Working With Olympians

Wyatt Woodsmall

Several years ago, at the Olympics, China competed in diving, something they had not been recognised for before. People said, ‘This should be humorous. I hope they do not hurt themselves.’ Diving is a complex process. To everybody’s amazement, not only did they show up with a diving team, but they also had a world-class diving team. Everybody was trying to figure out how they went from nothing to world-class in no time. No one could figure out how the Chinese got so good, so fast. Then, they realised that in every championship, there was always someone from East Asia with a camera. Everyone had assumed they were Japanese tourists because they always had a camera around their necks. However, it turned out that they were not Japanese tourists. They were Chinese diving coaches. They videotaped all the elite divers, and the diver they most wanted to copy was Greg Louganis, who was perhaps the greatest diver ever. They videotaped Greg and analysed the recordings in slow motion. Using physiological analysis, they identified the precise sequence of his movements. This analysis informed how they trained their own divers, enabling them to reproduce dives that closely resembled Greg’s. This approach aligns with John Grinder’s modelling. Now, in copying physiology, you may be able to do a dive that looks like Greg Louganis’, but you can never dive like Greg because you do not have Greg’s internal processes.