#7: How much does our mind impact our performance?

Hello and welcome to another edition of the trivelo coaching podcast. Trivelo coaching, where we get to coach athletes of all ranges in cycling and cycling races and triathlon races. As always, I'm joined by a man with many accolades. I'm actually sick of going through them at the start of each podcast. The point is, you won the Ironman, you went to the Commonwealth Games, you're very good at cycling, and you win a lot of races and triathlons. And that is the head coach of Tribala, coaching, Jared Donnelly. How you doing, Jared?

Thanks, Jordan. I'm not sick of the introduction. No. Look, it's really important that today's topic is all about poor achievement and good.

Achievement and the psychology behind it.

The psychology behind it. And that's why we've brought on board another guest.

We're keeping it in the family. So, obviously I say every podcast, but if you don't know, I am the head coach, his son Jordan, and we have bought my brother and another son of the head coach, and that is Liam. Welcome, Liam.

Thank you for having me.

But, yeah, today we're talking about something that doesn't get spoken about heaps in comparison to how important it is, and that is the psychology and mindset behind performance. I feel like everyone knows how important it is, but we train so much the physical side of the ourselves and our body to get ourselves ready, yet our mind can completely crumble our performances. We don't want to focus on the negative too much, but that's kind of what happens. And you, dad, you were really keen to talk about this. Why did you want to talk about it? Why did you want this to be the topic of the podcast?

I really think it's appropriate at this stage of the season. In all of the groups that we're coaching at the moment, some of the big A racers are just around the corner. And when we know the boys and girls are going to some important world championship races in triathlon and cycling in the next two weeks. And I just think it's really an opportune time to just have a discussion about how best to use the positivity of your mind to your advantage. And I know that you two have, both you and Liam have extensively studied the value and the uses of having the right mindset and this is the right time to do it, especially when our athletes are preparing right at this minute for probably the biggest race of their year. And some of them, they've never been to a world title event before. And, you know, we had Tim Jamieson on last Podcast who won the road race at this event in Perth two years ago. So, you know, we've heard from a person who's won the event. We talked about his training and his preparation. We didn't talk a lot about. We just touched on it briefly, didn't we, about his mindset.

But you could hear it in the way he talked. Anyway, you can hear his mindset and what, what he was saying. He has such a strong mindset. I felt that towards the end of the podcast when he was just talking about his passion for cycling and if you're going to go out there, you're going to train. And when he was training for the Worlds, he said, I think he might have said it off there actually, but he said, do you think I missed a Saturday session, a long six hour Saturday ride in that 12 weeks in the lead up, no matter what the weather? Because a lot of people have, they want to do the preparation but when something gets a little bit tough, they give up. He said, do you think whether it was in the middle of winter in Australia and it was cold and wet and hail in the hills and the Dandenongs? I didn't go to the session. No, of course I went to every single one. And that was the preparation that he needed to win, which shows his mindset, I think.

Yeah. And his physicality certainly is that. I mean, look, we have lots of alternative options rather than getting drenched and that shows how tough he was and I think that's a great mindset. But me sending the guys onto a 2 1/2 hour 3 hour ergo as a replacement is just as bad as a six hour out there in the rain. So the guys are certainly doing all that in our group. But not to take away from that, sometimes it's almost a bit silly to go out there and risk the safety factors of riding. But that's not what we're here to talk about. But really I just think the one thing that came through with him was his utmost confidence and the belief in himself. And that was the real key to me that I got out of listening to his stories about all the races he did well in and some of the races he didn't do so well in. The change in his attitude and how confident he was in this particular event. And that's what I want to get across to some of the guys. You and Liam's thoughts on how do you get your mind physically, not physically, how do you get your mind prepared for what's going to be a big day? And you've Put a lot into it. You've traveled across the world, you've spent money, you've hired a coach. There's a lot that goes into it. So what, from your point of view, I'll probably ask Liam that question first. How valuable is your mind in terms of comparing it to the physicality of your preparation?

Well, yeah, we have our theories. And the funny thing is, obviously people listening don't know that I'm a physiotherapist. So I'm trained in very much the physical body. And I actually left the physiotherapy industry because when I started going down the pathway of learning about how the mind influences pain and function in the body, I started realizing that actually we don't really know anything about the mind, but we know that it plays actually a bigger role in our physical body than our physical body does. And when I started learning that and started realizing that and started realizing just how much or how little we know about it, I got really disheartened and I left the physio industry because I honestly thought the physio industry was a bit of a joke in the fact that the way they treat back pain and the way they treat chronic pain and all that sort of thing. So, yeah, to answer your question, like, it's incredibly important, I guess.

Yeah.

To put proof in the pudding.

I don't know.

Have you told this story on the podcast about you at the Aus titles, dad, about. I'm guessing you haven't told anyone because you don't like talking about yourself. But. And forgive me if I get this wrong, but in the first stage of the OZ titles, maybe a couple of years ago, you were in a sprint finish with somebody who. You weren't. You knew you weren't as good a sprinter as. And you actually had never beaten him in a sprint, if I recall correctly. And you beat him. You won that. And that title for you was. That was your big goal for a number of years was to win that Australian title. And you looked at your wattage after the race and what was it? Over a thousand watts for the highest number I'd ever recorded by a significant weight. And so. And you said yourself that that isn't right. As a coach, I look at that and that's. I shouldn't have physically been able to produce that wattage. And I did. And so it's kind of like the stories of the mums whose kids are trapped under cars and the mums lift the cars up. You know, it's a ton, a thousand kilos, and it's not physically possible for that to happen, but then somehow these mums make it happen. And it's.

We have spoken about that exact race because the exact words you used when you were telling us the story is you said, I came around the corner. I just said to myself, I'm not going to lose. I'm going to win this no matter what it takes. And that shows what it took your body to produce that wattage to win. And you have a lot of people listening will know this story, but briefly tell it again because it gives context to this whole thing. But the piano story.

Yeah, look, as a young phys Ed teacher in early days, we were down at a country camp and the camp site went on fire and we had to get the kids and the equipment out of the hall. The local fire brigade came. There was no real drama. It was pretty panicky at the time, but when you look back on it, it was pretty small. But the gist of the story was we got all the kids out safely, all the chairs, and there was a piano in the room. And another helper and myself lifted the piano out, down the stairs and away from the fire. Fire brigade came, put the fire out. Everybody was happy. We had to put the equipment back. We put all the chairs back and then we tried to lift the piano. Two of us couldn't pick it up. The two people who had lifted it out of the room could not pick it up. It took six of us to pick the piano up and take it back into the room. And that was exactly what you just mentioned, Lamb. Exactly. When you were telling that story, I thought of that campsite story of how the mind and adrenaline, I suppose adrenaline is another thing we don't really talk about much and how valuable it is. But that was. I was pretty freaked out by not being able to pick up the piano with the same guy. And we looked at each other and went, oh, my God, that is scary.

