Queensland State Lifesaving Titles

Last week, I was fortunate enough to be interviewed by Terra et Mare Fitness's Ben Rake. Over the last few weeks he has been discussing 3 pillars post, the third pillar that I was interviewed for was emotion. Everyone has been through emotional times may it be in there personal life or in their working career. When you are feeling sad most of the times you will feel unmotivated, whereas when you are happy you believe you can accomplish anything.

1- Every athlete has negative experiences and set backs, what are some of the ones you have had?

I’ve had three major setbacks in my career so far, the first in 2011 I injured my knee 3 months before the Australian Surf Life Saving Titles. For myself I was devastated when I couldn’t paddle in the board’s events that year, as my team and I were on track to be in the top 6 at the ‘Aussies’. But I didn’t let that stop me from racing; I made a quick change over to the ski events and now I race full time in both ski and kayak’s.

The second setback was in 2013, I had a complete shoulder reconstruction after I injured it in training a few years earlier, after having a challenging 6 months off of all types of exercise, I made a comeback, training for the 2014 Molokai Challenge and World Surf ski Championships.

Finally In December last year I suffer a spout of feeling flat and fatigued, both the doctors and myself couldn’t understand why I was feeling like that, it forced me to have 6 week off. After coming back, with advice from my coach I decided to go gluten free and reduce the amount of dairy, since that day I have felt a lot better.

2- When you have a negative experience (bad training session, poor race performance) how do you best deal with it?

After having a bad training session or a poor race performance, I’ll usually sit down in a quiet place and just ask myself what I can do to turn that performance around. I’ll make a list that has a few simple questions such as:

Did I have a good night sleep the night before?

Am I eating well?

Am I feeling fatigued?

Am I still enjoying what I am doing?

After doing that I’ll hang out with my Parent, Girlfriend or my Mates to try and take my mind off what happened and then regather my focus for my next session or race.

3- When you are leading into main competitions it is often easy to focus on what others that you are racing are doing, how do you stay focused on what you need to do?

I’ll continually think about what I am going to be doing during that event. For example when I’m in the final few weeks prior to a national sprint regatta, I will write down what time and day my races are on and also my race plan for each distance. Also in the weeks leading up to the regatta I will try and execute/ make changes to the plans to make sure I get the best result I can. Also by staying off your fellow competitors social media sites it will help you stay focused on yourself and not them.

Below I have attached the Terra et Mare Fitness Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/Terraetmarefitness?fref=ts 

Weekly Wrap up

On the weekend I raced at the Queensland State Surf Lifesaving Titles that were held at Maroochydore beach. On the Friday I competed in the team events of Open Male Double ski and Open Mixed double ski. In the open male double ski my partner and I missed out on qualifying for the final by 3 places in what was a fast race. In the open mixed double ski I have more luck where my partner and I qualified for the final and we placed 9th, it was a good experience as in both races it as the first time that my partners and I had been in a double ski. On the Saturday I raced in the ski relay (3 person relay event) where we made the semi final and missed out by a couple of spots in qualifying for the final. In my individual single ski race I made it though to the quarter final where I got to line up next to a few of the more experienced paddlers being Martin Kenny, Ken Wallace and Brett Monaghan. Unfortunately after having a great start, I got hit by a wave in the lap and lost valuable space between the leading competitors and myself. Finishing 9th I missed out on the semi final by 1 position. On Sunday I watched the competition from the beach, the Open Men's single ski final was a nail bitter all the way to the end with Cory Hill (Northcliffe) holding off a fast finishing group consisting of 2nd Murray Stewart (Northcliffe), 3rd Hayden White (Mooloolaba), 4th Nick Crilly (North Burleigh), 5th Martin Kenny (Alex Headland) and 6th Joel Simpson (North Burleigh). With the surf season now being over for me, I will now be focusing solely on Molokai, which is 60 days from today. 

Enjoy your week on and off the water.

Ryan Paroz