Tennis star Jack Draper vomits on court during US Open semi-final | BBC News

now let's uh turn our attention to a bit of uh sports news primarily tennis because Britain's Jack Draper has lost and it was in dramatic fashion in his US Open semifinal the 22-year-old was sick he was Ill on court several times in his defeat to the world number one yanex sinner in the biggest match of his career Draper went down in straight set 75 76 62 in New York and during the second set the 2 fifth seed vomited three times and after the match he said that I'm quite an anxious human being and I do feel a little bit sick when it gets tough well c will go on to play the American Taylor Fritz in Sunday's tomorrow's final let's discuss the psychology of what is taking place on that tennis court and the sports psychologist and Senior lecturer at Glasgow cidonia University Paul McCarthy uh joins me now he's also helped a number of professional athletes manage performance anxiety hello welcome to the program uh first off when you saw I don't know if you saw it live or you saw it consequently in in reports when you saw him vomiting what came to mind straight away yeah well I guess the experience of exercise well what's called exercise Associated gastrointestinal distress is you know something that we do see from time to time but usually with extreme physical exhaustion um see it on the tennis court as perhaps a little unusual but understandable under the circumstances in the heat the duration of the game and the consequences for Jack himself um I mean the degree of anxiety that someone would have to reach for that physical reaction just talk talk us through what's going on in the body yeah so from a cognitive perspective what we are thinking about there's a lot of uncertainty people are making anticipation about what will happen there is uncertainty about the duration of the event and its outcome so that store of thoughts and feelings is creating a lot of perhaps undue stress at that time but within the body as well there will be muscular tension there'll be physical exhaustion from the time and heat as well and a combination of factors will contribute to to those outcomes as we had seen and perhaps where psychologists do most of their work is trying to understand the things that happened beforehand the antecedents and the consequences and excessive worry is typical because when events are important to us and the events are at the same time uncertain we will consider what the possibilities might be we will be worried but trying our best to achieve the outcomes we're looking for a sports Elite Sports people people have so many obstacles tennis players I mean you're playing on your own it's this is not a team sport that is an obstacle in itself would you see this level of anxiety um manifesting within different sports disciplines yes and and really does depend on the demands and normally we would explain it in terms of the demands that are placed on upon an athlete and the resources they have to cope with those demands and the demands change depend be on the different sports it might be in terms of duration for a triathlon or it might be in terms of uh duration in in a tennis game with the heat the importance of the game semi-finals finals Etc so the context in terms of the environment is always a contributing factor and I guess from an individual standpoint we're trying to understand what interpretations and appraisals the athletes are making about the situations in which they find themselves and the degree to which they see those events as a challenge something within their control something they have uh resources to deal with compared with a threat where they feel they perhaps do not have the same resources to cope with the demands this is what we try to make uh our understanding with athletes about when you talk about uh understanding within within this discipline within within your field I mean the key to this is how do do athlet athletes cope because it literally is mind over matter the athlete may be perfectly capable but once those negative thoughts that spiral begins how should they stop and just bring it under control and calm things down what what are you learning yeah and a lot of the work we will do will be working on on regulation so it will be addressing the thoughts that they have how functional or dysfunctional those thoughts might be we are trying to of course bring more thoughtful our more helpful thoughts to mind at the same time we're also trying to regulate our body so that we can deal with muscular tension or deal with exhaustion um and address decision making along the way and those are skills that are learnable they're teachable and athletes can learn them as they're progressing through their career so regardless of age and Stage they can make the most of their circumstances by investing a little bit more in the psychological demands of their sport so that they have the resources to cope with the and what we see typically is that athletes who learn these skills exercise those skills put them into into their practice and then into competition are on who are most successful in the end um talking about who actually makes it I I read a report and I think it was in the international Journal of sport and and exercise psychology and basically they made the point that the developmental period for tennis players in particular and athletes at that Elite level coin inides with the age it it overlaps with a peak onet of mental health disorders so is is the race really on to try and and control this level of anxiety and get those players over that so they know how to cope with it because I think it's accepted within psychology that mental health disorders normally tend to show by the age of 24 yeah so so we we do see that those examples of you know what is not acknowledged or maybe assessed by age of 14 and the detrimental effects even four years on and in sport particularly in high level sport children and young athletes are exposed to demands maybe far beyond what the typical child or teenagers exposed to and under those circumstances it seems reasonable that if they wish to participate that they're giving the resources to do so and those resources means that not just that it's psychological support it may be social support as well but it allows them to make sense of their themselves their environment and the context in which they find themselves and that's typical work of a sports psychologist is to to deliver that educational input at the beginning and also therapeutic support as they're progressing through their teenage years into young adulthood in professional sport okay it's been fascinating Paul McCarthy thank you very much indeed thank you thank you