Mind Set Win E-Book

• Herausgeber: Benevento
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 256

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Mentales Training: Die Motivationspsychologie aus dem Hochleistungssport für zuhause Was haben Top-Athleten wie Lindsey Vonn, Mario Gómez und Max Verstappen gemeinsam? Sie alle erbringen in ihren jeweiligen Disziplinen sportliche Höchstleistungen, die für andere unerreichbar scheinen. Aber was sind ihre Erfolgsgeheimnisse? Und können wir ihre Techniken auch im beruflichen und persönlichen Alltag zu unserem Vorteil nutzen? In diesem Buch zum gleichnamigen Red Bull Podcast verraten 36 Spitzensportler:innen, Psychologen und Trainer, wie Motivation und Mindset zum Sieg verhelfen. - Mentale Stärke trainieren: einfach praktische Übungen zu jedem Kapitel, die leicht in den Alltag integriert werden können - Resilienz: Strategien zur Stressbewältigung, die auf der Rennstrecke und im Büro funktionieren - Herausforderungen meistern: Wie Mentaltraining im Sport und im Alltag dabei hilft - Persönliche Entwicklung: Außergewöhnliche Spitzensportler:innen teilen ihre Schlüsselmomente - Die Erfolgsgeheimnisse der Besten in einem Ratgeber: Das Buch zum Podcast Resilienztraining, den Flow finden, mit Niederlagen umgehen: Die Tipps der Profis Mit der richtigen Motivation zu Höchstleistungen auflaufen, sich von Rückschlägen nicht entmutigen lassen, die richtige Einstellung bewahren: Im Spitzensport wird neben dem körperlichen Training viel Zeit darauf verwendet, die Psyche zu stärken, um dem Druck standhalten zu können. Trainingspläne aus dem Leistungssport sind im Alltag oft wenig praktikabel, doch die hier vorgestellten Tipps und Tricks lassen sich gut in den Tagesrhythmus integrieren und sind eine große Inspiration für das eigene persönliche Wachstum. Sie wollen jeden Tag Ihr Bestes geben – genau wie Ihre sportlichen Vorbilder? Dann ist dieser Ratgeber genau das Richtige für Sie!

Leseprobe

MINDSETWIN

Exploring the mental tacticsof high performers and how wecan apply them ourselves

INTRO

APPLYING THE EXTRA-ORDINARY TO THE EVERYDAY

Welcome to Mind Set Win, a book that has been developed out of the podcast of the same name from Red Bull – and is all about taking the kinds of mental techniques used by world-class athletes and other high performers and applying similar strategies to everyday life.

Over the following pages, you’ll hear from many of the guests who’ve appeared on the podcast since its launch – and from others who have provided new interviews especially for the book.

Those featured include serial champions like Max Verstappen, Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis, Carissa Moore, and Marc Márquez, inspirational national team captains and World Cup winners Ben Stokes and Siya Kolisi, and boundary-pushing endurance athletes like Fernanda Maciel and Lucy Charles-Barclay – not to mention true icons of their respective sports like Lindsey Vonn and Daniel Dhers.

Then there are the behind-the-scenes operators – the team masterminds like Sébastien Debs, better known simply as Ceb in the world of gaming, and a number of practising sports psychologists.

They are joined within these pages by some of the world’s most in-demand coaches, people like basketball’s Chris Matthews, aka Lethal Shooter, and tennis players like Elena Rybakina and Matteo Berrettini, alongside stars of BMX and mountain biking, surfing, and skating, as well as the Olympic gold medal-winning breaker Phil Wizard.

The common thread between them is their shared commitment to excellence, as well as an understanding that mastering the mental side of their sport has been a vital part of their rise to the top.

Our goal in making the podcast was not only to hear these high performers giving firsthand insight into how they prepare mentally for elite competition, but also to go a stage further by showing how the rest of us can learn from their experience and put into practice the skills these athletes have worked on during their careers.

Can all these techniques be mastered by nonprofessionals? Well, perhaps not! Athletes dedicate a significant proportion of their training time, often over decades, to their mental performance.

However, in working with a number of high-performance psychologists – including the Head of Mental Performance at Red Bull’s Athlete Performance Center, York-Peter Klöppel, and the show’s presenters over three seasons, Cédric Dumont, Kate Courtney, and Lisa Ramuschkat – we’ve tried to break down what the guests have told us and provide a series of actionable insights and exercises that are related to the kind of work the psychological pros do, but which should be accessible to us all.

