A good telltale sign is to look at the mental
preparation strategies, the psyching up strategies
that your athlete is incorporating. If they tend
to be somebody who gets nerves and that psyching
up strategy doesn't appear to be helping because
a lot of time in strength sports, psyching up
is predominantly considered as getting yourself
irate, increasing them arousal levels, getting
angry, screaming. If this individual just doesn't
seem to be benefiting from that, if they seem
to be uncomfortable, if their performance seems
to drop, then that's when you need to start thinking
about how can I control this because they are
exhibiting symptoms of something that is detrimental
to performance. And that's when you'd incorporate
the techniques identified within strategy one
to strategy three. Hi Curtis, it's my pleasure
to have you on Evidence Strong Show. If you could
briefly introduce yourself. My name is Curtis
Cusimano. I am a PhD student in Sport and Exercise
Science at the University of Essex. I come from
a broad background of strength sport practitioner
work, working as a strongman coach within the
community, in addition to utilizing my sports
psychology understanding to apply interventions
for working athletes. Amazing. So I invited you
because you published a very interesting paper.
us about psyching up so in strength sports you
know anything in strength sports is so rare that
i'm super excited to have you thank you for saying
yes and the first question would be what is psyching
up do you have some kind of definition for us
yeah so psyching up conventionally over the past
30 years of research has been defined as form
of psychological strategy used immediately prior
or during the execution of skill however that
didn't seem to because it was specifying as well
that it was self -directed It didn't seem to
consider different methodologies and interventions
that are quite often seen within the strength
community. This can be demonstrated by anecdotal
or just watching, you know, strongman on TV,
powerlifting meets and observational research
conducted by Wynwood. So very recently, it's
not actually been published as got accepted in
November. We've altered that definition to being
any mental preparation strategy that aims to
alter the levels of activation. This can be either
enhancing state arousal. or trying to control
or decrease state arousal. Nice. All right, so
let's go into the meat. What are these? Do we
have any groups or is there some kind of classification?
Yeah, so again, we used a concept mapping approach,
which effectively to do this, we approached strength
athletes and coaches and we got them to first
say, what sort of techniques do you use to get
yourself psyched up? This ended up giving us,
I think it was 901 off the top. Different methods
to get psyched up. I then had to condense this
list and get it back out to strength athletes
and ask them to then group these strategies together
in addition to giving their perceived ratings.
From this, we ended up with eight different psyching
up strategies overall. So the first one is pre
-performance routines, goals, performance accomplishments.
So thinking about where you aim to be or where
you've been in the past. Positive thoughts, feelings
and images. So thinking about previous... you've
done really well things like that self -deprecation
so this is now going towards aiming to increase
arousal stage physical and physiological techniques
negative thoughts feelings and images stimulation
and aggressive acts so these can comprise of
a variety of different techniques for example
within the aggressive acts there's head putting
walls and getting slapped and screamed at conversely
when we look towards the first three strategies
identified we've got things like visualizing
you performing the exercise or the lift successfully.
So the initial concept mapping is kind of like
a two stage area of data collection. Initially,
we brought in the various different techniques
that athletes use to get themselves hyped up.
Following this, there was like a sifting phase
where I condensed a list of 900 into 64, 65 different
techniques. Once we then had this list, we sent
it back out to a sample of strongmen, powerlifters,
Olympic weightlifters for them to then first
of all group the techniques within what they
perceive to be appropriate groups and then they
rated each individual technique because obviously
there will be variations in who groups what where
from this we then used the sort information we
conducted a multi -dimensional scaling applied
a point to each technique within a map while
conducting cluster analysis to allow for separations
of the groups or of the techniques to create
individual psyching up strategies or groups obviously
things like this will never be completely perfect
there will be individuals who utilize a technique
from strategy three to and a technique from strategy
eight it's always going to be some inconsistencies
in some regard with that sort of methodology
but the stress values were indicating good separation
of groups was really impressive really high for
a study of this this sort indicating that while
obviously there will always be some variations
within athletes and the way they cycle up that
the strategy or the classification of the groups
is fairly significant and is separation of the
separate strategies is fairly conclusive in these
regards and while you could say that well person
a may use technique 40 that is in strategy one
and technique three that's in in in strategy
eight this could be found within any any sort
of psychological skill work anyway i .e previously
they used to just separate into attentional focus
self -talk imagery and preparatory arousal you
could utilize self -taught methods in order to
enhance state arousal you could use imagery techniques
to do the same or you could use self -talk to
increase attentional focus So there is always
some potential there for overlap, but the stress
value was real high, which indicates reliable
separation of said strategies. All right. So
