite good with wellness and injuries over a period of time. The area that we have majorly focused on with the majority of our athletes has been around changing nutrition for them. Because we noticed and all the other sports scientists will tell you the same that you can have all the best training programs, protocols in place, they are pretty much not worth it if you don’t get nutrition mapped out for them. So that has been a big emphasis for us. We work with a couple of nutritionists who are in our ecosystem, who have been really helpful for athletes.

The other side of nutrition is supplementation. Getting the right advice in supplementation, particularly when you are an Olympic-bound athlete or competition-bound athlete because they have constraints of anti-doping policy as well. We need to be very particular on the education of our athletes around supplementation, nutrition because of the danger of anti-doping or the fear of it.

Education side of anti-doping is very important because many of them are ignorant. Also, the main focus of Tokyo-bound athletes was COVID safety and looking out to prevent infections. Giving them the right advice at the back of the guidelines of IOC as well. It is surprising just how unaware many sportspeople are even the highest level about general safe practices around COVID. And re-educating and reinforcing these messages have been critical. This is across all sports.

How do you see the pandemic affecting the Tokyo-bound athletes considering the current COVID situation in our hands?

Everyone is familier now with the protocols and we have well-educated our athletes on that as well as IOA, SAI, all have reinforced the safety messages.

Around performance, all these athletes have been exposed to operating in these environments for the last 15 months. So going to Tokyo, operating within a bio-bubble under COVID-safety protocols is nothing new for them. They have all come from some form of competition that has been staged under those conditions already. We have also pre-conditioned our athletes through various learning platforms around what to expect and how to deal with those environments. The shock factor of getting to Tokyo is not there.

Also, if you look at the duration of days they are going to be in Tokyo, it is much shorter than what normally it would be. The long duration stays that create the biggest problems for the athlete, from the perspective of mental health, are not really there. When you compare them with the cricket environment where you are in for weeks in a bubble. That is where issues begin to come around mental health. And require psychological support. With such short durations at Games, there won’t be many issues.

The main issues they will have will be around normal performance pressure and having that support around them as well.

Yes, the biggest feedback or one of the most pertinent feedbacks we had from previous Olympics around what we could do differently for our Indian contingent was food. And providing food that is relevant to them. In Rio, they attempted to make Indian food, have an Indian section but realistically it was not as good as perhaps it could have been. So that has been a real focus as well and one of the reasons we did our recee before COVID was to identify the supply of good quality Indian food that are particular to each region from where our athletes come. How that is going to pan out now within the Games village I think will be interesting to see. But the one message I get from all sports people across India, particularly in these times of bio-bubbles, is that food is such a huge part of this comfort. They can deal with pretty much anything but if they don’t get food right then they tend to struggle. This is not just for our Olympic-bound athletes but for all Indian athletes who are confined to these bio-environments.

Gloster is the head physio of Rajasthan Royals team. Special arrangement

When you went to Tokyo for a recce, what were your plans back then, and are there going to be any implementation of those?

What is relevant still today based on that recce is more soft skills side of things and the sensitivities for the international person in a culture like Japan.

The main reason why went to Tokyo in July 2019, the idea was to go exactly at the time Olympics were to be held in 2020. Because we needed to look at everything to do with athlete, the village, the venue, the transport, mapping the food supply chains for the athletes. But also other things like weather. With weather comes wind direction, humidity, how many hours in the day, all these factors that are needed to condition the athlete. Particularly for a shooter or an archer, in an outdoor environment, training becomes different. Understanding the weather pattern. And now what knowledge is relevant with constraints of COVID, it probably is the module we did for our athletes bound for Tokyo, we did that with the SAI and IOA to give them a heads up on the cultural side of Japanese life, what is accepted and what is not, which was also quite fascinating you know the dos and dont’s of Tokyo. I think fortunately a number of our athletes have been to Tokyo. It is unfortunate that the full value of our recce won’t play out in the current environment.

In the last one and half years or so, have athletes come up to you with mental issues across age groups and sports? Are they more open about it?

Probably this is the thing that has changed most for us in the last 18 months across sports. See, one is the surfacing of some mental health issues, the other is now they are coming forward and are willing to talk about it, which is really surprising.

