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AMBER MASLEN
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Love to train, love to race

I've learnt so many things from slalom I don't think I could have learnt anywhere else. I want to share them because I think if they make a positive difference to a single person's journey, then it's worth writing. 

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This might be hard to hear

6/25/2020

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I'm trying out a couple of things with my writing. I have quite a consistent "I think" theme going on, and I've read that it's a result of being a female writer. Rather than assertive statements, historically we'll go for the "I think" so that there's room for disagreement or someone else's opinion. I actually don't think that's a bad thing, and (here we go) it IS something everyone should try and project. I've been unpacking some of the things I feel about sport from a women's perspective, and I'd like to introduce them in this post. I'll get into the really hardcore stuff next week once everyone's warmed up for some scary stories.

Slalom is one of the most team-orientated environments I've ever been in, with athletes and coaches putting themselves without question at a disadvantage to support a teammate. Thankfully, it rejects the principle of "selfish" that I've heard various coaches preach to me before.  I have a few issues with this principle and since it's my blog, I’m going to go right ahead and dismantle them. I want to start with the tradition of "selfish athlete" to begin a discussion about women's roles.


The first item I’d like to discuss in relation to athlete selfishness, is: what is the point in sport? 

I’ve said on my blog a few times that I feel sport should fill a role in society that isn’t filled by anything else. From my experience of high school (in three different countries) and university, there’s currently no part of the education system that practically addresses:
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  • mental health
  • modern nutritional health
  • functional exercise (practical for working full time)
  • tolerance and understanding in competitive environments
  • rewarding sportsmanship rather than performance
  • delivering your best in a testing environment 
  • group logistics
  • budgeting and resource allocation
  • practical repair work (for equipment and yourself!)
  • your role within a community.

Sure there are loads of courses and degrees which might address a few of these things. But I truly believe there aren’t many environments that are tailor made to deliver these benefits in a practical way, when getting one of them wrong can cost a lot more than simply failing a test. Sport is essential in modern society.

The trouble is that being an athlete has a lot of very nice ‘badges’ that come along with it. Team kit, the ability to say ‘I’m an athlete’, the social status that comes with that and other more obvious things like an "instagrammable" lifestyle and perceived success as an individual. These can be just as problematic as they can be beneficial. As I saw with my early slalom life, it becomes way too easy for a person’s individual worth to become balanced on what they have achieved in sport. Which is ridiculous. 

It can also breed a sort of rivalry which isn’t healthy. I’ve always been incredibly competitive, down to very small activities. Which is great when everyone is giving their permission to be a part of the competition. But something that I'm learning through sport is the right time to engage in competition, and the wrong time. Sometimes a person can benefit a lot more than you know from a gentle word, or backing off when you can see that it’s getting a bit too intense. Respecting others is something that everyone must learn, but don't always have an opportunity to in a world where sports is competition, and everything else is neutral. 

It’s incredibly sad to me to be a part of this sport which is community based, and still see people clashing for no better reason than they race against one another. There’s not too many cases, and I’m definitely not saying you should try and be best friends with your competitors. But an old coach said to me, ‘you’re here to race, not to make friends’. He was wrong. Because what’s the point in sport? In slalom, as soon as the only point is to win, you’ve already lost. The best athletes in the history of our sport all race today, and they still fuck up. Jessica Fox (AUS) is the most decorated paddler in the history of slalom, and I’ve watched her miss not just finals but also semi finals. Sure we’re here to perform and put on a show. There’s a few of us who are highly likely to take a top three place. But it’s not fair to interact only by your own rules. Coaches love to think that they have the final authority on what is and isn’t the point of sport. Of course they have an opinion; tons of amazing coaches were high performing athletes themselves. But nobody should have authority to reinforce unhealthy, short term rules that won't serve an athlete after their sports career has ended.

A massive part of my learning to respect others is connected to being a woman in sport. I’ve come a long way since being repetitively sat down by a coach at dinner and told I’m slightly less for being a woman (verbatim: "racing just isn't as hard for women"). It's a troubling dialogue that still pervades conversations around racing. For the first time in history, slalom will be gender equal at the Olympics in Tokyo. We'll have two categories each for men and women, where previously there were three for men and one for women. The amount of resistance around allowing C1 women to race was outstanding. I remember talking to judges when it began as a national level category, and women being laughed down the course. That. Is. Insane. We can see that attitude reflected now that the ICF has allocated more world cups spots to nations that traditionally have not had slalom development incorporated into their national repertoire. But I'll leave that for the next post. 

My last thought for this week; I'm not dismantling sport like this to throw blame or create "sides". But I do think there are some difficult conversations that MUST be had in light of historical prejudice and "naturalised" issues. 



