What If Joy Was the Goal? A Reflection on Training and the Self | OR | Why Joy Should Be Part of Every Athlete’s Training

I’m sure all of you are wondering why several athletes are bowing out of tournaments, claiming they lack the emotional equanimity to perform at their best. Or, similarly, that the stress has caused their vestibular system to lose its fine-tuned calibration so that it was not safe for them to try to flip upside down and consistently land on the narrow balance beam during an out-of-this-universe challenging routine?

I find myself thinking about when I was studying dance, and my teacher told me, “You move so beautifully, and my eyes are always drawn to you during class, but there seems to be a part of you that is afraid to be beautiful.” I also found myself breaking into tears just as I thought my movements were becoming elegant, only to quit taking classes the following week. Why was that? For something to be beautiful, it must embody both the pleasure and the pain, and I did not know how to feel the extremes of either one. It is interesting—when I would attend a dance concert at Jacob’s Pillow. Afterwards, I would see the dancers from my favorite company outside, smoking cigarettes and holding a can of beer. That level of openness, which one has the pleasure of witnessing at a dance concert, a tennis match, or a gymnastic performance, unearths some of our deepest emotional secrets. These secrets are not only secrets from their fans but also sometimes secrets from themselves.

I don’t pretend to know anything about how our greatest athletes are trained, but I assume that technique and the development of a sense of fighting to the finish are usually at the forefront of their training. Neuropsychology is looking at the three levels of the nervous system in the polyvagal theory. The first level is the social nervous system, which is relational and embodied, and all aspects of the sensory systems are well-calibrated and online. As an occupational therapist, my goal is to help children have access to that part of the nervous system. One can observe the playful joy on their face to know that they are there. The other two parts are fight/flight, and then freeze. My work with kids' sports coordination in Ohio often involves helping children return to that joyful, regulated state through sensory awareness and emotional grounding.

My question is: can we develop athletic winners by putting joy at the forefront of our training goals? Can the athletes have a sense in their body, almost like a paint chip, against which they can measure their joy? When it is not there, they can take a break and explore what is masking their sense of joy. Athletes lately are discussing the recovery aspect of their preparation being just as important as the actual drills. Does that recovery, however, just address the physical recovery, or does it also address the emotional recovery? I heard the brothers who play tennis doubles play jazz music together before a match, and when they find the time to play together, they are usually much more successful.

The body is an amazingly fine-tuned instrument, and when we are accessing our joy, all our parts—including the cellular level, to the organs, to the fascia, to the muscles, to the visual skills—are all tuned together like a symphony orchestra. Focusing on joy may be the slow, fast way to success. Like the tortoise and the hare, eventually the tortoise wins the race. Even in education, we can conduct drills with children early on and require them to sit in their seats, but research shows that children who become more successful and happier adults often begin their learning process through play. I often observe this when supporting kids' sports coordination in Ohio, where joy in movement directly promotes long-term growth and development.

I hope that the courage that these athletes have will lead to a tweaking of the way athletes are trained. As the development of their skills begins to peel the emotional and fascial onion, I hope that they are given the time and space and emotional support to explore what emerges from the lower reaches of their being so that when they are under pressure, they are not surprised by parts of themselves that they were not familiar with. Let joy be their north star as they tack like a sailboat towards their success. I am curious what will emerge. My favorite tennis player, Rafael Nadal, has that sense of joy. Even when he is successfully defeating his opponent, I always seem to sense his joy in the game, fueling his skill. When he comes off the court, his ability to be kind and relational is right there, despite a five-hour attack on the court.

This article is not the final exploration of this issu,e but the beginning of trying to support athletes to be successful as well as their most human.