I guess, yeah. It's funny because you kind of asked me two questions about how important the mind is. But then what should these athletes who are going to the. Going to Italy for the world titles, what they should do? Rarely do we see athletes have an issue with, you know, putting their all in at a sprint finish and that sort of thing. Like, that's a. When you get to this level, when you're going to the world title, you know, you're a pretty committed, crazy person to have gotten to this point. Like, we can all admit that as athletes, like that's. We're ridiculous with how we approach training and mind over matter and that sort of stuff. So that's rarely an issue. What is a massive issue is the performance anxiety around these big races. And yeah, once the race start, usually people can get going and going a little bit better. But usually we see athletes get so worked up and so nervous about these big events that it actually ruins their race because they've used so much physical energy around the stress and anxiety of the lead up to this race and then they're not thinking clearly in the race and they're missing brakes and they're not making smart decisions. That's a much bigger problem than just trying to push as many watts as you can in the sprint finish because when it gets to that stage, usually it's pretty level.

I do, as you know, coach a big cross section of athletes with different philosophies on training and mindset and personalities and that's normal, that's okay. But I do always wonder why some people have a better luck at some races and other people have really bad luck at races. And I'm just interested in from a theoretical point of view of why does it seem like that? And we talked about some AFL games where teams get on a run and seems like everything goes well for them and everything goes wrong for the opposition. And we've got a classic example of we'll talk about probably later with Jordan with your experience as playing finals footy and they're good analogies to give people an idea of how performance anxiety can ruin or make the day unreal.

It's not just big races either. Obviously the bigger the event, the more likely you're going to feel anxious about it because it means more to you. But you see it across the board with at any level you can feel nervous about a very standard race. If you're AFL players, sometimes they get the yips and they can't perform at any race. They're not even just a final. But you look at Richmond this season and how confident they are and I watched them Friday night versus the Bombers. They've been doing this all year. But they are not the most talented team and you compare them to someone like GWS who have a team of just talented kids. But Richmond are just unstoppable because as a team they are so confident and they're not missing targets. They don't fumble all and you cannot underestimate how much that is to do with the mental side of things in confidence. And Gary Lyon actually said halfway through the season when the Bombers lost to Carlton the week before played shocking Carlton, the worst team in the comp, and the next week came out and beat Geelong, who at the time was still top four, top six side. And he said, we cannot underestimate how much the mindset of a team impacts a game, because this is the same team that one week ago, on the exact same deck, lost to Carlton and a week later completely turned around and smashed Geelong. And. And I think they're the same players, aren't they? Everyone hears that and they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

Yeah, mindset's important.

Yeah. But you say, no, don't underestimate it. It literally was the difference, because the tactics haven't changed in one week.

The attitude of the players changed. The same players had a different attitude.

Yeah.

And it might be because the opposition were weak. So they had an attitude of we'll win regardless. And they didn't. Whereas when the attitude had to be, well, this team's better than us. We need to actually really lift. So your attitude towards the event can't be underestimated either.

And this concept of an athlete's form or the form of the team is just so fascinating because what is form like? Obviously, when it comes to endurance athletes, you have tapering and you have specific training mechanisms to create biological changes in your muscles and in your cardiovascular system and that sort of thing. Like, that's. That's one aspect of form. But then what's form? Yeah. With regards to. Yeah. A football team like this or. You know, we love the example of golf, you know, because the Pro tour, that they play four rounds on the same course, the same 18 holes, and at the end of each four, each round, they have a completely different score. They haven't improved or decreased their skill level in golf shots. It's nothing to do with their biology. It's nothing to do with their physical fitness or their peak fitness. It's nothing to do with the fact that they forgot to taper or they didn't taper correctly leading up to the PGA Tour. It's literally an idea of form, an idea of state, an idea of how well are you executing the skills that you already know you have and what outside influences affect. Well, the only influences the mind, really. Yeah. How well you.

But you have let those outside influences affect your mind. If I don't get this putt, I miss the cut.

That's right. And so, yeah, with. With Jordy Dad's watch just gone off the first 10 minutes of this podcast, we try to figure out how to put it on silent. And we couldn't figure it out.

Damn Apple watches.

Maybe our mindset wasn't good enough. Yeah. With you, Jordy, I love this story mainly because I was. I feel like I was the super coach around fixing your form. But you rang me. Round 22 in your first year of senior footy, and you guys had made finals and you had a big game coming up this week, first finals appearance for you in senior football, scraped into the finals. Scratch it to the finals. Yeah, it's an important aspect of the story, actually.

It definitely wasn't in form.

And yeah, you. You rang me and you basically were saying, look, last month I've just been playing like shit. Like, I've just been. I'm not in the game. I'm just. I mean, actually, maybe you didn't tell.

Me that that was.

You dad rang me. It's like, Jordan, he's playing so bad, he's not in the game. But, yeah, you rang me. And you were. You assume you're like, I just don't know what's going on. And we had a conversation about this very stuff, about the fact that you're a good player. Your skill is in your speed and your endurance and using that to your advantage. But we also talked about a lot, about the consequences of staying in this state and the consequences of approaching each contest and each decision in the game. And what would happen if you stayed in this state of lack of confidence, in this state of being unsure. And what would happen if you approached each contest in a state of actually, no one's fitter than me aerobically in this league. I know that because, you know, I'm the son of a genetic miracle and Giro Donnelly. But, yeah, and I know that if I can do a couple of big runs up and down the wing, maybe when I get the ball on that third transition, I know I'll have a few meters on my opponent and approaching each contest with that confidence. Long story short, you played unbelievably. That first final you guys beat, you were the last side, you were fourth, you played first and you absolutely demolished them by 70 points or something. It was an absolute thrashing. And then you played third or second. It was the other way around.

It was. You play third first.

