We currently have vacancies for 2 new permanent members of staff to join our team. The closing date for both vacancies is is 19th September 2024. If you have any queries about either post, please contact Dr Jess Pinchbeck.
Thanks to the OU dyslexia, caring for elderly relatives and anxiety were not barriers to Jasmine achieving a BSc (hons) in Sport, Fitness and Coaching.
Exercise has long been recognised as an effective intervention in both the prevention and treatment of mental health conditions. For example, in their meta-analysis of the literature exploring exercise in the treatment of depression Heissel et al. (2023) found exercise to be an effective treatment for those with depression. Similarly, exercise has also been found to be an effective tool in the prevention of depression (Hu et al., 2020). The simple logic behind the link between exercise and mental health is that exercise can make us feel better. This means that exercise can benefit your mental health whether or not you have a diagnosed mental health problem. As well as combating diagnosed mental health conditions such as depression, exercise can enhance mood and reduce stress levels, thus allowing us to tackle daily challenges in a more positive, optimistic and constructive way. Up and down the country there are many people who are advocates for the beneficial role of exercise in preventing and treating mental health conditions. A few years ago I was lucky enough to meet a group of inspiring people who were referred to a scheme which involved prescribing exercise as part of a programme to tackle mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. A clear message from these participants was that exercise was a powerful tool in helping them to combat mental health challenges. They described exercise as a far more positive treatment than medication.
There lots of evidence to show that exercise can have a positive impact on mental health, but why is this the case? What is it about engaging in physical activity that leads to enhanced mental health? There is no one theory or hypothesis that has been universally accepted to explain the link between exercise and mental health. Instead, several different hypotheses have been proposed. These can be split into two categories: physical or psychological explanations (see Table 1). It may be that a combination of factors is causes improvements in mental health, rather than one factor alone. Additionally, because people differ greatly, explanations for improvements in mental health may vary according to the individual concerned.
Table 1: Examples of physical and psychological explanations for the relationship between exercise and improved mental health (adapted from Weinberg and Gould, 2015)
Physiological Explanations
Psychological Explanations
Increases in cerebral blood flow
Changes in brain neurotransmitters (e.g., norepinephrine, endorphins, serotonin)
Increases in maximal oxygen consumption and delivery of oxygen to cerebral tissues
Reductions in muscle tension
Structural changes in the brain
Enhanced feeling of control
Feeling of competency and self-efficacy
Positive social interactions
Improved self-concept and self-esteem
Opportunities for fun and enjoyment
Conclusion
It would appear that exercise can be a highly effective tool in the prevention and treatment of mental health conditions. Exercise is a comparatively low cost treatment that can be used on its own or as an adjunct therapy and has virtually no side effects. In addition, it can tackle many other health conditions such as hypertension and heart disease. Surely prescribing exercise to treat mental health is a no brainer!
Imagine hearing a crowd of roaring fans every time you make an appearance. Thousands of camera flashes follow your every move. Each moment of your life taken up with preparation for your big moment: training, performing, media interviews and photo shoots. Then imagine going back to your daily life again – acclimatising to the everyday mundanity of bills, returning to your day job and resuming household chores.
What happens when the crowds stop screaming and you have to deal with the shift back to ordinary life?
When the Olympic Games finishes on August 11, those of us who’ve been watching the excitement – and possibly experienced vicarious satisfaction – may also experience a sense of emptiness. But it’s nothing compared to the void Olympic many athletes will experience in the aftermath of the games.
For athletes returning home from the Olympic Games, their journey is usually accompanied by a radical change in environment and considerable physical and mental shifts. A different climate, sights and smells and the lack of excited echoes in anticipation-filled arenas. Suddenly the hype surrounding an athlete’s performance diminishes and their intense training schedule reverts to normal as their bodies recover.
For athletes, the build-up to the Olympic Games is a four-year cycle, demanding huge personal and professional sacrifices and bringing with it an enormous amount of pressure.
The event itself is an experience of sensory overload – the huge crowds and deafening noise. Add to that the pressure of performing on the global stage and – for a fortnight at least – the celebrity status that comes with being an Olympic athlete.
Even veteran Olympic athletes, such as US gymnast and 11 times Olympic medallist Simone Biles and former US swimmer Michael Phelps – the most successful and most decorated swimmer of all time – have opened up about their post-Olympic blues.