The book is structured in such a way that you can dive in and out of chapters, depending on your specific interest in the overarching theme or, of course, the stories of the athletes themselves.

Along the way, you’ll hear some of the most inspiring people from the world of sport speaking candidly about subjects that align clearly with the development of a winning mindset – like facing fears (Chapter 3), finding flow state (Chapter 4), and keeping control (Chapter 11).

But as the stories of these outstanding characters make clear, the journey to being successful, and staying successful, can’t just be a relentless crusade to be better, stronger, and more competitive. These people understand that developing a winning mindset is also about taking care of yourself, accepting that everyone makes mistakes, and avoiding falling into the trap of punishing yourself for setbacks that are, after all, inevitable.

That’s why we’ve made a point of including chapters that are about being good to yourself (Chapter 6), accepting mistakes (Chapter 8), and coping with crisis (Chapter 9).

It’s also important to highlight the two chapters that begin and end the book.

Finding ways to love what you do (Chapter 1), to savour the moment, to make choices based on what you enjoy doing and not just about what you think will bring you the most reward, is so important. If you want to be successful at something for a long time, there is no alternative but to have true passion.

The question of purpose (Chapter 12) comes up time and again with our guests on Mind Set Win too. They know that the tangible rewards that come with glory, though important, can never be enough by themselves, and that true fulfilment is the result of being motivated by a greater cause.

By building on the podcast and presenting Mind Set Win in book form, our aim is to elaborate even further upon, and connect the dots between, the different mental techniques we’ve featured on the show – and to bring you some new ones. Each of the 12 chapters will take you on a journey through a particular theme or mindset strategy, with steps you can apply in your own life.

Whether you’re looking to enhance your performance at work, improve your mental resilience, achieve personal goals, or just feel more fulfilled and satisfied in general, we hope these insights will inspire and equip you to unlock your full potential.

So lean in and spend some quality time learning how these elite athletes have found an extra gear when they’ve really needed it, while maintaining the kind of balance that leads to long and sustained success.

A NOTE OF THANKS:

Many people have been involved in the making of Mind Set Win, and we couldn’t have done it without them. The hosts of the first season were both world-class athletes in their own right – Cédric Dumont, the skydiver who is himself a high-performance psychologist, and Kate Courtney, a world champion star of downhill mountain biking. Their insights were vital in making good on the show’s promise to break down the tactics used by professional athletes and make them not only understandable but also useful for anyone who is eager for self-improvement. Off mic, the psychologist Mia Stellberg provided crucial insights, based on her work with esports teams at the highest levels of international competition. York-Peter Klöppel, Head of Mental Performance at Red Bull’s Athlete Performance Center, also offered psychological expertise from early on, and in season 2 he took on co-presenting duties with Cédric, helping to make the takeaways and exercises even more accessible for the audience. York continued in the studio for season 3, this time joined by Lisa Ramuschkat. Together, they added more substance to the episodes, with Lisa leading each guest in an in-depth interview before joining York for the breakdown.

Many more outstanding professionals have worked behind the scenes on the podcast in areas including research, editorial, and production, and in the writing, editing, design, and production of this book.

Heartfelt thanks go to you all, and especially to the athletes, coaches, managers, and psychologists who gave up their time, and spoke with such refreshing candour, offering the kind of insight the rest of us don’t have – but can certainly learn from.

The Mind Set Win team

A note on the interviews:

All the interviews – whether recorded for the podcast or for the book – have been lightly edited for clarity, and shortened in order to highlight the techniques and experiences relevant to the chapter theme.