Oh, third, first. Yeah, yeah. Long story short, yeah, you beat every team and won the grand final by no less than 50 points every game. And you were named one of the players of the final series. And then you found out later that night or after the grand finale that the coaching staff and the selection panel, the Tuesday before the first final had a 20 minute discussion around, I think we need to seriously drop Jordan Donnelly from this final series. And the irony behind that, like that's. That's the form, quotation marks, form you were in leading up to that final series and they were going to drop you because of it. And then you chose to create a different form during that final series and that's. You were still nervous, right?

Yeah.

But it's the way you approached those nerves and what you committed to yourself, what kind of actions and mentality you committed to despite those nerves that allowed you to perform at your peak, perform what you were capable of. And I think, yeah, if these guys, your athletes are going to Italy for these world Championships, they've done all the hard work physically, you know, it's just a question whether they can perform at their peak or not.

And that.

And I think the most important thing to understand is it's not outside of their control, it's 100% within their own control. And just choosing to commit to adopting a more positive mindset just does wonders. Choosing to acknowledge that I am a good cyclist, I have put in the hard work. I actually deserve to be here. Like, little stuff like that and reminders actually really tremendously help.

The language that you use there is funny. We are aware of it because we've done a lot of background study in behavioral psychology and cognitive psychology and just doing short courses and that kind of thing because we were both so interested in it. Which is why I called you at that time with footy, because we'd done a few years of that study and I found myself in a position where I thought, well, I know a lot of this, but now I'm in a position where I need to apply it to myself. I called you knowing that you would help. And one of the things that really helped was what you talk about here with state control and choosing your state. That terminology sounds funny, but basically, you have to understand that at any point in time we are in a certain emotional state. Whether it's a happy emotional state or a confident emotional state, or a nervous emotional state, a sad emotional state, whatever it is. And before a race, when you're really anxious and nervous, you've got to ask yourself, what am I focusing on right now? And if you're focusing on what can go wrong, if you're focusing on imagining we do this all the time in our head, we imagine how bad it could be, or we imagine the worst case scenario for some reason. And when you do that, or imagine.

What'S gone wrong in the past.

Exactly, yeah.

Oh, shit. Every time I get into one of these big races, I, you know, I always stuff it up like that. What? How are you meant to feel confident, like going into a race when you're concentrating on that?

Yeah, it's impossible.

Yeah, we always use the analogy of. Because it's a hard concept to grasp, because it's uncomfortable concept to grasp, you know, being responsible for your emotions and states and that sort of thing. But we always use the, the real world example that if you are watching a horrifically sad movie, you know, Marley and Me, the saddest movie in history, where he has to put his dog down, or, you know, any sad movie, watching that movie, and when you're really into it, it's nearly impossible to crack a smile, to be genuinely happy during that moment. And that's not a bad thing. Like, that's just reality.

It's just life.

That's just life. And so that's the lesson is when you're watching a movie in your mind and you're concentrating on that movie and you're reflecting on that movie, your state, your biology will react a certain way. And so when you're leading up to an important race or you're on the start line and the movie that you're choosing to play is a sad one, is a stressful one, it's an anxious one, and again, the mistake riddled one. That's right. It's like we're always playing movies in our heads, whether we realize it or not. And when you can realize that and just step back for a second and go, hang on, what scenario am I playing here? I'm actually imagining myself getting a mechanical. I'm imagining myself falling off my bike, like on the first corner, like, why am I playing this movie? Why am I like, that's such a.

Brilliant thing you brought up. And I just want to give you one story from. I don't really like telling a lot of stories about what's happened in my career. But one of the training things that I practice from a lot of the reading that I did, was I do this run from here up to Sherbrooke Forest and back.

I know this story.

And they have bollards at the entrance and bollards at the end so that cars or whatever can't go around the beautiful trails around Sherbrooke Forest, which is the mecca of running in Melbourne. And that's why I moved here so that I could train there. And one of the things I used to do was a two hour run on a Wednesday, and I'd run From home with our dog. And the dog would stay at the start of the forest and wait for me till the end of the forest. And then, come on, Matty, let's go back home. But I would run into the forest going, right, this is the start of my race. And when I got to the bollards at the end of the race, I put both hands in the air as if I just won the race that I was about to finish and say to myself, well done, you won. With cheering inside saying, this is the feeling I want to have when I finish this Ironman race that I'm about to do. All this training for this two years of training. Every Wednesday I ran through the bollards with both hands in the air screaming out. Which is very unlike me. But it was a movie that I played over and over again, week in, week out, come that day when I actually won that race. It was so funny, putting my hands sort of in the air. But, you know, the mindset that I created about getting to that position, that feeling was from practicing it the same movie, repeat the same movie.

That's actually a really good thing about. What we do know about mindset is visualization, which is what you're talking about, actually has been scientifically documented and studied. And there actually is scientific proof behind. I don't know if you guys know, I know Jordan, you know, this particular example, I don't know, dad, if you know it, but the basketball free throw shooting. And so they had three groups of college students from a college team in America and they separated them into groups of eight. And so they had group one with eight people, group two with eight people, group three with eight people, and all basketball players, all, you know, good basketballers. And the first group, they didn't, they were the control group. They didn't add any additional free throw shooting to their regime. The second group, they made them do 100 free throws after every single training session, no matter what, 100 extra to whatever they've already done. And the third group, they didn't get them to do 100 free throws. They made them sit down on the bench and imagine doing 100 successful free throws. Now, at the end of the 12 week study period, they retested everyone, made them all do free throws, tracked how many they scored, how many they missed. And what they did is they measured the improvement of the group as a whole. So the average improvement. And obviously group one didn't improve at all because they didn't do any extra training, didn't do any extra. Anything else. And group two and group three. This is what's fascinating. You would expect group two to be significantly better than group three because they actually practiced. But what happened was there was no significant difference between the improvement between Group 2 and Group 3. Both groups improved approximately the same amount, so one group from just doing it and the other group just by visualizing it.

And that's a really good study to bring up because a lot of people, when they hear you talking about psychology or visualization, it just sounds a bit woo woo and just sounds a bit. We don't really know if that works or not. It sounds a bit like magic. But when you talk about it in this concept of, well, really, you're just playing a mental movie in your head. And we all do it every second of every day. So when you decide to play a different movie, because if you. Dad, if you didn't play that movie of putting your hands up in the air, let's pretend you got to start the race and you had the movie of you cramping or you being really tired throughout, that your whole state would be different. That's what we're talking about with state control. You know, it is quite hard just to say, okay, I'm gonna be happy now, like you said, Liam, because, you know, external factors influence that. If you're just sitting there watching a sad movie and then you say, okay, I want to be happy now, it's not gonna work.

