The Big Interview: No small pond thinking in open water for Chris Bryan

Simply qualifying for the Olympics isn’t enough for Clare swimmer Chris Bryan. A PhD student in sport psychology, he is setting his sights on an Olympic medal.

In one of Chris Bryan’s many personal journals, there’s something Paul O’Connell has said that he’s jotted down and worked into a personal affirmation.

“Like Paul, I am the one who can push further. I want it more than anyone else. I am a workhorse. When the shit hits the fan, I’m your man who can deal with it.”

It wasn’t something O’Connell said in some interview he came across on the net. O’Connell would have said it to him face-to-face in many of their conversations over a cuppa here in the sports bar of the UL campus.

Bryan may not be a familiar name to you the way some of the county hurlers are that also move and mix among the Munster rugby fraternity that reside on campus, but Bryan is someone O’Connell would have chatted to more frequently than any of them.

In Bryan, O’Connell could see something of a kindred spirit, though as a self-confessed “textbook over-thinker” and “always a bit of a nerd”, Bryan is probably closer to Pádraig Harrington on a cerebral and obsessive scale.

Maybe O’Connell’s regard for the 25-year-old is because Bryan is a swimmer, like O’Connell himself was ever before becoming a rugby player. He can appreciate all the early mornings — in Bryan’s case, up at 4.30am to be at the pool for 5am, for almost a decade here in UL — all those laps, the grind and the grit that sport commands.

More so, Bryan is an open water swimmer, someone who two years ago finished in the top 12 at the world championships after 10 gruelling kilometres in the choppy seas. Don’t let the fresh face fool you. If you want a study in resilience in sport, check out the Clareman. Literally.

As well as trying to qualify for Rio after missing out by a whisker on London, Bryan is researching for a PHD in sport psychology on the resilience of high-performers. And as Bryan himself will admit, his past season alone with all its trials and setbacks was a “bloody field study”.

Actually, his whole life kind of has. He didn’t like the sea at first. He wasn’t from the coast, he was from Shannon, and the sand and the salt water and especially the jellyfish didn’t appeal to him. But that was overcome by a group of friends pinning him down and covering him with jellyfish. “I got stung and all but you know what?” Bryan smiles. “I got over it!”

He was very good at maths at school, maybe taking after his father, a civil engineer and another “obsessive”. English and language didn’t come as easily to him. “I remember sitting down at the table with my mother and bawling. I was the worst! I would fly off in a huge temper, throwing all the toys out of the cot and wear myself out from all the crying. ‘It’s just not for me!’ But after I’d calmed down, it [the work] would still be there when I finished. And my mother was so persistent. She didn’t say ‘It’s fine, it doesn’t matter.’ She’d be ‘Okay, let’s go again.’ Eventually then I’d get it.”

And that, he’s learned from his swimming and studies, is resilience. Grit. The renowned researcher Carol Dweck has found that attributing your success to effort more than ability leads to greater success. Because you can cope with setbacks better. You see failure less as an affront to your esteem as more a step to success. In contrast, someone supposedly more ‘gifted’ will struggle, maybe fold, when it stops coming easy to them.

“That’s a fact of life. Sure some people are going to be bigger or more intelligent. But when I look at what makes the top performers, I think of Will Smith. He said the difference between him and more talented actors than him was that he’s not afraid to die on a treadmill. The way he put it was: ‘If you and I each get on a treadmill, one of two things is going to happen: either you get off first or I’m going to die.’ And I’m like that. It might take you one hour to figure out something in French that will take me four hours, but I will figure it out.”

Swimming was the same. He had every excuse not to make it as an international athlete. He was from a small club in a small county in a small country. But small-pond thinking was something he wouldn’t allow.

“The biggest evolution for me in my sport was international exposure. In Ireland I won something like nine events at the Munster championships and eight silvers at the nationals but then I’d go abroad for a few meets and I wouldn’t even make finals against guys younger than me. I was lucky I came across at a time when the internet was at my fingertips. I was constantly in tune with what was going on abroad and figuring out what I had to do to get better. I realised that while I might not have been yet a champion, I could already develop a championship mindset.”

