Talking mental health with ex Tall Black Judd Flavell

Judd Flavell led the Rams to their first championship in 31 years. Photo: Robyn Edie/Stuff

When it comes to professional sports, it’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of viral highlight plays and marvellous physical feats, so much so that the mental health of athletes can often be overlooked. To get a firsthand perspective on mental health in sports, I caught up with former Tall Black and current Canterbury Rams head coach Judd Flavell.

Can you describe the importance of mental health in sports and how it can impact athletic performance?

JF: In my own playing career, and I’m sure [it’s the same for] players to this day, players are always faced with adversity, challenges, hurdles, setbacks, and not getting feedback from coaches. There’s a lot that goes on in an athlete’s head. In today’s times, we’re a lot more aware of [mental health] and probably have different strategies that we’ve used.

Going back in my time, which is sort of 30 years ago or more, those strategies probably weren’t as refined or talked about necessarily. It was just sort of like ‘get on with the job’... You just had to learn as you were going through [it].

The same is true for athletes today but I feel we have a lot more awareness of it and I know for me as a coach it has helped me [try] to front foot a lot of those situations with athletes. How it relates to athletes – their performance and what’s going on in their head – can totally paralyse them on the court. Trying to filter information and being able to process it is a real key and how that can relate to performance is massive because what goes on upstairs in your head totally comes across in your actions.

Sometimes understanding exactly what an athlete’s going through [is important], instead of putting it all under the blanket of mental health.

How can injuries impact an athlete’s mental health?

JF: For an athlete, their body is basically the vehicle that allows them to do what they do on the court and to be at their best. If it’s a minor sort of injury and something you can play through, you’ve still got a hesitancy as far as “can I still do this at the same speed or with the same strength, balance or power?”

With basketball, all those attributes are priorities and are key to be able to perform at your best. Anything less than at your best can always play with your head and knowing that you don’t quite have that same speed can… put you in some tough positions at times [where you’re] needing to back yourself.

Having some of those thought patterns going through your head can slow you down. The uncertainty of knowing when you’re going to be back or when you’ll be 100% can play on your mind and mess with your routine. Trying to establish routines is basically half of what we try to do around high performance. There’s a lot of ways [injuries] can affect you… most of all, is when you do recover and come back to the court, there is still an underlying hesitancy or second-guessing your ability [that takes place] and it might take two or three games before they can fully feel back to themselves.

How can the pressure to win mentally affect athletes, and how do you balance this pressure with positive mental well-being?

JF: Even going back to when I was playing, everything was all about winning and it still is. If you can put on your resume that you’ve won this title, that looks great and you’re more employable. How we frame winning is a lot different in this day and age. I think we’re doing a lot better, certainly on a lot of the teams I’ve been on where it’s more process-oriented – making sure we’re set out to attack this team by doing A-B-C to get the result we want.

We understand though that other factors come into that result. The biggest one is the opposition’s gameplan to do the exact same, and only one team can win. Even though you may have the best plan of attack and do everything possible to put yourself in the right place, there is still no guarantee that you’re going to produce it.

At the end of the day, because you’re coaching inside your circle, it still doesn’t stop outside influences such as media, social media comments, fans, and pressure being put on about winning and losing. How we filter [that feedback] is extremely important and [so is] making sure we understand that the media have a job to do and their job is to dramatise the negative and the positive. Nothing is quite as it seems and you can’t be sitting there hanging on to every word from the media.

Do you believe there is a stigma surrounding mental health in professional sports?

JF: I think we’re still at the real early stages. If I go back to my playing career, we never spoke about mental health. You just went on with the job. In a lot of ways, it worked. You shook it off and got on with the next game. Sometimes when you bring more attention to things it can manifest into bigger issues. But the way I see it playing out now, we’re a lot more sensitive to [mental health].

There are different degrees of mental health. Sometimes understanding exactly what an athlete’s going through [is important], instead of putting it all under the blanket of mental health. Mental health can mean to somebody that they’re anxious about a performance and for some other people they can be in a real dark place. In my experience, we are still getting to that stage where we’re able to filter it down to different stages so we know exactly the appropriate method of how we [can] support the athlete or the coach when they’re going through that. It’s an area we’ve still got a lot more we need to learn about.

The second half of the season, and especially the finals run, involved a lot of time on the road and quick turnarounds. How do you support the well-being of players and coaches during these challenging patches of the season?

JF: First of all, just being on the pulse with how the team is feeling week-to-week. We have a trainer, coaches, physios, and our job is to monitor [players]. We start off the season with a plan but that plan is always fluid, where we can up the ante and the loading or back it off depending on how the team is going. For example, whenever you play two games back-to-back, you’re on the road, travelling a lot, living out of suitcases, out of routine… it can take a toll on you.

Even though physically the loading may be pretty light, in terms of being away and out of sleeping habits, they all play a huge factor in your overall performance. It’s about being on the pulse with that. For me, that’s always talking to our staff. As a coach, you take all that information on board [and] talk to the players themselves and see how they’re tracking.

At the end of it all, you’ve got to put it all into consideration and decide what’s best for the team. Sometimes that might mean saying “hey, you’ve got enough loading on, so we don’t need you at the skills session but do need you to be at practice.” [It’s just about] being in touch and on the pulse with each of the individuals and taking in feedback from all the resources we have supporting the athletes.

In the world of modern sports-entertainment, players are often subject to criticism over social media. How can online opinions affect athletes and how can this be managed?

JF: It’s just an area that’s really over the last decade taken off and it’s another area I feel like we’re still finding our way through. I know with teenagers that social media is such a huge part of their lives. It’s almost like a weapon because it can be so dangerous.

People [are] accessible to making a comment about you and all of a sudden there are likes and followers and your name is getting blasted. It’s very different to when I was coming through playing. You’d only hear it if you read it in the newspaper or if word passed through conversation. In this day and age, it’s on top of you 24/7. We’ve got to be so careful, especially with our youngsters because they’re all over their phones. The danger of [social media] is that it’s just constant.

We have to be able to provide another layer of support and that could be through former athletes who have gone through their careers and are now providing mentoring for the next generation. I’ve certainly seen in my time athletes at all levels, from juniors to professionals, being thrown into those situations which isn’t pleasant at all. We’ve just got to make sure we’ve got a full circle of support around them.