“Remember to Smile…”

I’m a week out from competing. It’s one of my final session before I start concentrating on recovery. I’m tense, but I feel strong and sharp. I’m rolling well, and I feel confident that I’ve done the work.

My coach takes me aside, “Oh Peter, let’s have a chat”.

For now, I’ll breeze over the fact that he’s one of a very select few who I don’t feel strange about using my full first name. That’s another day’s yarn.

I’m expecting him to give me some technical advice about the previous day’s rolling that I should take into today’s session. I really hang out for these moments where I get nuggets of gold from him about the fine-tuning I need to do. More often than anything else, the advice he gives is “keep showing up”, which used to bother me. But the longer I train, the more correct that advice turns out to be. Today however is the final push before an invitational, so I’m amping myself up to really blow out the lines with my team-mates.

“Peter, today I don’t want to look at you at any point in time and see you not smiling”.

“Oh…”

I start laughing.

“I’m serious… you seem really tense man. But you’ve worked really hard. We’ve pushed you, and now there’s nothing I want you to try and change in your game. I want you to have fun, and relax. I want you to remember to smile”.

He was right.

Turns out my face had been scrunched up like a pug; like the rolled up sock of the dog-world. I was tense. And he saw something more important than small technical changes; that if I didn’t relax, I would be liable to get in my own way.

I didn’t win that tournament, but sweet mother of that is açai and anime, I had fun.

This all took place almost a year ago. I love how vividly I can recall the conversation; how much it has stuck with me over time and how much it helped and how much it continues to help.

Reminding myself to smile has turned out to be so important. When training, tech study, content creation and competition get hard, the joy I manage to squeeze out of the process is what keeps me coming back, not medals and being intense and “tuff”.

So, when a team-mate came to me last week, and asked what advice I would give him going into a tournament coming up this month, I didn’t wax lyrical about tech. I didn’t talk about nutrition or recovery. I didn’t talk about game planning, mental rehearsal and visualising himself on the podium.

I told him to remember to smile.