we have a new classification that groups techniques
into these groups. You said eight? Yes. Eight
separate strategies. Yeah. Awesome. Now you tested
these in athletes. Yes. So the control condition,
we opted for a passive control. This was based
off systematic review we did where participants
who were incorporated within a passive. condition
and there was less positive effects of said intervention
they were comparing to which leads to a possibility
especially again when you're measuring psychological
interventions and strategies if you were to engage
in an active control in order to control for
the use of psyching up strategies this could
end up having a detrimental effect on the performance
within a control condition in addition to that
especially if you're getting them to do a strength
task there's potential health and safety risks
that you need to be considering as well should
you be engaging in a distraction technique or
a distraction technique of the sorts. So we opted
for a passive control condition, which was fairly
simplistic. We asked the participant not to engage
in the psyching up strategy they typically use
and to, while they're still trying to generate
as much force into the deadlift as possible,
we want them to treat it as a blasé approach,
like they're picking up their gym bag or something
like that. In addition to that, we had to have
silence in the room, so we had to keep turning
music on and off in gyms around them. the country
in addition to instructing everyone else who
may be around that keep storm this needs to be
perfectly controlled conversely the other condition
your psyching up strategy if you need anything
from us let us know we'll do it if you need anything
from from peers other people around the facility
take it you have preference over music should
you want that so that got quite fun as well getting
to see various different psyching up strategies
getting involved in it giving a few people a
back slap here and there it was um yeah it was
weird to call it science in some regards but
we found that there was a big difference within
the effects of psyching up on performance but
there was no indication of a superior strategy
i think one of the key elements of this is as
we did see that there was a trend in the more
experienced the athlete was the greater the enhancement
in performance. I think it ranged from, I'm going
off the top of my head here, so I might be wrong,
but I think it was an average of 14 % increase
in regional level athletes and then 22 % in national
and 24 % in international athletes. I might be
butchering the numbers slightly there as it is
off the top of my head, but there was a trend,
especially a big difference between the regional
and the national and the international. having
that experience and practice with your skill
and building that that trust within it but i
also do think that especially if you're dealing
with experienced athletes they've got that experience
of effectively trial and error they might have
tried they're getting angry in the salts figured
out it didn't work for them and gone for something
to decrease that activation so interesting that's
fascinating that the more experienced athletes
were way better yeah yeah so there was as you
can imagine disparities between the the sample
sizes but not enough for it to make any meaningful
difference when it comes to statistical significance
so again off the top of my head roughly it was
split with around 100 regional athletes and then
a fairly even split between the national and
international athletes with circa about 50 per
group there it wasn't quite that clean cut nice
numbers but within that sort of ballpark sounds
good would you be able to say what would work
for what type of athlete yes so within the the
discriminant analysis we indicated what personality
traits were greatest associated with strategy
selection. So there was no effect on performance,
but especially when you were looking at the results,
it was clear that there was a trend in what strategies
are preferred by people of certain types of traits.
So when it comes to the individual strategy,
there is no indication as to you have to select
this specific one. I think allowing an athlete...
to have some sort of autonomy of what seems to
be most comfortable for them. and allow their
preference may be what indicates this to some
degree. But individuals who have greater sensitivity
to reward and lower sensitivity to anxiety and
higher trait aggression will favor strategy four,
five, six, seven, and eight. Those that appear
to be aiming to increase state arousal in some
degree. So obviously it's just differences of
how you get there. So for self -deprecation,
you're getting there in a way where you're saying
some pretty... intense things about yourself
and to yourself whereas aggressive acts is more
over engaging in more physical activities that
may again raise arousal getting slapped things
like stimulation as well utilizing pre -workouts
inhaling ammonia things like that whereas if
somebody has greater sensitivity to their anxiety
systems lower trait aggression and lower reward
sensitivity they'll favor the first three strategies
so pre -performance routines positive thoughts
feelings and images goals performance accomplishments
so again we can't specify any deeper than that
in regard to if you're x y and z you should be
in this strategy only but i don't necessarily
think that would be an appropriate response anyway
people will always have their own preferences
and allowing that autonomy of saying okay you
should pick it from one of these three strategies
or you should pick from one of these five strategies
just allows them to relate to what whether it's
their own personal experiences what they feel
comfortable doing and like i said before there
is always going to be some potential crossover
within there so it might be that they take inspiration
from techniques within a couple of the strategies
rather than just always sewing in on one individual
could you explain routine in particular yeah
