This summer I made a short trip to Norway. I crossed the Hardangervidda, Europe’s biggest high alpine plateau, alone – only with my tent, sleeping bag, mattress and enough food for nine days. I did this trip not as a vacation. Instead, I wanted to see if hiking over a couple of days would be a worthy method I could include in my coaching portfolio. In this episode I’m going to deal with three topics. Firstly, I will talk about why I think long distance hiking makes a great coaching method, and how I think it could be integrated into my coaching portfolio. Secondly, I will briefly discuss some aspects one needs to consider when planning such a hike coaching trip, and thirdly, I’ll talk about five things I personally learned and realized while crossing the Hardangervidda. To sum my experience up, I can say that the trip was just perfect. The weather was excellent, I enjoyed the silence, the solitude, the sun, the wind, the water, the activity itself and everything that happened in the Hardangervidda. No matter how heavy the backpack was, and how strenuous it was to climb some of the hills and mountains I am absolutely grateful for the experiences I made. If there is one advice I can give at that point it would be the following: Grab whatever equipment you have and go out there. Into the woods, onto the mountains – whatever is possible for you – and enjoy the silence. It will be louder than you imagine.

ZEPP FM 008 – The Hardangervidda Project

Dr. Christian Zepp is an expert for sport psychology, a researcher and lecturer whose motivation it is to help his athletes, coaches, teams, and students take the next step in their athletic, mental and personal development. Based on his experiences as an athlete, national team coach and his applied work with many elite athletes, coaches and teams from different countries in the world, he shares with you tips, tricks and strategies to develop an optimistic attitude, have powerful habits, and show ambitious behaviors day in and day out. In his show, Chris reviews brilliant books that will help you getting a new perspective, being mindful, and eventually improving your performance. In addition, Chris interviews incredible athletes, coaches and sport psychologists, sharing with you their stories and experience about what helped them achieve success and become the person they are today. Discover how you can learn from them how to improve your motivation, discipline, and leadership skills, and how to also use this knowledge to help others soar.

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Maria Toorpakai is a Pakistani squash player who had the dream to become an athlete as a young girl. Unfortunately, the culture, the society and the Taliban don’t allow girls to be actively involved in sports in Pakistan – and especially not in remote tribal areas like Maria’s home, South Waziristan. However, Maria never gave up fighting for what was important to her, and luckily she had a father who was a strong advocate for equal rights of men and women, and supported Maria in her dream to become an athlete. At the age of 4 years, Maria burned all her girls clothes and lived disguised as a boy, which made it possible for her to be the athlete she always wanted to be. After discovering squash and the joy she experienced on a squash court her true identity was revealed and she received death threats from different groups, including the Taliban. Although it wasn’t safe for her to leave the family’s house she kept training inside her bedroom. She sent thousands of emails to people around the world, asking for help. Finally, Jonathon Power, former world #1 in squash, offered her to come to Toronto/Canada. Today, Maria Toorpakai lives and trains in Toronto, still competing for the Pakistan. In this episode, Maria talks about her story and her experiences as a girl in an extreme patriarchal society, about being oppressed, about receiving death threats and about never giving up. She talks about the mindset she developed on her journey in life in squash and sport, about equality, human rights and her book A different kind of daughter. We also talked about the Maria Toorpakai foundation is dedicated to building peaceful communities and gender equity by investing in education, sports and healthcare programs for young girls and boys in remote regions of the world, particularly the Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

ZEPP FM 019 - Squash and death threats from the Taliban with Maria Toorpakai

After studying psychology, Lisa focused specifically on the field of sport psychology, because she enjoys helping other athletes learn new things and improve their performances. Today she is living and working in The Hague in the Netherlands, owning ToughMinds together with two other sport psychologists, a company that delivers sport psychology services to athletes, team, coaches, companies as well as other target groups in the Netherlands. Once you meet Lisa you feel the positive vibes that surround her and I really enjoyed talking with her. She doesn’t only talk about the great moments as a sport psychologist, but also shares several situations where she felt that she might have made a mistake, and that taught her some valuable lessons. In addition, Lisa and I talked about what skills future sport psychologists should learn in order to be really able to work with athletes, coaches and other clients, and not only focusing on the basic sport psychology skills everyone can learn in text- and work books. Thank you, Lisa, for all the great insights into your methods, your ideas, your way of working with people and what lessons you already learned along your way as a sport psychologist.

ZEPP FM 018 - Keeping it simple in sport psychology with Lisa Ruebsteck

Nick Symmonds is a two-time Olympian, who competed for the United States in the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games. With 7 NCAA titles, 9 U.S. titles, a silver medal at the World Championships and a personal best of 3:59.68 for One Mile, he can be pretty satisfied with what he achieved during his active career. However, Nick doesn’t enjoy the good life after a successful sporting career, he goes on and sets new goals for himself for the future. Not only did he co-found RunGum, a company producing chewing gums with energy boosting ingredients, but he strives also to climb the seven summits within the next couple of years. His goal is to be the first person on earth to run the mile under four minutes and summit Mt. Everest. In this episode, Nick talks about how he dealt with stress prior and during competitions, why discipline and dealing with obstacles is so important and what characteristics he developed while being an Olympic athlete that help him achieve his goals today in business and in mountains. Thank you, Nick, for sharing your personal insights with us!

ZEPP FM 017 - Turning off the mind with Nick Symmonds

In this episode, Fabian gives great insights into the lives of eSports athletes, how they train, how they live and how he tries to improve not only their level of performance through the application of several methods from sport psychology, but also their mental and physical well-being through new diets, more physical activity and fresh air. Moreover, his job is to create a cohesive team that sticks together, out of a small group of individuals who are only used to play their game in front of their own screen, only for their own benefit. With what I know about Fabian and how he talks about it, I’m pretty sure he’s doing a remarkable job in Copenhagen, helping Origen and his athletes to dominate League of Legends in 2019.

ZEPP FM 016 - Holistic athlete development in eSports with Fabian Broich

Many students and people at workshops or keynotes regularly ask me about the methods and strategies I apply when working with people. With this solo episode today I am sharing one of the strategies with you, which I use for myself and which I apply with athletes and other clients when it’s all about defining new goals for the future. I’m taking you through the complete process of reflecting on the past, identifying lessons learned from the last year or the last season, define new goals for the future as well as strategies for the times when life gets difficult and you might lose your goals out of sight. A couple of years ago I started not only defining goals for the upcoming year, but also developing a certain structure that not only helps me for myself and my personal goals, but that I can also apply when working with clients, athletes and students. The result is the SIX+ONE strategy I’m going to talk about in today’s episode. I will definitely keep working on the strategies and its methods, but maybe you and your clients can benefit from what the strategies is like today. In order to make it even easier to follow and apply this strategy I created a short step-by-step guide. In this pdf file you get the basic guidelines, the strategies as well as one template for working on your outcome goals in step number 5. Should you have any questions regarding the strategy or any thoughts, please drop me an email and I’m happy to answer all of your questions!

ZEPP FM 008 – The Hardangervidda Project

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