That's near impossible.

But if you run a mental move in your head of something, let's. Let's say, all right, if I want to be happy, let's. Let's think about a time I was happy. Let's play a mental movie in my head and remember a specific time when I was happy and go back to that time and remember who was there. What were you looking at? What were you feeling at the time? What were people saying to you? What were you saying to yourself? You start running that movie and you start feeling a bit happier, that becomes more real. And that's where the psychology. You start to understand how playing these mental movies really does impact your state. And that's something that you can actually control and you can focus on. You can say, okay, well, which movie do you want to play? If I want to be motivated, if I want to feel good before a race, let's think of a time when I. When I was motivated. Or let's think about all the training I've done. Let's think about the things that are going to help me control my state compared to running the movie. Of nerves or anxiety. And that's not to say that you're not going to be anxious. You know, before this footy finals, like you said, I was still nervous, but of course, the majority of the time I was playing the confidence movie in my head, and my whole game completely changed because of that. And anyone before a race can try a similar thing. It's not going to get rid of all nerves.

And.

And that would be dumb because if you weren't nervous, it would probably mean it doesn't mean much to you. So you're not trying to not be nervous at all. You're just trying to run a better movie.

And look, just off the topic a little bit, nerves are great because it shows that you care. And if you don't care, then you've got a problem straight away.

That's the fun of it at the end of the day.

And as you know, in life, anybody who's passionate about anything is normally going to be successful because they're not going to let anybody drag them down, pull them back, or put barriers or roadblocks in front of them because they're wanting to achieve. And the difference is you get to the start line, everybody's trained, and at the professional highest level, they're all unbelievably good. They're all very similar. And the difference a lot of the time is who believes in it more than the other. And that's kind of what I want to talk to you guys about today is, you know, your belief in yourself and your confidence in yourself can play such a role. When you've got two guys equally talented physically, the guy who's got the better mindset will win every time.

Is there a question you want to ask around that?

Yeah.

So.

How do you get rid of the negativity that's going to be coming through your thought process, Especially when it comes to. Especially that part of the day at the start or the night before where you're going to waste a little bit of energy worrying about the outcome and the external forces that you think could be sabotaging your race, whereas you've got control over everything. That's the question. How do you get your. What little tactics and things from your experience and your study in the mind that can actually help to get you to think?

Well, the simple answer is what Jordan's already said is, change what you're focusing on. Because if you're focusing on going shit happening and things going bad, then you're gonna feel bad, you're gonna feel nervous. So that's the simple answer is change what you're focusing on. The unfortunate thing is that can be difficult.

And yeah, because I was going to say in order to do that, you need to accept the. Almost the universal law. If this is what you want to do, if you want to perform well, accept the universal law. And this isn't a real law. It's not, it's not like a law belief system. It's a belief system. Yeah. That you are responsible for your results. If you can accept that responsibility, then you have the self discipline empowering yourself to decide what you want to focus on and be in control of that. However, if you don't accept that responsibility, it's going to be difficult for you to take control of the state that you want to be in because you're going to be blaming external factors. And that belief system is a choice because you can either say, well, no, that's not true, not everything is my responsibility. There's going to be external factors. And if that's it, then you're going to be relying on external factors to help you to win or help you perform. And that is. I don't want to be in that position. I'd rather just have the responsibility on myself.

Yeah, I want to be in control.

Yeah, for sure.

And put it this way, if you're not confident in your ability to handle your emotions and take control of your emotions, I've got reassurance for you right now because as athletes, hopefully you've experienced this, because I assume we've all experienced at some point, but when we get in that flow state, that state, where it can be during training, it can be during a race, but where you just feel bulletproof, everything comes together, you just feel amazing. Your muscles work exactly how they feel like they should, your breathing is just perfectly in sync, you're not getting tired, everything's just going amazingly well. We've all had that experience in our career at some point. Now, the thing that's important to remember is that a magic wizard didn't come along and just touch you and create that for you. You created it yourself. And you can debate whether I didn't consciously create it or, you know, it was luck that that happened. Regardless of whether I'm correct and whether this belief system is true, it doesn't matter. The reality is that you have experienced that flow state in the past. And so therefore you can choose to believe that was luck or you can choose to believe that you had a role in creating that bulletproof state. Now, if you choose the latter, which I highly suggest you do, because it will make you a better athlete and you perform better. If you choose to believe that you've had a role in the past about creating an amazing state for yourself, that means that you can probably make that state again in some way, shape or form. And it also means. This is what you're saying, Jordan, about taking responsibility. If you've created good feelings and good states in your past, then you probably will have the ability to create bad states in the past. Sorry. In the future, bad states in the future, bad and anxious states in the future, and vice versa. If you've created really anxious and negative states in the past, that's awesome because you've proven that you have the ability to change your physiology and your biology and ride crap just from your mindset. That's how powerful your mindset is. So if you've done that in the past, that's awesome because then you have the ability to then switch that thinking and use that same mental power that you've got that you've created in the past to create really good outcomes for yourself in the future. And that should be exciting, exciting for you. So literally. Yeah. Simple ways to change your focus on what you're focusing on. But I know a lot of people that we work with and talk to, they really struggle to believe that they can do that.

Yeah. Because like you said, it is difficult to do that. And to do that, you have to. You have to be willing to take that responsibility. And we also call it results versus reasons. And it's an equation. You can be on the results side of the equation or you can be on the reasons side of the equation. What that means is you can either get the results that you want or you'll have reasons as to why you don't get the results. And you can call them reasons, you can call them excuses, whatever. Those reasons can be entirely valid. But if you don't get the result, then it's a reason why you don't have the result. And your reasons, or your excuses can range in the level of, well, that's, that's not acceptable. That's just you being weak to a completely acceptable excuse. But regardless of how acceptable it is, you're either on the result side or the reason side. You can't have a bit of both. And so if you want to do your best to get the results that you want, you want to put yourself on the result side. And I argue heavily with this about Lance Armstrong because while he was a drug cheat, he won seven Tour de France's in a Row without any quote, unquote, bad luck. So he.

Well, he did have bad luck, he did have mechanical, that sort of thing.