GUEST LIST

Q&A

York-Peter Klöppel

CHAPTER 1

LOVING WHAT YOU DO

Jamie O’Brien – Choosing your own path

Lucy Charles-Barclay – Finding joy

Justine Dupont – Activating the senses

CHAPTER 2

BUILDING SUPPORT NETWORKS

Xavi Simons – Adapting to a new environment

Sébastien ‘Ceb’ Debs – Trusting your people

Kristian Blummenfelt – Building a special relationship

Q&A

Olav Aleksander Bu – The coach’s point of view

CHAPTER 3

FACING YOUR FEARS

Emil Johansson – Having a courage mindset

Dario Costa – Making fear your best friend

Dr Michael Gervais – Fear of people’s opinions

CHAPTER 4

FINDING FLOW

Rhiannan Iffland – What is flow state

Sam Sunderland – Hitting the sweet spot

Andrea Petkovic – Experiencing full immersion

CHAPTER 5

PREPARING TO SUCCEED

Max Verstappen – Trusting in the process

Marco Odermatt – The power of anchoring

Liam Lawson – Being ready to take your chance

Q&A

Kai Traemann – The power of visualisation

CHAPTER 6

BEING GOOD TO YOURSELF

Pascal Siakam – Avoiding mental overload

Fernanda Maciel – Practising meditation

Konstanze Klosterhalfen – Staying patient

Q&A

Hazal Nehir – Positive self-talk

REFLECTIONS

INSIDE THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COACH AND ATHLETE

Leif Olav Alnes

Karsten Warholm

REFLECTIONS

THE ROLE OF TEAM PSYCHOLOGIST

Dr Peter Schneider

CHAPTER 7

STAYING AGILE

Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis – Building a growth mindset

Marc Márquez – Recalibrating goals

Daniel Dhers – The art of not panicking

CHAPTER 8

ACCEPTING MISTAKES

Matteo Berrettini – Learning lessons from defeat

Mario Gómez – How to keep backing yourself

Daniela Ryf – Pressing the reset button

CHAPTER 9

COPING WITH CRISIS

Ben Stokes – Accepting vulnerabilities, seeking help

TJ Rogers – Dealing with the unexpected

Saya Sakakibara – The value of journaling

CHAPTER 10

DEVELOPING STAYING POWER

Lindsey Vonn – Staying single-minded

Mutaz Barshim – Developing resilience

Kate Courtney – Maintaining motivation

CHAPTER 11

KEEPING CONTROL

Elena Rybakina – Using tactical body language

Chris Matthews – Practising compartmentalisation

Marcus Kleveland – Thriving on pressure

Q&A

Professor Adam Nicholls – Dealing with stress

CHAPTER 12

FINDING PURPOSE

Siya Kolisi – Finding your why

Molly Carlson – Inspiring your community

Carissa Moore – Connecting with your heart

Q&A

Phil Wizard – Staying true to yourself

Q&A

YORK-PETER KLÖPPEL

As Head of Mental Performance at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center, York-Peter Klöppel is part of a team dedicated to helping some of the world’s best and most creative individuals prepare to reach peak performance when it really matters.

The APC, based in the Salzburg region of Austria, acts as an athlete accelerator, with a team of experts that includes nutritionists, physiotherapists, medical doctors, sport scientists, strength and conditioning coaches, and, of course, mental performance experts.

York will be a familiar voice to fans of the podcast Mind Set Win. He became a co-presenter in seasons 2 and 3, after initially offering his expertise behind the scenes. Before you dive in to the chapters, here he is explaining a little more about his role and what he hopes everybody will take away from this book.

What does your role as the Head of Mental Performance entail?

At the APC, we help athletes unlock their true potential and reach the next level. We have experts from every area of sports medicine and sports science, and I have the honour of leading the mental performance department. Alongside my team, I work with the athletes regularly to help them train their mental skills and find ways to perform when it really matters. It’s a fun job and I get to meet a lot of interesting people.

How do you approach working with athletes across a wide variety of sports?

It’s very important to treat everyone uniquely, as individuals. We listen to their individual needs and try to help them with what they perceive to be the most important aspects. We don’t follow a specific programme or scheme, as not all motorsport athletes are the same, for example. But having said that, people always think there’s a big difference between all the sports, and while this might be true physically, from a mental perspective it’s not always the case. Personalities differ but the challenges can be similar.

What is the importance of mental strength in high performance?

There are so many aspects of mental performance, many of which are included in this book. In an athletic sense, the importance of mental strength really becomes obvious during competition. You can put in hours and hours of work in training, but you still need to turn up on the day and reach your maximum potential if you want to succeed. And the difference between performing and not performing is often down to mental strength.

It’s not just purely performance related, though. Other topics we explore in Mind Set Win include how to take better care of ourselves and why taking the time to look after ourselves is so important to being healthier in general.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PERFORMING AND NOT PERFORMING IS OFTEN DOWN TO MENTAL STRENGTH.

What will we learn from featuring the athletes all together in this book?

I think it’s really important for people to know that the athletes don’t see themselves as special. They’re normal people like you or me, but what they do have is a relentless commitment and dedication to improve, the internal drive to not only achieve their goals but to become the best version of themselves.

At the end of their careers, they want to say they did everything they possibly could to reach their potential – and I hope that’s the inspiration people take from Mind Set Win. People shouldn’t think they’re going to instantly become a world champion or record-holder, but rather discover how they too can become the best version of themselves.

How transferable to daily life are the mental tactics adopted by high-performance athletes?