so pre -performance routines itself so this is
you are quite right the the verbiage the terminology
can kind of indicate well in some regard every
psyching up strategy is some form of routine
right but it's more based off the methodologies
used within this specific strategy matches those
that are used within current literature regarding
what is meant by a pre -performance routine within
sports psych literature so this can be you know
to read off a few of the techniques as giving
yourself a countdown in your head prior to execution
so before you pull a deadlift you go three two
one go engaging in slow deep breaths clearing
your mind visualizing performing the lift successfully
wearing the same clothing or footwear that you
tend to use in previous successful attempts these
actions or behaviors or thought processes are
seen and it's really cool as well in a sense
of seeing that these are the strategies used
by strength athletes that they've just picked
up through maybe they've been advised to do it
maybe they've just figured it out on their own
but these are things that have been found in
in various other sports as techniques to especially
control for things like anxiety the idea effectively
is to try and increase flow state by decreasing
activity within the frontal regions of the brain
and rely more on trying to elicit a flow response
in some regard which has been shown as really
effective in controlling for symptoms of anxiety
for example things like the countdown the breathing
techniques and visualization is heavily incorporated
in golfers for example as an intervention when
they're struggling with anxiety when they're
going for a putt or something so pre -performance
routines while the verbiage does kind of indicate
especially with a psyching up strategy all of
them are a routine in some regard this was more
just because it reflected previous literature
of the same man all right could we stop for a
moment also to to discuss what is the idea situation
so is there a state the athlete has to be in
to perform at their best because obviously they
could get there better if they were allowed to
use they prefer techniques to get themselves
so there is i presume some kind of state that
will promote better performance so what it is
yeah so this is this is a really complex issue
that that sports side has been trying to address
literally since 1908 in some regard and it is
entirely individual so and this is one of the
reasons that I included specifically anxiety
sensitivity within conditions for most recent
trials because 1908 Yerkes -Dodson published
about the relationship between arousal and performance
indicating that there's an optimal point within
the middle of the inverted u -shaped relationship
and there's been various different theories is
specifically looking into the impact and the
relationship between performance, anxiety, and
arousal. And typically, once you exceed this
threshold, you end up with decreased performance
and end up in a state of state anxiety rather
than optimal performance, feeling excited, feeling
high, feeling psyched. Conversely, if you fail
to meet that threshold, it will be a bit of a
boredom, lack of interest, not full engagement.
There's been various adaptions of this theory.
or different theories to look into this relationship
since there's catastrophe theory, reversal theory,
but I tend to buy most into the individual zones
of optimal performance, which basically indicates
the same inverted U shape, but that optimal threshold
is at different points for different people.
So myself, for example, may perform at a much
greater level when that arousal level is extremely
high. I may have, in this scenario, low sensitivity
to anxiety. really strive upon that physiological
response of increased state arousal. Conversely,
you may be of greater anxiety sensitivity and
your threshold might be on the other end of the
spectrum where you need to be in a lower state
of arousal because if you exceed that point,
you'll end up with formants anxiety, which debilitates
formants. So with that in mind, and this is why
we changed the psyching up definition to alters
activation levels and enhancing mental, utilizing
mental preparation. skills to alter activation
levels because while the first three strategies
appear to be either trying to decrease or control
that state arousal the other five appear to be
trying to elicit and enhance that state arousal
in what appears to be ever -growing methodologies
so or difference so some are very internal such
as saying nasty things about yourself in your
head verse going around grunting screaming and
head -butting walls so there isn't an optimal
state per se but each individual has their own
optimal state if that makes sense is there anything
coaches can do to help the athlete yeah so first
of all it's it's kind of knowing who your person
is at this point in time at least prior to publication
it is just trying to understand your athlete
in some regards of okay they appear to exhibit
symptoms of getting nerves or or anxiety it may
be that we are intending on controlling and decreasing
them Conversely, if you know somebody can elicit
a more beneficial response from increasing them,
them arousals that don't seem to exhibit these
anxiety responses, they seem to do better when
people are shouting at them around them. That's
when you can tend to favor the latter strategies.
Once this manuscript I've currently got in draft
gets published, I have made a lot of grand promises
to those in the strength sport communities that
the specific function that we now have, so we've
got a formula that will... indicate based off
the same questionnaires we utilized within that
study that this will be an accessible formula
in a sense of it'll be online and it will be
published in a way that you effectively just
fill out the questionnaires and then it will
tell you, you should pick from one of these three
strategies. Here are the techniques used. Do
you think that the scale you're working on will
be applicable for Olympic weightlifters too?
