How to Drive High Performance: Insights from a Top Formula One Coach | Patrick Harding

Patrick Harding (0:00)

What do I think Mastery is?

For me, it's dedicate yourself to a journey, and doing it with joy, doing it with love, doing it with passion, in spite of the sacrifices. So knowing that that journey is difficult, and the likelihood of success may be 1%, but you're still dedicate yourself to that. That's the journey I'm on.

Michael Gervais (0:29)

Welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. Okay, Formula One racing may seem like a sit-down sport to some, but the reality is that race car drivers are anything but sedentary. World-class F1 auto racing pushes the limits of human endurance and focus and reaction time and risk.

It is flat-out full-on, and it's requiring competitors to face incredibly intense physical and mental challenges.

Now, in the open cockpit of a Formula One car, drivers or pilots, as they're often known as, must maintain, must maintain razor-sharp concentration at speeds approaching 220 miles an hour, jamming on the brakes, downshifting all the way to like 40, 50 miles an hour. That type of G-forced and tension in the system is incredible. It rivals those that are experienced by astronauts during launch.

And they do it all on top of a grueling global 30-week-per-year international travel schedule. High-performing athletes, flat out. Driver performance is as crucial as vehicle engineering. Now, the tension between those two, it's real now. You got the engineers, you got the drivers, trying to figure out how to allow this car to do its thing on a different track over the course of the year.

Now, to reach sustained superior performance, that's the game inside the game here, Formula One athletes often work with coaches who guide them to excel both on and off the course. So in this episode, we sit down with a dear friend of mine, Patrick Harding, distinguished performance coach for Formula One racer, Alex Albon. Patrick's extensive background in physiotherapy, strength and conditioning and performance coaching makes him an invaluable asset to champions. With more than 12 years experience in elite sports, including professional rugby, Australian rules football, team Great Britain's most successful Olympic canoeing squad, plus a personal interest in boxing, Patrick's expertise is significant. Now in this conversation, we discuss how to create a high performance environment for athletes. The strategy behind mental and physical preparation and why the journey of self discovery is an essential component of mastery.

Patrick also shares insights from his personal journey, the lessons that he's learned along the way. Really good. And I love how he shares his insights and his stories and how he helps athletes understand themselves. And if I could just pause there, the commitment to help others understand themselves is a blend between art and science. And he's got it. And how to help them find joy in the process of becoming. His story is a testament to the power of dedication and the transformative potential of performance coaching. So with that, let's dive right into this week's conversation with Patrick Harding. Patrick, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. Like we met a handful of years ago, and there was this instant spark about the spark you have about helping people be their very best and the vehicle that you have to bring that to life. And it was like this instant like, okay, this is awesome to get to know you. And here we are. And so why don't we just start with kind of the basics.

Help our community understand what you do in Formula One. And then we'll also talk about boxing as well. But let's just start with Formula One.

Patrick Harding (4:20)

Yeah, absolutely.

Actually, that meeting was in a bar. It was in a bar.

Michael Gervais (4:26)

Where were we?

Patrick Harding (4:27)

Miami.

Michael Gervais (4:27)

It was Miami.

Patrick Harding (4:28)

Yeah, race weekend in Miami. Yeah, fun. I mean, we'll probably get into that a little bit. Not about the bar, but yeah.

Michael Gervais (4:34)

We'll keep that off.

Patrick Harding (4:35)

We'll keep that off. Yeah. Yeah. So firstly, yeah, really, really happy to be here. And I reflected on that a few times over the last couple of days, knowing that I was coming on and it was a nice bar. We hadn't met each other before. But we got into some pretty deep stuff. Right. Just over a couple of beers with music playing in the background. And like you said, it was really refreshing for me in that environment to speak to somebody who was coming in objectively, not necessarily in that sport for a particularly long time, but to hear some of your observations about the environment was incredible for me. Like you said, when you asked me to come on, I was more than happy to.