They’re very transferable, and we’ve explored this throughout Mind Set Win with the exercises that everybody can take away and action. I’m an example of this myself. I’ve also learned so much from the athletes that I incorporate into my daily life. Things like journaling and mindfulness practices have become very important for me, and I’m sure they can be for other people as well.

How has the approach to mental training changed over recent times?

There’s been such a positive shift in perception. In the past, the traditional way of looking at psychology was to wait until something goes wrong before starting to look for an answer or skill that can help you with it. But a psychologist is more than just an option when everything else has failed and you have nobody else to turn to.

Nowadays, the mindset has changed in that mental training is being treated more like coaching. It’s about improving your current wellbeing even if you feel great. And you don’t have to wait for a problem to arise before doing it! You can realise benefits by starting to develop your mental strength, not just as a prevention strategy, but in order to see improvements in your life. Even when everything in your life is going well, you can still get so much out of continually developing your mental fitness, or seeing your psychologist, because it will help you consistently perform better. That’s the mind shift that I’ve really strived for.

HAVING THE GOAL OF IMPROVING YOUR GENERAL WELLBEING AND SATISFACTION IS A GREAT PLACE TO START.

For people starting out on their mental fitness journey, what advice would you give?

It’s good to remember that it’s a process. There’s nothing written in any book that you can read that will suddenly make everything seem better. It requires time and effort.

Also, having the goal of improving your general wellbeing and satisfaction is a great place to start. Try to develop a mindset that involves a continuous drive to self-improve and to be the best you can possibly be.

Each chapter ends with an actionable exercise. How should people approach these?

Not all the chapters will apply to everyone, so I wouldn’t recommend starting with every exercise all at once. Pick out a couple and really commit to them before evaluating the results. I hope that some of the topics will stand out to you, and you’ll have moments where you go, “Aha, that’s what I’ve been looking for!”

CHAPTER 1

LOVING WHAT YOU DO

IN THIS CHAPTER WE’LL LOOK AT:

Choosing your own path

Finding joy

Activating the senses

WE’LL HEAR FROM:

Jamie O’Brien

“It brought me so much joy, so much happiness and fun to film and create and build content and have them believe in what I believe in.”

Lucy Charles-Barclay

“My performances got better as I took the pressure off and found that love again. My mental toughness and resilience went up another notch.”

Justine Dupont

“I really enjoy this moment when riding a wave, and at the end I have a giant smile on my face as I know that I did all the right things at the right time.”

INTRODUCTION

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED JUST HOW MUCH EASIER IT IS TO COMPLETE A CHALLENGING TASK WHEN YOU CAN APPROACH IT IN A POSITIVE FRAME OF MIND AND HAVE SOME FUN ALONG THE WAY?

Developing the ability to find satisfaction in the experience as well as in the results can help bring long-term success – something we’ve heard consistently on Mind Set Win from athletes, coaches, and other high performers.

They explain that enjoyment doesn’t always need to be found in the winning moment or the crowning achievement. Sure, the results are important, as we’re all striving to be more successful, but separating the outcome from the action and allowing ourselves to live in the moment is also at the core of increased productivity and ongoing success.

Whether it’s Jamie O’Brien letting go of a key aspect of surfing to concentrate on what truly motivates him, Lucy Charles-Barclay finding herself smiling as she comes out of a punishing swim, or Justine Dupont activating her senses to live every moment of riding a big wave – it’s their obvious enjoyment and passion that enables them to be the best version of themselves.

Of course, finding joy is a very personal thing and you can’t just decide to be happy, but by learning to be present we can give ourselves the best opportunity to enjoy what we do on a daily basis. Let’s learn how some of the very best go about it.

BE UNIQUE AND DO IT HOW YOU WANT TO DO IT. THAT’S HOW YOU WILL SUCCEED – BY BEING YOURSELF.

S3, EP 8

LISTEN TO THEPODCAST HERE:

https://www.redbull.com/int-en/podcast-episodes/mind-set-win-s3-e8-jamie-obrien-part-a

JAMIE O’BRIEN

GROWING UP ON THE NORTH SHORE, HAWAII, NEAR ONE OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS WAVES ON THE PLANET AND HAVING A LIFEGUARD DAD WITH A SURFING PASSION, MEANT JAMIE O’BRIEN WAS DESTINED FOR A LIFE ON THE WATER.

By 21, he was one of the youngest surfers ever to win a Pipeline Masters, generating excitement for his creativity and audacity in the water.