But not enough bad luck to. For him to lose a race. And the Tour de France is so hard to win because over three weeks, anything can happen. And he had mechanicals, he had crashes, he ran off the road, he had crazy things happened to him. But he's. Regardless of the drugs, his mindset was so strong that he was on the results side that no matter what happened, no matter what reasons he had, he was still gonna win. And that's probably the mindset that made him take drugs. But to do it seven years in a row, you can't underestimate how incredible that is from a results point of view. And you see so many Tour de France writers now, and the most recent example is probably Richie Porte, who every year something seems to go wrong, and you can call a crash bad luck, but it's still a reason.

Yeah, yeah. And this is, again, this gets really tricky and it's. It's tough talking about psychological concepts like.

This because you don't want to blame Richie for his crash.

Exactly. And that's not what we're saying here.

And it's.

It's so funny because everything we're talking about is so arbitrary and, and not real, but it has a very real consequence. And so everything we're talking about here doesn't matter whether factually we are correct in our thinking and our theories. It doesn't matter whether science maybe one day might disprove all of this. All that matters is if. And this is what comes down is the placebo effect. Like, it's been proven that people that take a drug like a Panadol or something, or painkiller or something that actually isn't anything do receive physical relief in symptoms. Their body reacts exactly like they would react if it was interacting with a chemical. And that is absolutely mind blowing. And that proves that belief can actually create change, can overcome. It can. And so what we're saying is that the most bulletproof belief that you can have is that you control everything. Now, I'm pretty sure that that's not true. I'm pretty sure that we can't control everything. But I rarely think like that. Instead, I live my life and I approach my sport with the fact that I am 100% in control of everything that happens. That includes mechanicals, that includes crashes, that includes punctures. Because if I'm in control of it, then I'll make sure that doesn't happen. And this is where it gets so tricky in that, like, we've had conversations with you dad around, like, you had a period there where the Tour of Bright was such an important race for you. And pretty much every year you would go. You went in with a tremendous physical form, really with a favorite to win each year. And then every single year, something would happen. Either you would have a puncture, have a crash mechanical, you would get really sick, really physically ill, and all this sort of stuff. And we're not saying that you created that. We're not saying it's your fault you had a mechanical. We're not saying it's. It's all this sort of stuff. But what we are saying is that if you choose to adopt the belief, even though it's probably not real, it's pretend, it doesn't matter if it's pretend, because something that's pretend, a belief that's pretend or a belief that's actually incorrect still can create physical changes. That's what we find in the placebo effect. And so, yeah, if you're a person that's struggled with results in the past or in important races and that sort of thing, realize that, okay, if I change my ideology, I change my approach to mindset and thinking, and I go, you know what? No, I am Superman or Superwoman. I control absolutely everything that happens in my life. All of a sudden, that's an incredibly empowering feeling to have. All of a sudden, you feel very strong and very good. And you look at people like Lance Armstrong, you look at, you know, the people at the top, like Dustin Martin at the moment in afl, you know, when he grabs the ball and he sees four players, opposition players all around him. Do you think he goes into the mindset of or. I've been tackled in the past. I don't know if I want to get tackled again. You know, like, I don't. Is that the kind of movie that he's playing in his head? No freaking way. He plays the movie that I can't get. I cannot get tackled. I am so strong that anyone that comes at me, I will shove them in the chest and run away from them. And he does exactly that. Eight times out of 10, he still gets tackled. Two times out of 10, it doesn't matter, because he takes that risk anyway, and it works out the majority of the time, you know, but it's without having that bulletproof mindset.

And the reason you take it to the extreme and say things like a bulletproof mindset and have the mindset of Superman is to show people. That is a bit of a game. It's a game, but try. Try pretending to be in that mindset and see how much better you feel. Because obviously you can't control everything. Obviously you can't control the weather. You know things are gonna happen to you. But I think a better way to put it is you don't control everything, but you do control your response to everything. So if Superman, if he was racing and then it was really wet, he would ride well in the wet rather than trying to try to stop the rain or whatever.

That's right, yeah. Reacting to the conditions is a mindset too, isn't it?

Exactly.

Geez, it's really windy. Well, of course it's really windy, but it's windy for every person in this race. How are you going to deal with the wind? That's more important, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly.

And if, you know, for our guys in this race, I'm always banging on about tactical positioning. And if you don't have the right mindset of. I remember in Perth when there was, I think, 250 riders on the start line for our age group, and at some stage we rode along the freeway in Perth for about 25km, and there was really wide road and we knew that was going to narrow when we got off the freeway into a single lane. 250 riders is just like pro Tour. Peloton doesn't fit. So all of a sudden, the guy in the first 10 is now 150 meters ahead of the guy who's 250th. So to get from 250th, 200 meters behind, it's a big. A big effort physically to get back up to the front. So the key mindset for me was I must stay in the top 10. Fifteen riders the whole time I'm on this freeway before we get to the hills, where it's really going to count. And a couple of the guys from Melbourne kept coming up to me saying, I don't know how you're doing this. You're holding your position, yet people continually pushing me backwards. And two or three times, one of the guys came up to me and said exactly the same thing. He's going, what are you doing? How are you doing this? And it was just my concentration was so determined that I'm not losing my position. And if we turn direction and the wind was coming from the right, I moved across to the left, so the four guys were protecting me from that crosswind. If the wind came from the other direction, I moved again. And I just continually moved the whole first hour and stayed in that position. And of course, there was a massive crash in that race where the particular guy who was asking me that, and I don't like mentioning names, but he actually had a really bad crash and ended up in hospital for a long time to do with positioning. It was unlucky. But here we go with mindset. And had he probably had the same mindset as me, the crash could have been in front of me as well. But it wasn't. And you know, am I fortunate? Well, I just had the right tactics. Mindset, positivity, bulletproof.