Because you mentioned that at the beginning you
used Olympic weightlifters for the... mapping
study, but then later you used mainly strongman
and powerlifting athletes. Do you think that
we can put all these sports together? Because
powerlifting and weightlifting are similar in
the sense that you go up to your lift, you take
one lift, you go off, then you do it again, again,
again, again. So would it be the same or close
or how do you see that? So the strategies themselves
were also identified within the concept mapping
of Olympic weight. lifters so i do believe in
some regard it may be able to be carried over
obviously the main differences between the sports
of strongman power lift power lifting and olympic
weight lifting specific when it comes to one
rep max attempts is the actual type of strength
exhibition so with olympic weight lifting it's
power based strength speed movements whereas
within power lifting it is absolute strength
and then in strongman obviously there's greater
variation the The main reason I didn't include
Olympic weightlifters within this study is that
it wouldn't allow for the utilization of a consistent
dependent variable in a sense of with powerlifters,
strongmen, maximal deadlifts is something they're
both exposed to on a regular basis. If you could
bring it all together and have some kind of advice
for coaches. So you know quite a lot on the basis
of the studies that you already know results
of. So how coaches should apply what you just
discovered. or brought together in the coaching
practice? Yeah, so in order to really make the
most of what we've got so far is that the questionnaires
that we used within the trials were the Bus -Perry
Aggression Questionnaire, BPAQ, and the BIS -BAS
scale, which is Behavioral Inhibition Sensitivity
and Behavioral Activation Sensitivity from Carver
and White. Both these questionnaires are available
for free in various different websites. psych
tools is one of them from these results especially
if you're thinking about how to prescribe or
what type of strategy to prescribe for your athlete
should the individual display greater sensitivities
to their reward system which is the bass in the
bass scale or if they display and if they display
lower scores for the bis which is the anxiety
sensitivity and higher scores for the trait aggression
and these are overall scores especially for the
bass which it does have subcategories, same for
the BPAT, then I would opt for strategy four,
five, six, seven, or eight. So the last five
strategies on the list within the concept mapping
study, if they exhibit especially higher scores
of anxiety, so higher BIS score or lower sensitivity
to the reward and lower scores for the trait
aggression, then so, sorry, higher scores on
the BIS indicating greater anxiety sensitivity.
then I'd opt for one of the first three strategies.
A good telltale sign is to look at the mental
preparation strategies, the psyching up strategies
that your athlete is incorporating. If they tend
to be somebody who gets nerves and that psyching
up strategy doesn't appear to be helping because
a lot of time in strength sports, psyching up
is predominantly considered as getting yourself
irate, increasing them arousal levels, getting
angry, screaming. If this individual just doesn't
seem to be benefiting from that, if they seem
to be uncomfortable, If their performance seems
to drop, then that's when you need to start thinking
about how can I control this because they are
exhibiting symptoms of something that is detrimental
to performance. And that's when you'd incorporate
the techniques identified within strategy one
to strategy three. I personally, in that regard,
based on my own preference and experiences, think
that opting for the pre -performance routines
approach would probably still be favorable just
because it supported findings within other literature
as well. To be able to switch off that perception
of this is a state of potential anxiety. Using
different methodologies to increase that flow.
But you know if somebody feels more comfortable.
Or enjoys the idea of thinking about positive
previous experiences. Whether it be within the
sporting context or outside of it. Allowing autonomy
as well for them to select. Okay you need to
decrease your anxiety levels. Here are three
different strategies. You know providing athletes
with autonomy has been shown to be extremely
beneficial. just in a performance context, but
in a client coach relationship as well. Awesome.
Sounds good. Okay. Two short questions to finish.
The first one is, what is your favorite lift?
What's my favorite lift? Oh, I mean, the deadlift
is the mother of all lifts, but I feel that's
a bit, that's a bit cliche. I did used to really
love Farms Walk. but a colleague of mine recently
beat me on that event in a comp and that's that's
increased the negative effect towards that one
is that was when I should have beaten him out
in that comp but I quite like a super yoke as
well quite good with a yoke awesome and where
people can find you if they want to follow your
work or see what you're publishing what you're
up to or even ask a question where should they
go so there's a few options really if you're
if you're not overly into reading publications
and you want easy or more accessible explanations
of my findings i like to discuss a lot of my
work on my instagram page or in addition to generic
psychological research that can enhance performance
specific to strength athletes so that is my instagram
handle is the strongman psychologist conversely
if you're more interested in reading publications
and actual papers i can be found on researchgate
Curtis Cusimano and google scholar same name
awesome thank you so much thank you very much
for your time thank you very much thank you Thank
you.