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Understanding yourself in the moment

6/17/2020

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I've spent about a year putting together a book of my experiences and thoughts during my time racing slalom. I'm going to post occasional "windows" into the different chapters, to gauge what people would like to read about and also see if it actually helps in any way. This excerpt comes from chapter one, comfort zones​.

There are literally thousands of hours of expertise backing up hundreds of different theories around canoe slalom. In recent years the sport has gotten faster, with running times becoming shorter and the courses more technical. We are also seeng massive developments in equipment facilitating these technical advances. Such as boats becoming more manoeuvrable, and our buoyancy aid/top being altered to be thinner for more range around poles. Whitewater is volatile; usually the courses we use are artificially ‘pumped’, which means there is a consistent volume of water coming down the course at any time. However depending on the character of the river bed, this can flush. That means the water gathers in pockets to full capacity and flushes out at certain parts of the course. It means that features like drops, and stoppers, can become inconsistent and change during the course of a race run. Canoe slalom athletes train every day to get better at reading and understanding the water, but on the race day it’s impossible to predict exactly how a certain bit of water will feel. 


When I started racing, a huge emphasis was placed on how ‘difficult’ the mental side of preparation is. It was really popular at the time to apply well-known sports psychology structures to training and racing without properly understanding them. That’s not meant to undermine the way these structures are put together. It’s more like I believe someone can fully understand the theoretical side of a concept, but not be able to implement it practically. For example, a really popular programme to use at one point was the structure behind The Chimp Paradox. It’s a well written book, and it paints strong imagery around the scientific reasons our brains behave a certain way. Everyone is completely different, and with that in mind the Chimp method really over complicates things for me. I’d say the same for the ‘process focused rather than outcome focused approach’. I’m just using these as examples of the hundreds of different mental approaches, and this book certainly isn’t meant to criticise any of them. Way better athletes than me use all of them. 

For me, a big step in focussing on the start line was accepting the feelings I get before a race. Your comfort zone is likely to be a situation you know very well and where you can predict what’s going to happen next. Racing in slalom is distinctly out of that comfort zone. Accepting that, and anticipating the emotions I’m likely to feel during the build up to a race, made it much easier for me to let go of them on the start line. It’s so incredibly easy to find a structure that makes your brain feel nice and comfortable, and desperately hang on to it throughout a race. I’ve found that doesn’t really work, because you end up thinking about that structure instead of concentrating on the job at hand.

In the days before a race, athletes are able to train on the whitewater in designated sessions. When the race course is set, you are no longer able to paddle on the course before your run. So a priority for the training sessions is to learn as much as possible about the course, and practise as many ‘moves’ on the features as possible. I get a lot of anxiety around this stage; I feel responsible for finding every possible move that might be in the race. This can be pretty stressful in busy sessions. Quite often the gates aren’t exactly where you’d like them to be, or you can quickly feel as though you’re missing out on certain moves if they are repeatedly not included in team sessions. Trusting in your own ability here becomes key; even if I haven’t tried a move before, there’s every chance with my own experience that I’d be able to do it without thinking in a race. So instead of concentrating on getting as many courses in the bag as possible, I try and relax, to focus on what the water is doing rather than the gates. If I have a good understanding of how that section feels, I should be able to choose what happens to my boat in any situation. I guess it’s the slalom equivalent of finding a master key; if you relax and feel the water, it fits everything. 

I get quite nervous before races; I’m getting pretty good at anticipating what sets off nerves. It’s fairly guaranteed that I’ll get the ‘stomach swooping’ the first time I look at the gates set out for the race course. The thing is, because our whole year of training leads up to these races, it can quickly end up feeling as though emotions and senses are sharpened and way more sensitive when it gets to actual crunch time. Which can be great; if your awareness and reactions are heightened then you can definitely benefit from them in a race run. What’s not great is if that higher sensitivity makes you neurotic in the lead up to a race. It sounds stupid, but things like noises when I’m sleeping, efficiency in transport, coaching input during sessions and the food leading up to a race can easily become areas of anxiety and stress if you let yourself become too sensitive to them. It’s really amazing the conditions under which a person can race their best. Franz Anton won gold at the world championships in 2018 after a week of being sick. I know countless athletes who are unable to sleep at all the night before a race. You can lose a boat and have to borrow equipment and still perform at the highest level. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try and make your environment absolutely ideal for yourself. It just means I think that you shouldn’t put any weight on things you can’t control.
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    Amber is a whitewater slalom athlete specialising in K1. Her top events to date were:
    U23 World Championships 2016
    U23 European Championships 2016
    Augsburg ICF World Cup 2018
    Tacen ICF World Cup 2018
    Bratislava  ICF World Cup 2019
    ​Tacen ICF World Cup 2019
    Leipzig ICF World Cup 2019
    Pau ICF World Cup final 2022

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