So it was totally unexpected when he turned his back on competition to travel the world and become a content creator. Three thrilling surf movies and his own surf school later, Jamie dropped in to Mind Set Win to talk about the importance of staying true to what you love.

I beat all my heroes when I was 21 years old. I’m going, “Wait, what just happened? This is astronomical.” And then all the sponsors started looking at me. And for me, it was like, “That feels good to win but I don’t really want to continue competing.” Because I wasn’t even at the highest level; I was a level below still. And I felt like it was a lot of pressure from the sponsors.

I was watching all these videos of free surfers, and I just really liked that realm of filming and creating and building content. At that time, I was already doing that with my friends – we would travel the world, and we’d take turns filming each other, and to me, that was so cool. Then I started realising I wanted to make a movie, and so this was the turning point, from surfing contests to making videos.

I remember saying, “Dad, I want to make a movie!” But my dad wanted me to be world champion. He was pissed because I saw a different vision than the way he saw me going.

I just remember talking to a sponsor and saying, “We want to make a Jamie O’Brien movie.” And you know what they told me? “We are not ready for a Jamie O’Brien movie.” So I decided I was going to make it with or without them. We showed it to them before we released it and they said, “Wow, this is beautiful – we would love to be a part of it!”

It brought me so much joy, so much happiness and fun to film and create and build content and have them believe in what I believe in. And it just opened the floodgates. We’re like, “Oh my God, we love filming; this is epic!” You want to do what you love.

And Jamie’s ambitions didn’t stop at filmmaking; he also founded his own surf school on the North Shore of Hawaii…

I always wanted to open up a surf school. I liked the idea of teaching people how to surf and giving the gift of surfing to the world, because that’s what my father did for me, and it changed my life. It wasn’t easy but you’ve got to set your goals so high and think, “I’m going to achieve them one day.”

Now we teach thousands and thousands of people how to surf every year, and it’s such a beautiful thing. It reminds me why I love surfing.

I’d like my legacy to be giving the gift of surfing to everybody, but then also giving the choice of what you do. Just know, there’s not one right way to ride a surfboard or to film and create content. Be yourself, be unique, and do it how you want to do it. And that’s how you will succeed – by being yourself.

YORK’S NOTES

If you’re skilled at something, and especially if you’ve started to achieve some success at it, it can be all too easy to get swept along without stopping to consider whether it makes you happy and fulfilled. In the midst of huge success, Jamie braved his dad’s disappointment and decided to dedicate himself to what truly brought him satisfaction. It must have taken a lot of self-awareness and courage for him to admit that his passion was becoming a pressure. But here’s the cool thing: by doing something that was his own idea and something he felt he had a lot of autonomy over (the movie), he was able to reconnect with what gave him joy and use it to guide him forward. As we progress with our goals, it’s so important to keep checking in on how we feel. Because finding what makes you happy might not necessarily mean wholesale change. Instead, like Jamie, it might mean just a shift in emphasis and focus.

LUCY CHARLES-BARCLAY

THE BRITISH ATHLETE SWITCHED FROM SWIMMING TO TRIATHLON AND WON THE IRONMAN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS IN 2023 IN A NEW COURSE RECORD TIME.

Key to Lucy’s rapid rise from rookie to champion in the punishing discipline combining swimming, cycling, and running has been the ability to find and maintain enjoyment in every part of the process. Preparing to race intensely against your rivals for more than eight hours requires unwavering levels of motivation, and Lucy has discovered how to find her mojo when she really needs it. Let’s learn how she’s able to smile through the pain.

When I first transitioned from swimming to IRONMAN, I enjoyed it because it was new. Everything was different and it felt exciting. Going out for a group ride at the weekend didn’t even feel like training because you were talking and riding. It was so completely different to swimming, which always felt like a chore. I always found open water swimming more fun than swimming laps in the pool, though, as swimming outdoors felt like a hobby, something I enjoyed doing but was still getting a lot from.

To begin with, my swim was so useful in allowing me to get good results, even if my bike and run wasn’t as strong as the other girls’, as I could build up such a big lead. It convinced me that I needed to start loving it again, as, actually, it’s a weapon for me and sets every race up with a great start.

I was doing double days in the pool, morning and evening, and I remember ploughing up and down the pool and hitting times I wasn’t hitting before. I would finish the sets absolutely in bits, but I’d be lying on the pool side with a massive smile on my face. I remembered that pushing myself and finding a new gear was what I loved about swimming. That was what really ignited the love again.