In his late teens, he came across a couple of sport psychology books that helped him overcome the competitive anxiety he suffered from.

“I used to get terrified racing. I used to hate racing. Because I knew how hard I had worked and how much I wanted it. And if it didn’t work out that one day, that was going to define me.”

At the 2008 national championships, he was favourite to win the 1500m. He was training brilliantly, comfortably beating his expecting challengers. He was even beginning to think and dream of making a late push to make Beijing. But come race day, it all unravelled. After 600m, he was burning up. His rival pulled away. Bryan finished a distant, dreadful, second.

“It was process overload. I wasn’t there, I wasn’t in the moment. I was thinking of so many things and it was pure process overload. When he started to get ahead of me, panic started to creep in. ‘Oh my God, this isn’t going to plan! I’m hurting!’ It was just horrible.

“If you think about your best performances, you nearly can’t remember anything! You might remember a couple of small turning points but for the most part, it’s a blank. You’re in flow, you’re not in your head. You’re just in the moment, even though you might be in the water for two hours.”

Through the years, he’s learned in the lead-up to a race to just get out of his head and his own way and let his body do what it is programmed to do best.

“The way I now approach the eve or day of a race, the race is already swam. All the hard work is done, so I’m no longer worried. I’m actually excited to see how I do.”

That excitement may still end up in disappointment, of course. There still have been setbacks, some of them especially testing. He was expected to qualify for the 2012 Olympics. He needed to finish in the top 15 of a qualifying race in Portugal that June. When he arrived there a couple of days beforehand, he discovered he had shingles.

He thought the pain would restrict him and for five of the six laps, he stayed at the back of the field, unsure of whether his body would give up or not. When the proverbial went, he decided he’d go all out, nothing to lose. “I was just passing people, one after another.” When he touched the finish, he was joint 15th with a Hungarian out of a field of over 80. In a photo finish the Hungarian got the nod.

“[Swim Ireland performance director] Peter Banks came over and asked me if I wanted to check the video but I said I’m sure the officials had and left it at that and shook your man’s hand. That’s probably one of the things that sticks in my throat a bit. I was trying to be the classy champion and sportsman, but sometimes I think, you should definitely have looked at that video! You just don’t know what kind of politics could be going on in the background.”

Maybe he was so gracious because there was still a chance he could be allocated a spot in the weeks that followed. As it would transpire, the last spot would be given to an African athlete who was over an hour slower.

Again, it was all a test of Bryan’s resilience. He’d given all he could or at least known for London. He’d be the wiser and grittier from it for Rio.

But the road to Rio has been an arduous one as well, especially this year. With that Harrington-like head of his, he tried a new high-fat, low-carb diet. In training he was flying. His body composition scores had never been better, he’d never felt stronger. But come racetime, he was blowing up with three kilometres still to go. Every third week, he was racing and he was getting beaten by people who had never beaten him before. This was not in the script. He was supposed to have qualified for the Olympics at the World Championships. He was supposed to challenge for a medal at the World University Games in South Korea. At the airport that evening he could barely talk to his UL-based coach, Lars Humer. When they did, it got heated.

“Being resilient doesn’t mean you don’t feel the lows as bad. Of course you do. It’s about processing and dealing with the negative and then frame it in a constructive way. People think ‘Be positive, be positive.’ I think in the past I started acting out that character. I wasn’t processing setbacks. I was drubbing them off. I was maybe smiling all the time on the outside and not properly confronting my doubts or disappointments.

“I’ve come to allow myself a few hours to be rightly pissed off, to feel the world is unfair and has come falling down. Then I’ll start to process it, by myself and with the likes of Lars. We’re very like-minded. We’re very passionate about what we do. And because we care a lot, we fight a lot! And after those couple of races, he was so frustrated, he suggested I maybe wasn’t really going for it. And I said: ‘I am bloody going for it! I know no other way!’”