Prior to this, there was a reluctance to communicate on some of these issues. Being in the sort of a medicine world, we are often the first point of contact for many of these communications. What we call Red Flags are often raised by us based on our relationship and understanding that we have with some of our athletes. But for me, the medium that we have been forced to use to communicate has also provided an opportunity to talk about issues. A lot of good is also coming out of COVID in terms of athletes now accepting that this (mental health issues) is part of modern sports, this is a part of life, and there is a system in place for help. It has become a really important part and we used COVID almost as a testing ground to start working on strategies to help the athletes with the mental side of their game. With the resilience, with their durability, with their sort of tackling things which they would have otherwise never tackled because of lack of time, because the opportunity was not there.

COVID presented us with this opportunity to really drill on the most important component of sport which is tackling the mental side of the game. And really bringing strategies to empower them to take control of their sporting lives. Especially during the early part of COVID, when athletes could not go back to the training, COVID became a great lesson.

Fear is not good for athletes and COVID came with one fear. So we decided to use the environment of fear to gain from that and use it to our advantage. And that is why I think we are going to have more durable and more resilient athletes coming out of the competition because of what they have learned through the COVID experience.

So many of us have lost our loved ones, family members. With this pain, comes strength. And resilience. Particularly when you are trapped in an environment where you cannot escape those emotions. You cannot go out, beat them physically by training or travel or going to meet friends or whatever. So you really have to embrace it and you really have to deal with it yourself. So that is what we told our athletes, to look at this opportunity to build strength.

One of the ways to dampen their anxiety was to find other areas of creativity for them within the constraints of their apartment or wherever they were. A lot of them embraced things like cooking, painting, and reading. One of our shooters is a phenomenal painter. When you eat, drink, sleep everything sports, you are mentally fatigued. This has been amazing, fine way to move away from sports and develop strategies to switch off and be created in another space. I see huge benefits on mental health sides coming out of COVID experience for our athletes.

Representational photo. AP

What have been the major concerns for Tokyo-bound athletes? We saw the story of how Sai Praneeth is worried about turning false positive in Tokyo. 

That is their biggest fear. Not being able to compete. It is one thing to have a fear of competition when you have not prepared well, have not had good training but when something comes completely out of your control like COVID then it just adds to the layer for these athletes. When you prepare for five years for that one moment and to see it taken away from you could be devastating. It becomes important to talk about the education of COVID safeties.

Sometimes people ask ‘are you guys going overboard with all these protocols and all?’ The answer is no. At the end of the day, all that matters is the athlete. Getting them safely to their event, competing, and getting them back safely is all that matters. Safety first is important, it has to be the motto.

There is nothing more nerve-wracking than knowing you are going to an event and having those last two or three tests and just hoping it turns out negative. Athletes keep calling to have everything explained. You need to be aware of how COVID behaves. If you have been infected once, what can happen even months later is you throw off footprints of the infection in a test, they may trigger as a response in the result. And that could be frightening for an athlete. And it is important for athletes to understand what that means. Then we look at the CT cycle and look how high it is, if it is pretty high, then we go and test again, hoping you turn negative.

But what we focus on is how to prevent them from getting exposed in the first place. We have had many such conversations with the athletes like relook at your test, relook at your CTC cycle.

You have spent more time here in India than anyone else, in different roles with many teams and organisations, in the last decade or so. What are the changes that have happened in Indian sports in your eyes?

This is my 17th year in India, I think. Remarkable changes. Because of organisations like GoSports, who identify where the problem lies in sport.

The biggest change I have seen is the acceptance that in order to perform at a high level, you need a support system around you. That can be team support, that can be individual support etc.

When I came to India, roles like sports physio did not exist. Whereas now it is a common term and every team feels they should be travelling with a good sports physio. Sports nutrition, again the role nutrition plays was never really taken as a priority for any athlete. Now that has come to the fore. Sports psychology as well and these relevant sports networks are now a norm. And I think the birth and growth of the ecosystem around sports have been remarkable. Those learning now are coming back to serve. The biggest change is in the mindset of athletes. They are embracing these changes. They see that without it, they cannot succeed at the international stage. Being open to new technology. Indian sports for me from when I came first and where it is now, has remarkably changed.