So there's two really important points in that. One is actually a prepoint is a lot of people get switched off when you talk about just be positive. And I agree, because it's not. The goal isn't to be positive because you're going to be equally positive and negative at certain points, but the goal is to switch your focus when it counts. But Liam, you made a really important point in the saying, if you have the ability to be in a negative state, you always have the ability to be in a positive state. And we've seen so many examples of professional athletes choking on the big stage. And I can't remember who the guy was, but there was an epic story of this table tennis guy who made the final of the Olympics or the world championships or something, and table tennis, he hit hundreds of thousands of balls in your career. And he got to the final and he choked and seized up so bad he couldn't hit the ball. Ball. It was just an absolute disaster. Cringeworthy. And his mind just crumbled on him. And a guy that hits a ball thousands of times a day for a living suddenly couldn't hit a ball in the final. And it was just mindset. But like you're saying, if your body, if your mind has the power to create that sort of response and be so bad, it probably also has the power to make you feel really good and be in a really good state. So that's number one. But number two and what you were talking about just then is you can make it easier on yourself by doing a lot of other things. And as a coach, you would have all this advice, but it's in your whole preparation. So how do you reduce the nerves on race day or leading up to the race? It's to be. You can list them off well prepared. So in your training in the 12 weeks leading up to it, the day before, doing recon on the course in the morning, having a good Prep. I mean, you can list them off. By the time you get to the start line, you're so well prepared that you're taking all those other factors out that could hinder you. Whereas if you're panicking, if you're in a rush, if you don't know what you're eating, if you haven't got your equipment right, you're going to be in a really poor state. And then tactics in the race play a part as well. If you. If you know you want to stay in the top 10 or 15, that's your tactic. If a crash happens in front of you, then that's unlucky and so be it. But if, you know that's your tactic, you'd say, well, there wasn't more I could do. I was at the front of the race. And that's you taking responsibility for your actions.

And this is where we get into the name that we give. A lot of these concepts comes down to beneficial beliefs or limiting beliefs. And so holding the belief that if I have a good night's sleep and I have a good breakfast before a race, I race well, that's a beneficial belief to have, even if it's not real, even if you're completely delusional and your sleep the night before has nothing to do with how you perform in a race. If that's what the science proves. Like, ironically, the science doesn't prove that it's a bad example, but doesn't matter because we know from the placebo effect that having a certain belief can have physiological and biological changes and your body can perform from that beneficial belief. But holding the belief that if I don't get a good night's sleep and I don't eat right, and I don't get my preparation and warm up right, I will race badly. That's a limiting belief. Because who's to say that all that stuff will make you race badly? You're the one deciding. You're the one deciding that. Okay, this is the rule. If, you know, I get some dirt on my shoes or, you know, I don't get my favorite car park or whatever before the race, like, what are those superstitions? Like, some people are superstitious and like.

We'Re in the same jocks everywhere. Yeah, winning jocks. These are my winning jocks. You're welcome.

I encourage you to be superstitious if it's been beneficial belief, you know, but if your superstition doesn't go right for whatever reason in your preparation or whatever.

Wearing the wrong jocks.

Yeah, that's right. It turns into a limiting belief. And if that makes, makes you, Jordan and I always go quotation marks makes you perform worse. Because the irony is nothing makes you perform worse. And then you do, and then you decide to perform worse because your jocks are different, you know, so that's, that's the reality. So again, like, for me, superstitions aren't for me, that's okay. I welcome you to have them, especially if they make you perform well. If your superstitions give you beneficial beliefs and make you perform well, then embrace them. That's great. That's a tactic that you can use your psychology to your advantage, but you.

Could set yourself up for failure because I lost my jobs and now I'm going to perform poorly.

And so you need to hold that paradox in your mind. You need to be like, if I have my superstitious jocks, I will perform amazingly. But if I don't, if they get wrecked in the wash or they get dyed pink by my red jersey and they're ruined, it actually doesn't impact me. I'll still ride just as well. And reality is that we can make all this stuff up because we're in charge. And that's the most fun thing about this mindset stuff and how much enjoyment we've got out of it. Personally, Jordan, you and I experimenting, experimenting with this sort of stuff and because yeah, we admittedly sport and competing is so much more fun when you master this sort of stuff because you feel like you've got a drug that none of your other competitors have, that you literally have an unfair advantage over everybody else because you can manipulate your mind in this way, manipulate your thoughts and manipulate your beliefs and all of a sudden you are feeling like you're pumped up on doping an EPO and whatever. I don't even know what they feel like. But I imagine that you feel unstoppable and you feel bulletproof and you can almost create that exact feeling. And it's a very real feeling from very made up beliefs. And that's what's so funny and ridiculous.

A little story that might give an example of having a belief that's not real. And look, the four children I have, you two were quite slow in developing. And Jordan actually pointed this out the other day when we were looking through photo albums and he saw himself in a year 12 photo and he was in shock at the size that he was against the rest of the people in his class. And it's something that I instilled in you guys, was that size when you were little, you didn't even think you, you thought you were normally same size as everybody else because you had belief that what I was telling you was it doesn't matter what size you are, you can still perform.

That's right.

And it was a shock to you guys to look back and it was just, it was just last week when we were flicking through, you were just couldn't believe that you were competing in athletics, cross country. You made the state, both of you made the state cross country team at the nationals, representing Victoria at the national titles as midgets compared to the rest of the guys in your, in your age races. And you know, the guys who you've raced against are really physically developed and you were both, you know, under 15, under 14, under 16, whatever it was, you were really physically against men, really physically not mature. But your belief in your ability overrode your physicalness. And that's something that I was in awe of how you embraced that and you believed what I was telling you was don't worry about that. I've grown up myself being a small person in a man's physical. I played football as a 16 year old in open age football, yet I was a stick a matchstick and I would, you know, people go, oh, you.

Know, not a good idea, not a.

Good idea to be out there. But I had that survival instinct of I'm not going to get tackled or I'm not going to get bumped. So I use my skill of evasiveness, etc, the positive things to get me to where I wanted to be, which is to play at that level. And you both were able to do that as junior sports people. It's now that you're, you know, you matured as a 19, 20, 21, 22 year old, you caught up very quickly and then all of a sudden you had the same physicality as the people of your same age. And it was only then when you were actually probably better athletes than you were beforehand. But it was the state of mind that was so intriguing to me that you totally believed with good reason that I was telling you guys, you deserve to be here, you're good enough. And you proved it because you got selected. It wasn't like you got a free trip. You performed in those races because you had the belief you had the right movie, that I'm going to do this to get to this end result. And all I had to do was do these actions and that would get me to where I want to go. And the other example that I use a lot was when I'm telling athletes about the mindset of looking at the result rather than the actual. The actual action process. The process. And, you know, the footballer, the classic example, the Grand Final, if you want to use that scenario, the story, you know, it's been happening a lot. And it's not just the Grand Final, but, you know, the sirens gone, some guy's taken a mark and he has to kick the goal to win. Misses and they lose. And last week it was with the Eagles, you know, to win the game, to stay in the top. Two or four weeks ago, it was Geelong. And it's happened so many times. And you see the guys, you know, guys who just think, okay, if I kick the goal, we win. And that's all they're focusing on, is the outcome. And the guy who goes, right, my routine is I go back, put the ball down, pull my socks up, I don't care. I'm in a bubble, no one else is around me. I just do five steps in, kick the ball, drop it perfectly, go through for a goal. Oh, and by the way, now I win that process ahead of the results. Is that something that, that, you know, the mind can. Can control as well? Thinking too much about the result rather than actually performing the process again, it's.