With his confidence affected, so too was his commitment. Over the following weeks he stayed up later, didn’t watch his diet as much; went into a slump basically. When he sat down with the sport psychologist Gerry Hussey, he admitted he wasn’t sure what was motivating him anymore.

“Back in 2012 even though I didn’t go to the Olympics, I reckoned I was about 11th or 12th in the world. By Rio, I could challenge for a medal, so that’s what I was working towards. But towards the end of this season, I subconsciously was thinking: ‘I don’t think it’s really possible.’

“Gerry asked me then was it possible to qualify for the Olympics. And I said I could definitely qualify for the Olympics but my problem was I wasn’t excited by it. It sounds horrible and quite insulting for some people but I wasn’t someone who wanted to go for the fame and so I could tell people I was an Olympian. I just wasn’t enjoying my swimming and because of my interests in other things, I wasn’t really worried like some other athletes are about what my life would be like after it.

“That’s when we struck upon it. I have a mastery-orientation. It’s all about me being the best I could be. That’s why I got into swimming in the first place.”

To help him with that, they reset an outcome goal: to put himself in the best possible position where a medal is a possibility. There’s little between 10th and third. The silver medallist in London has retired. The gold medallist finished thirtysomething at the worlds. So a medal is achievable. Aim for the stars and you might hit the moon and all that...

“The thing is you can’t act that. I’ve got to believe that. I’ve got to write down exactly what work and sacrifices I have to do. Because it’s not just about showing up. For a few weeks there I wasn’t prepared to make as many sacrifices because I didn’t need to make them to make the Olympics. But now I’m back to being a 100 percenter. My mindset is that in two hours’ time, either way I’ll be in the shower. And either I’m going to make those next two hours as productive as possible or I don’t.”

You don’t have to guess which way he’s chosen. He’s going all out. The diet is out too, which might explain why he finished fifth in the last World Cup race. He’ll be having camps abroad, because that’s where he gets a lot of his best work done.

The qualifying race will be again in Portugal. If that goes well, it’s Rio with its cold Atlantic Ocean waters, just like home, that would suit him perfectly.

So he’s excited. And not afraid of his fears either. He’s built into his training to experience nerves; some morning this week, while you’re still asleep, he’ll face a set with a specific time in mind and the nerves will be jingling, his stomach will be a bit queasy about whether he’ll meet that challenge.

Before a race he’ll repeat a mantra: ‘Calm and confident.’ He pays attention to his breath. “That’s a great one for a textbook over-thinker like me because it stops me thinking.”

From day to day, he’ll acknowledge and document his concerns. That way he tends to disarm them. It’s fitting that Bryan’s personal sponsor is a data management solutions company called Asystec. Solutions with data is what he’s all about.

“I’m a fierce man for lists. Every week I have a list for swimming and for college and my personal life. Because before I’d be constantly worrying about forgetting things in the back of mind. But see when they’re on paper? I don’t worry about them. Some people might think I’m a bit of a space cadet that way but it’s what works for me. And I find now at races that while I’m in a nice relaxed frame of mind, others are fiddling with their phones or goggles and you can see their thoughts turning.

“Of course I’ll have some doubts. ‘Biggest race of my life — what if I don’t make it?’ Before I’d just beat it off. Be positive, I’d tell myself. But that’s not the way to deal with it. It’s ‘Right, why am I thinking that?’ If I have a negative thought, I just write it out and then give it a mark out of 10 how much I really believe it. ‘Biggest race. Yeah, isn’t it great?!’ Or so I might say ‘Muscular endurance could be poor.’ But I can only give that really two out of 10. The training I’m doing, that’s not a real concern. Then I’ll write out things like, ‘Everything is trialled and tested now. When I’m going through hell, I can keep going, I can hold it together.’”

And he has. True grit.