Day 6 - The Calm Before the Gold: Mental Preparation for the Gymnastics All-Around Final | The Game Inside The Games

Michael Gervais (0:00)

Day six from Paris. The women's gymnastics all around is coming up, and we have the perfect person here to pull back the curtain on that experience. Welcome back or welcome to the Game Inside the Games on Finding Mastery. I'm Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist.

Nastia Liukin (0:19)

And I'm Nastia Liukin, Olympic gold medalist, and we are here in Paris for the Olympic Games. And in this special series, we unlock the psychology of pivotal, often unseen moments that can make or break an athlete's dream. What's it like to focus a lifetime of experience into one performance, a single moment?

Michael Gervais (0:36)

What goes on inside the minds of the brightest Olympic stars while the whole world is watching? Welcome back to Paris and let's dive into the Game Inside the Games.

Nastia Liukin (0:46)

Welcome back to Paris and the Game Inside the Games, presented by Microsoft Co-Pilot. I'm Olympic gold medalist, Nastia Liukin.

Michael Gervais (0:51)

And I am sport and performance psychologist, Dr. Michael Gervais. And together, we're bringing you an inside look at the Games like never before. Okay, Nastia, we are coming up on what is probably one of the most popular events at the Games, the Women's All-Around Final. It's the event that captures the world's imagination every four years.

Nastia Liukin (1:12)

Yeah, it really does. And you know, it all comes down to years and years of training to just about four minutes, 90 seconds on a four-inch-wide balance beam. That's just a little bit wider than your cell phone. To put it in perspective, 90 seconds on their floor exercise, five seconds, if you're on the slower side, on vault, and 45 seconds on the uneven bars. So you go into it knowing that you have to deliver in that exact moment. You don't get another chance. You don't get another try. You know, I'm honestly not sure how it's done. And I kind of want to explore that a little bit more of like, how are you able to do that?

Michael Gervais (1:50)

Yeah, let's let's do that. Let's bring the audience inside that moment and give them a view like they've never had before.

Nastia Liukin (1:58)

So I'm going to set the scene. We're going to take it back to the warm up hall first. So a few hours before the competition starts, you're in the warm up hall and you're doing all four of the events as a group. Top eight. So it's all seated. So the qualifying round, you start from scratch. Scores do not carry over, but that is your way to get into the final. So you start on vault if you make the top eight from the qualifying round. So top eight best gymnast in the entire world are all marching together now. So talk about being right next to your closest competition, whether it's your teammate from your country or somebody else. You know exactly what is happening to the person that you need to hopefully beat. Not that that's your goal, but you see them right in front of you.

Michael Gervais (2:41)

Describe two parts of that. What is your ideal competitive mindset? And then when you're off from that, what is that like?

Nastia Liukin (2:49)

You know, I think you don't fully turn off the whole time. I think when you're going up on the event and when you're standing there on the side, like I remember watching someone on the balance beam before me, but I wasn't even watching.

I was looking past it because I was trying to focus on the beam, visualize my routine when somebody else was on the beam. So I didn't even see what was happening on it.

Michael Gervais (3:24)

That's cool. So you're totally dialed in. 100% dialed in. This is that level of focus and concentration is special. And it's not something new to you at the Olympics, but that's the level of dialed in for your mindset.

Nastia Liukin (3:40)

That's the level that you hope to be in.

Michael Gervais (3:42)

Okay. But when I say competitive mindset, is it more free? Is it more aggressive? Are you smooth like everything's just eloquent?

Or is there an edge to it?

Nastia Liukin (3:58)

It's all of those things because each event requires almost a different kind of mindset and a different energy. So for vault, you kind of have to be a little bit more aggressive and powerful. And you know, especially for me, I wasn't as physically strong as a lot of the other gymnasts. So it really took a lot out of me. Then you go on to the uneven bars. That was my best event. I knew that if I had any mistakes on that event, I had absolutely no chance to end up on top. That was the event that I knew there was no room for any error. So the nerves were just through the roof.