Just what you focus on. It's. And that is such a powerful yet simple lesson because if focusing on results.

Gets you a positive into a positive mindset, then focus on results. Yeah, but for the majority of people that. Well, not majority, maybe 60, 80% of people, that's not the case. Focus on results. Actually, it's really stressful. So that helps to not focus on.

Some people thrive off it. Like I imagine maybe Dustin Martin, if he marked it 30 out, he would be thriving, going, if I kick this, I keep the winner. Well, I'm pretty pumped about that in the NBA.

Look, LeBron James and then before him, Michael Jordan demanding to have the winning shot to win the game. Like, there is no way they were letting their teammates have that.

The confidence they had.

That's right. And it's that. Because they have that mindset that I want to be the hero, I'm the best, I want to prove it. As opposed to risk. Yeah. As opposed to the mindset. Oh, I don't. I hope I don't miss this because then everyone will find out I'm not the best.

Like, that's right.

Well, it's not even a question for them. They're so far ahead in their level of mindset and thinking. It's not a question of whether I make the shot or I don't. It's. I need to prove to everyone just how good I am because I know how good I am and so I need to do these ridiculous things to prove how good I am.

Yeah, the risk versus reward doesn't come into it for them, does it?

Cause there's no risk. Because they're the best.

They've got nothing to lose.

There's no risk because I'm not going to miss.

Superman's not afraid of the lose, stupid. Because it's Superman.

That's right.

But I think it's important to know that it works both ways. And it takes practice because I'm by no means, by no means mastered this. We've just had some experiences where we've gone, whoa, this stuff kind of works. And I still play footy every week and I play some shocking games and I know that I always have shots on Thursday night after training. And if I'm nailing those shots, I'm running a good movie. I generally kick a goal or two on Saturday and if I miss one Thursday, I'll run into goal and immediately play that picture of missing on Thursday and I'll miss the goal. It happens every time.

And I would say, don't do that. That, like, that's really bad, Jordan.

Yeah. So it takes, it takes practice to run this right movie. But if you've got a situation where you've got an A race coming up, it's a good chance for you to go, right, well, let's have a crack at this and just see if I can play a better move in my head, focus on the right things.

I think for me, one of my big aha moments was I used to get really nervous before athletics meets, really, really nervous that, you know, this is controversial. But I look back in hindsight now and I look at self sabotage and injuries that I created during those athletic years to not compete because it was actually better to not compete than it was to risk the chance of failure. And I would create overuse injuries and repetitive strain injuries in my legs. So I would get off the hook from competing and potentially failing. And I remember in my final year of APS and I had the opportunity to represent the school in the 800 and it was something like I always dreamed of competing on APS day back when it was at Olympic park and you know, it was 10,000 people, really like 8 to 10,000 people in the crowds. It was awesome. And I'd never, I had an opportunity as a younger kid, but I'd never had the opportunity to be there on the big day as a senior. And I remember that was out of me and one other guy to make the team for this 800. And he was faster than me and his PB was better than mine. And even when he ran poorly, it was still better than my PB. And I needed to run pretty much on 2 minutes flat or better to beat him in order to be able to represent the school. And for some reason on this day, the movies. I didn't even know neuro linguistics and I didn't know mindset at this point. But for some reason on that day, instead of being nervous and worrying about what was going to happen, I just approached that mindset of there's no way I'm going to lose to this guy. I'm the fastest thing there is. I remember. What's that movie? Mel Gibson. Is it Mel. No. Yeah, it is Mel Gibson when he's the runner and he goes to war and his coach asked him, what are your legs made out of? Iron springs. How fast are you? As fast as a leopard. How fast are you? As fast as a leopard. How fast are you going to run? As fast as a leopard. And I remember talking to myself like that in my warm up. And all of a sudden I had way less fears and way less nerves and I was.

It was just bullshit.

Like cherry to fire was one of those.

That's right. It's just. Anyway, I beat this guy. I ran 2 minutes flat PB by a mile for me. And I remember as I went around the back straight with 600 to go or 550. Yeah. So three, two, 50 to go. I remember just feeling so good and not tired. I was gonna wait to the very end to go around him because in my mindset I was like, oh no, I have to, because I'm gonna be holding on the whole race and just trying to get around him at the last second. And that was my whole theory for the last like weeks leading up to it. But then in the actual race prior, because I changed the movies, I was playing what I was imagining and what I was talking about myself. I just remember feeling so good and just going, I'm so fast. I'm going right round you right now. And I did. I went right around him. And in hindsight it looks stupid. Like, why would you risk that? But I had the mindset to do it. It changed my physicality. I was able to hold that for the rest of the race and I finished ahead of him.

And look, he wouldn't have expected that. Either because he'd never had you pass him. And that would have been a negative thing for him to experience. And it could have actually been tactically magnificent because it was either going to make him go faster or completely destroy him, which it actually did.

Yeah, that's right.

And so, yeah, since that day, I've never really struggled with nerves the same way I used to because I had that aha moment that I can actually get rid of nerves purely by concentrating on something else. Concentrating on not what could go wrong in the race, not what has gone wrong for me in the past, not how scary I find this stuff, but concentrating on how fucking good I am. And I'm not saying this works for everyone, but for me, in that particular instance, that's what I needed to tell myself. That's the movie I needed to play in my head.

Rather than shying away from the contest. Bring it on, embrace it, I'm ready. They're the things that I use in my, you know, it's good that you've got this analogy as a movie. I've never really thought of it like that, but the thought processes that I always have is, don't be scared, bring it on, you're ready. And you know, I'm ready for battle. Whether it's a battle between me and some other guy or, you know, this.

Is another example of positive self talk. Like it's so simple, but if you, and this is quite confronting, you know, because you might be listening and going, well, am I someone that is on the self sabotage side of things? Am I someone that tends to use reasons instead of just, just focusing on the result? And it's natural because we don't, we don't want to look bad in front of our peers, we don't want to look bad in front of the people.

So we don't want to disappoint ourselves.