Looking back, Phelps said in May 2024: “2004 was my first taste of post-Olympic depression, you know, coming off such a high.” Nile Wilson, British artistic gymnast and Olympic bronze medallist has spoken publicly about his experience of Olympic comedown.
“Comedown” is a term usually associated with withdrawal from stimulant drugs. But the feelings experienced by athletes are not so different. The high athletes get from their sport has been linked to the release of the hormone adrenaline. The Olympic comedown is a response to the “high” that is experienced from the release of adrenaline during the games.
Adrenaline addiction is often connected to extreme sportparticipants but studies have shown that addictive disorders – including alcohol, drugs and gambling – can affect athletes across a range of sports.
Success can become like a drug to elite athletes. And, unfortunately, for some the “high” from winning and attention may be replaced with other addictions once the competition is over. Athletes report feeling like “rock stars” – one professional wrestler commented that “there’s no better drug” than their sport.
Prolonged media attention can delay a bout of post-Olympic blues but for many athletes retiring from elite sport altogether, this transition from feeling like a celebrity to becoming a regular person again can present a significant risk to their psychological health and wellbeing. Replacing the sporting experience with something constructive can be a challenge.
Coping with post-event blues
Many athletes have a strong but narrow sense of identity – what they do is a huge part of who they are. Once athletes return from the Olympic games, they may experience an existential crisis, asking themselves “what now?”, or “what does all this mean?”
But this doesn’t have to be a negative experience. Studies have demonstrated that when athletes stop their sport it can be an opportunity for reflection, clarification of values, and a search for alternative ways of living.
Preparing the mind and body to wind down for one’s health is just as important as psyching up to perform. A 2022 studyreported that this sort of preparation and athlete support is still lacking.
Days before 800m runner Keely Hodgkinson won a gold medal in Paris 2024, she opened up about experiencing depression after coming second and “only” winning a silver four years earlier at the Tokyo Games, saying: “I didn’t realise Olympic comedown was actually a big thing.”
Post-event slumps don’t just affect Olympians, though. We can all experience depression after a long build-up to an important life event. While the following coping strategies were suggested by elite sportspeople to help other athletes ward off post-competition depression, they could be helpful for anyone trying to navigate our way through the blues after a big event.
The first step is to accept that you know the goal is finished, then take time off to enjoy and celebrate what you have achieved. Reflect on what went well, what didn’t go so well and what you enjoyed. Most importantly, make a list of the pleasurable things you missed out on while preparing for the event – so maybe going to the movies, having more free time to devote to hobbies, friends and family, or going to the beach. Then, during your time off after the event, make an effort to go and do those things.
Filling your life with meaningful activities after a big event can help all of us to deal with comedown – whether we’re Olympic rockstars or more ordinary folk.
In July 2024 an impactful OU/BBC documentary ‘Linford‘ exploring Linford Christie’s (1992 Olympic 100m Champion) legacy aired on BBC1 just before the Paris Olympics. As well as charting the highs of his career, the documentary also addressed some of the lows such as racism and doping which were acknowledged in the media as being particularly powerful aspects of the programme. For example, The Guardian described the ‘racist fetishisation’ experienced by Linford as ‘heartbreaking’, whilst Athletics Weekly acknowledged the ‘painful’ sight of two of Linford’s children in tears after watching archive footage of their father facing the trivialisation of racism. In this article four #TeamOUsport staff members reflect on the documentary and the impact it had on them.
At the 1992 Olympics, for Linford’s 100m victory, I was in the Olympic village as part of the Team GB coaching team (windsurfing). That night many Brits crammed around the TV to watch him, aged 32, win the gold. It was one of those shared moments. We leaped around the room in celebration, proud that ‘one of us’ had won the blue-riband event. We all walked a bit taller. In a way it galvanised the GB team.
Watching how his personal story unfolded in ‘Linford’ I now understand that by defending his corner he was often perceived as tricky character by the media. For me, the greatest personal slight and racist trope having scaled the peak of Olympic sprinting history was for the very next day his achievement to be demeaned by the Sun newspaper. Their front page focused on his genitals rather than his supreme global victory. In the Olympic village we didn’t see the papers but now I better understand how racist stereotypes were at play. Would the same have happened to say, Andy Murray after his Wimbledon success or other world beating white athletes? For me, this type of framing of success can’t be dismissed as ‘banter’, it is abusive.