When I finished my first IRONMAN, I had never felt anything like it. In that moment, I knew that I had to keep doing it. Some training sessions are really tough and it’s hard to have fun in that exact moment but after I’ve achieved it, I’m really happy and get a lot from it.

After many successful years as a professional, an extended break from competition allowed Lucy to remember why she finds so much joy in IRONMAN racing. This realisation, together with a new outlook, ignited a run of form that resulted in her becoming 70.3 world champion in 2021.

In hindsight, the year out with the pandemic was a blessing for me, as it allowed me to come away from the sport and reevaluate why I was doing it. It gave me so much energy and made me realise that I do love what I’m doing.

Then, in 2021, I probably had the best year of my career as a triathlete because I was like, “What does it matter what the outcome is? Just go enjoy it, have fun, and challenge myself in new ways.” I wanted to do well, but if it went terribly, what does it even matter?

MY PERFORMANCES GOT BETTER AS I TOOK THE PRESSURE OFF AND FOUND THAT LOVE AGAIN.

S1, EP 1

LISTEN TO THEPODCAST HERE:

https://www.redbull.com/int-en/podcast-episodes/mind-set-win-s1-e1-lucy-charles-barclay

My performances got better as I took the pressure off and found that love again. My mental toughness and resilience went up another notch.

There is a photo that was captured of me coming out of the swim at a race, and I just have pure joy on my face. It showed me that I just love it and that’s why I do it. I can push myself to the limit and still be having fun at the same time.

YORK’S NOTES

What’s that famous saying? If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life? That sounds bang on the mark for Lucy, who makes a point of finding fun in her training and day-to-day life, even as she puts in tremendous effort to be at her best. It helps her stay motivated and, along with all the training, is a vital ingredient in her success. She also has an ability to focus on the challenge in front of her, and the enjoyment of just being there. It’s no surprise that developing this approach coincided with the best season of her career. Another part of her journey that’s relatable is the realisation that taking a break from something you dedicate a lot of time to can often really spark that enjoyment again.

EVERY TIME I SURF A BIG WAVE, IT FEELS LIKE THE FIRST TIME I WENT SURFING WHEN I WAS YOUNGER. I’M ENJOYING EVERY SECOND!

S1, EP 5

LISTEN TO THEPODCAST HERE:

https://www.redbull.com/int-en/podcast-episodes/mind-set-win-s1-e5-justine-dupont

JUSTINE DUPONT

WIDELY REGARDED AS ONE OF THE BEST BIG WAVE SURFERS OF HER GENERATION, VIDEOS OF JUSTINE RIDING JAW-DROPPING 70-FOOT WAVES HAVE BEEN VIEWED MILLIONS OF TIMES.

A world champion in multiple disciplines on the water, Justine has dedicated her career to chasing the biggest thrills that surf breaks such as Jaws in Hawaii and Nazaré in Portugal have to offer.

Performing in the eye of a storm isn’t for the faint-hearted but through connecting with her senses and living in the present moment, the French surfer is able to come alive and enjoy every aspect of the experience.

I love the ocean, big waves, and spending time in the water. Every time I surf a big wave it feels like the first time I went surfing when I was younger. I’m enjoying every second!

As soon as you catch the wave, you are living in the moment. It’s a crazy feeling to be connected with the ocean, the wave, your board, body and mind in this way. You’re a tiny object on the water and you feel like you’re in the right place at the right time. I really enjoy this moment when riding a wave, and at the end I have a giant smile on my face as I know that I did all the right things at the right time.

One thing I’ve learned that really makes me more efficient and focused in the water while surfing big waves is to be more connected with my senses. When I enter the water, I can feel the temperature. I can taste the salt and see the colour of the wave. I can hear the birds. I really focus on my senses because if you can connect with your senses, you will be fully in the present.

In spots like Nazaré or Jaws, for example, when I’m waiting for a big wave, I start to feel the pressure and nerves. You know there is a risk, and this almost gives you another sense because being afraid gives an affirmation to my body, which automatically helps it find extra focus.

As soon as I feel these emotions, I focus on my breathing, being aware of the water, the air, and all my surroundings. I’m more aware than ever to stay on my feet and not fall.

Justine’s ability to be fully present isn’t just reserved for big wave surfing.

An example of a time that living in the present and enjoying the moment helped me was when I went to the World SUP and Paddleboard Championships in El Salvador in 2019. My only goal was to win, so I had this pressure on me. I can still remember everything because I was so focused and living in the moment. It was so much better for me, and I really felt the energy of being connected with the ocean and with nature. It made the victory all the more memorable.