Yeah, exactly. So it feels easier and it feels more comfortable to use an excuse or using a reason because it doesn't make you feel worse about yourself. You go, well, I couldn't help that mechanical. So it's easier to blame that than to blame myself. Because you put a lot of pressure on yourself. But you talk about the top guys or even just the most humble guys, no matter what happens, they don't use the excuse if they get a mechanical. And you told the story of Frank getting a mechanical which really cost him the race, but didn't complain about it once. And that's actually much more, it's much more admirable to see and people respect you. A lot more. If you're going to say, look, I put in my best effort. That was the best result I could get compared to. Everyone knows when you're using a reason, no one wants to hear you say, oh, this. This. Stuff me up, because no one's gonna believe you anyway.

That's so true, Jordan. One of the guys I really love watching because of that is Peter Sagan.

I was gonna bring him up.

I mean, he's won. Say he's won a hundred races, he's come second 100 times.

He's approached the World Championships, right. Like, I don't lose a World Championship. That's been his mindset in the last few years.

He's won three, hasn't he? Yeah. But he. When he gets interviewed, it is pretty hilarious because if he loses, I tried my best. The others were on the day, and it's just brilliant because you never hear him say, my teammates let me down.

Cavendish. Sorry, what was that?

But you can. It's just. It's great to see some people and they're. The people I love to associate with is. Because there's never a reason. It's, well, I wasn't good enough today.

If you look up in the record books, it doesn't list you all the world titles you would have won if you didn't have a mechanical.

Yeah.

It says who won the race for that year and it says who run the race for the year after.

And the thing I love about Saaga is what exactly say he posts on his Instagram after every race, and he would just blatantly say, I wasn't good enough today, or I didn't have the legs. Or he'll say, really happy with his win. I rode really well. I was feeling good.

I think a concept that we haven't talked about, which, again, really helped me with my nerves after I started studying this stuff and learning about this stuff is. It's a difficult concept because it's what we like to call a paradox. It's holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time and both utilizing them to the best of your ability. So you can't. You can't pick up a pen and go, this pen is red, but this pen is also blue. Like, that's a paradox that's not possible in the real world.

One of them isn't true.

One of them isn't true. So if one of them is true, then the other one has to be false. That's what a paradox is. But what's awesome about this psychology stuff is that it's a Game, it's pretend. It doesn't have to make logical sense in order for you to have a positive impact on you and your real world results. And so having the mindset that this is an important race, I care so much about this race and I'm going to do whatever it takes to win this race, whilst at the same time holding the mindset that I do not care about the result of this race. I'm just gonna have fun, I'm gonna enjoy it. I've done all my hard work leading up to it. I'm just gonna go out there and I really don't care whether I win, crash, lose or die. It doesn't matter what ends up happening for me personally. And this might help you, it might not. But that created an incredible feeling of confidence in myself because I was disassociated from the outcome of the race, outcome from the event. And so whilst I still cared, like, you know, I'm Jared Donnelly's son, like, I can't not be competitive when I'm playing, you know, five side social network, like, I'm very, very serious. But at the same time I really don't care about, about the result. And you listen to that. It doesn't make sense, it can't be true. It's a paradox, it's logically incorrect. But doing your best to hold that belief and both those beliefs simultaneously actually does an amazing thing for you.

And a real classic example is the optimal arousal chart, which you learn the most basic form of psychology, but there's the arousal chart, which is that inverted you, where you reach a certain level of arousal, which is optimal level. And if you go past that, you're over aroused, you perform poorly. If you're under aroused, you're too lax, you won't perform. And what those two beliefs are doing are getting to that optimal point of arousal where you're hyping yourself up enough that it's a really important race. But if you do that too much, you're going to be over aroused. So then you hold the belief that you actually don't care about the race, you just find that midpoint.

That's right.

That's so well put.

Yeah, that's.

I think, I mean, there's a lot to cover in psychology and we might do a few more podcasts on this because we think it's really important, but that's probably a good starting point. We've covered a lot here and I think for the people coming up to their A races, you're going to give them a lot of specific tactics on what they need to do to prepare physically and to prepare for the race so that they're organized and they're on top of things. And when you're on top of things, it's easy to be a bit more relaxed and they can just focus on playing the right movies in their head and having a crack at that.

And look, this is really an opportune time. As I said right at the beginning, it's good for the guys to actually have a listen to what we've spoken about today. Because for me, it's great to hear you two speaking about this because you've actually studied it in depth and you've actually experienced it as athletes yourselves. And there is theory and there is practice, and sometimes the theorists have no experience practically. And you guys have been disappointed and at the same time been, you know, euphoric about results and your football campaign. You played two seasons of football and you've won two premierships. That's a hundred percent record, which is absolutely unachievable. And, you know, a lot of people, Spud for all these girls team just won the grand final on the weekend. He's never been in a winning grand final in his whole career. So you can have still have a fantastic career. It's not all about winning, but at the same time, you can have the right mindset to get yourself to a point where you're enjoying yourself that much that you can't wait for the next contest. I think that's the message I want to get across to all the guys going to Italy and the two triathletes going to South Africa for the world titles in 70.3 is that the physical side, the preparation side is all done. And this podcast today is really giving you absolute gold information about how you can prepare yourself pre race, during the race and execution of your event. And to have the right movie playing will make such a difference to the outcome. And the belief you have in yourself and your preparation and the positive way you approach it definitely influences the outcome. Would you agree with that?

Definitely. And I'm really glad we had this podcast, the three of us, because our whole life we've been kind of having these conversations about mindset, going into races and hearing your experience, and then us trialling it ourselves and having conversations pre and post events about what's working, what's not. And we really found that we can improve our own performances just by shifting our focus when the work, for the most part, is being done.

Well, thank you so much, Lane. I know it's a long way to come from cooling for this podcast. And Jordan, as always, it's been really, for me, very valuable. And I'm really hoping that all of our athletes get to listen to this because, you know, I've learned so much off you two. It's so rare for, you know, an adult who's been here for double the time you guys have been on this earth to, to be able to learn so much from such young minds. And yeah, really, really thanks so much, you guys, for giving your thoughts.

No worries. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Trivelo coaching podcast. As always, leave your reviews. We've had a few good ratings. We've had a few five star ratings on itunes, which is good. Always leave positive reviews. And I always say if you've got negative reviews, keep them to yourself and ask any questions or let us know of any topics. A few people have been emailing topics that they want us to talk about, so we'll keep getting through them. Other than that, we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you very much.