Ola’s reflections
Linford Christie was iconic – he was ‘the man’ who took the fight to the USA sprinters. The way he stood on the starting line, completely focused and dominating everybody in that 1991-93 period made him the greatest in that era. While watching the documentary it was great to see him being honoured but you can also see how much he was maligned by the British media.
I remember fuming in my Haringey bedsit at the subtle racism and gaslighting at play as Linford was having to justify why he was wearing Lycra shorts on the Saint and Greavsie programme, so much so that I wrote a letter of complaint. The British mainstream media never gave Linford the platitudes or spoke about his supreme mental strength and great sprinting ability which contrasted to the positive coverage for white male athletes. The press just wanted to talk about his genitalia as if that was what all Linford was.
He won a case against the Met police in the 1990s and interestingly things haven’t changed as two of the athletes that Linford coaches, Bianca Williams and Ricardo Dos Santos, also successfully took the Met police to court because they were unlawfully arrested and found to be racially profiled by officers in 2020. At the time Linford brought this to our attention on social media and was castigated by many people that he was a ‘race baiter’, rather than being praised for supporting his athletes. How can it be that even now the Police are still racially profiling Black people in the UK?
Linford was the greatest sprinter this country has ever produced. His legacy should be celebrated.
Jim’s reflections
I had just turned 16 when Linford Christie won 100m gold in 1992 but I remember it like yesterday. I got the chills watching the race again via the documentary, aided by David Coleman’s famous commentary. He was one of my childhood sporting heroes – he came from London (like me), he was a sprinter (I liked to run fast too), he took on the brash, dominant North American athletes with all their privileges and beat them all (an easy narrative to get behind as an impressionable teenager).
Looking back now, I think I followed Linford’s career because of these simple personal connections. The racial politics associated with his career only really became apparent to me later as I began to take more of an interest in issues of ‘race’ and racism in sport during my studies and then through my academic career. For me, one of the most fascinating moments in the documentary was when Christie talked about wrapping himself in the union flag after his victory. He notes the controversy this caused, recalling a UK official telling him at the time that ‘this wasn’t something (Black) athletes should be doing’. But this simple gesture took on huge significance as it became an iconic moment well beyond sport; Christie’s flag wearing was an overt display of Black Britishness, one which helped to re-define national identity in late 20th Century Britain. In that respect, it is what Linford did straight after, rather than during, that race in Barcelona all those years ago that is arguably his greatest legacy.
As someone who has been involved in athletics since the early 1990s and trained in a similar area of West London to Linford, I felt honoured to be an academic consultant on this documentary with Ben. As an athlete in that period Linford was a legend and it was always exciting when he trained at my track or was at the same competitions as me. To me and others in athletics he always came across as a nice guy, who took the time to speak to people and seemed very humble. It surprised me when others and elements of the media seemed to have a different opinion of him. That differing perspective continues to this day through his perceived legacy since retiring from competition. To those outside of athletics, Linford is perceived to be invisible and to have disappeared under a cloud of disgrace after his drugs ban. Those inside of athletics know that Linford is in fact still very visible, and his legacy has lived on through his role as a coach. Learning from the close partnership he had with his own coach Ron Roddan, Linford has gone on to successfully coach several athletes including Olympic medallists Darren Campbell and Katherine Merry and 2024 Olympian Bianca Williams. His coaching career, however, continues to be touched by issues of drugs and racism. His drugs ban means that he is not allowed accreditation as a coach at any Olympics and so his ability to support his athletes in hindered. Sports coaching as a profession continues to lack diversity with black people typically underrepresented and so Linford’s position as a successful black coach means that he continues to be an important role model and continues to challenge racial stereotypes – an important legacy.
The ‘Linford’ documentary has been instrumental in raising awareness of some of the darker sides of sport that not only affected Linford Christie’s competitive career in the 1980s and 90s, but sadly continue to affect athletes today. Let’s hope that this awareness can be a catalyst for change.
The ‘Linford’ documentary is an Open University (OU)/BBC co-production. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer.
Associated resources exploring why athletic performances continue to improve can also be found on the Open University Connect website.
