Day 7 - The Inner Game of Winning Gymnastics Gold | The Game Inside The Games

Nastia Liukin (0:00)

Day seven from Paris. We promised you part two of my experiences and insights from the All-Around Finals. So let's dive back in.

Michael Gervais (0:08)

Welcome back, or welcome to the Game Inside the Games on Finding Mastery. I'm Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade in training, a high-performance psychologist.

Nastia Liukin (0:17)

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 (0:34)

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 (0:44)

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

Michael Gervais (0:49)

And I'm sport and performance psychologist, Dr. Michael Gervais. And together, we're bringing you an inside look at the Games like never before. Okay, we're jumping back into our conversation, breaking down women's gymnastics all around. And in part one, we talked about your preparation. We talked about walking out of the tunnel, sticking the landing. We talked about, you know, vault. And then next up, take us away. We're going to talk about bars and the other elements.

Nastia Liukin (1:16)

Yes, absolutely. So everybody's best event, obviously is different. For me, it was the uneven bars. I knew that I had to hit the best routine I possibly could in order just to stay competitive with the rest of the field. I wasn't as strong on vault, even with that stuck landing, just as I had done in my dream. I knew that this event coming up right now was so crucial. And so I always felt more nervous on this event because I knew what was at stake. So it was even more important to put myself in that head space of calmness and confidence, but also a little bit of that attack. And so it's a very fine line of trying to balance the right proportions, I guess, if you will, of each of those feelings.

Michael Gervais (2:07)

It's a little bit like an equalizer.

Nastia Liukin (2:09)

Yeah.

Michael Gervais (2:09)

So when you're on the inner game or you think of a couple of dials, you've got the confidence dial, you've got the activation or the calm nervousness type of dial.

And then there's the type of aggressiveness that you want. So there's these dials. That's kind of what the inner game is. first, you have to know what the dials are. And then secondly, you have to have the skills to be able to level them up or drag them around.

Nastia Liukin (2:30)

And imagine doing that when you're on a four inch wide balance beam, right? When you're already nervous and your heart is beating and just one little, like a pinky toe could be off and it becomes scary.

Michael Gervais (2:41)

This is why we don't wait until these moments to train and prepare on the mental part of the game.

Nastia Liukin (2:45)

That's exactly right. And I think that's what a great coach does too. It goes back to the gym. You can't learn that in a competition. You have to put yourself in that mindset. And of course, it's not really fully possible in the gym because there's no audience, because there's, you know, there's no distractions. But you have to try your absolute best to do so. So you put yourself in training, at least for us, we used to go to another gym, you know, just to get a little buzz, just to get a little bit of energy. This is your 30-second touch, go, you're not used to the surroundings, you're not used to the bars, you're not used to the noises at this gym.

Michael Gervais (3:23)

Cool.

Nastia Liukin (3:23)

Because when you become, when you train at a gym and everything is the same day after day after day after day, then it just becomes like you're normal.

Michael Gervais (3:31)

That's very cool. Now, we're talking about bars. What was the 30-second touch like for that? Like, what was the process? Bring us into when you were getting ready to go to your bars.

Nastia Liukin (3:45)

So this is the part I feel like is not really talked about. If you're watching this happen, and sometimes you don't really get to see this happen, the lineup on the bars and the all-around finals, it's all like seated based on the qualifying round of competition. Scores don't carry over, but it's based on that. So when the start list comes out, immediately you look who you're after on bars. Because we use grips, the US should misuse grips. Now, some of the countries don't. China, for instance, they use honey on the bar. So to paint that picture, your grips are going to get stuck. Wait, honey and chalk? A little bit of chalk, but some honey, yeah.