Benn Harradine is the five-time Australian discus champion and co-founder of Harradine Performance, through which he helps athletes and folks from all walks of life realize their potential by strengthening their mental and physical game. Benn holds degrees in exercise physiology, physical education, and health and personal development, and currently serves as CEO of Killmonday Games. He has agreed to do regular interviews with McThrows focusing on the mental side of coaching and competing.
McThrows: Benn, the recent World Athletics Ultimate Championships offered athletes a chance to compete for a lot more money than is normally at stake in track and field competitions. That’s exciting, but I wonder, could it also be unnerving? How can going for the big bucks affect an athlete’s motivation and/or mental preparation?
BH: To answer that question, it helps to consider the nature of motivation. The things which motivate us generally fall into two categories. There are what I would call “suboptimal” motivating factors, which are like the fast food of motivation. They fill up your cup but don’t last long. I’d put competing to earn money or Diamond League points—transactional motivators—in that category.
“Optimal” motivating factors are things that are more inline with and inherent to your overall mission, values, and purpose as a person. That type of motivation only comes when an athlete grapples with questions like “Why do I do this?” and “What do I truly value?”
Motivation that aligns with your larger
values and purpose is motivation that
can sustain you through a longer period than suboptimal motivators.
It’s like the difference between eating a nice red steak with a salad, rather than McDonalds. It fortifies you and helps you get through the shit.
Given the nature of the sport of throwing, you might have out of twenty comps fifteen that are dreadful, and if you haven’t taken the time to get clear about how tossing a discus aligns with your purpose in life, if you are just competing because it feels good to throw far and make money, it can be hard to sustain through all the ups and downs. A larger sense of purpose, on the other hand, keeps you at the table like a bad gambler.
McThrows: It sounds like you’ve had personal experience with this.
BH: I have. The biggest turning point in my whole career came in 2009. I had moved to Germany to train with Jurgen Schult, and we made steady progress, so that summer I got selected to represent Australia at the World Championships in Berlin.
I’d had some consistent marks in California that season, and threw 64.03m in Halle and 64.97m in Lugano in June, but Jurgen—with all his experience—was aware that throwing well at a fairly minor competition in Switzerland was not the same as throwing well in a World Championships, especially for a young thrower making a lot of technical changes. So he suggested I give myself some space and look at Berlin as part of the journey.
I ended up throwing 61.74m there, which was not enough to advance out of qualification. The head of Australian performance did not share Jurgen’s outlook, and after the competition he came up to me and said, “This is the biggest failure of the whole team.” That sent me into…I don’t want to say an “existential crisis” but it certainly got me asking “What’s the point?” Was I competing in the discus to get this guy’s approval? Or did it fit into a larger purpose?
That’s when I started competing in the colorful suits. I decided I wanted to do things on my terms, which meant combining entertainment and performance. And family was a big value in my life, so I asked myself, “How can I either create a family around this, or bring my real family into it so I can honor them by what I do?”
After that, throwing the discus became more than “Let’s see how far we can get,” and I discovered that to be very freeing. It made it much easier to manage the usual anxiety of “I have to throw far” in order to make money, be popular or whatever.
McThrows: And how did that influence your attitude towards major competitions?
BH: It helped me realize that the World Championships and Olympic Games are valuable stepping stones that help you along the way in your mission, but those comps aren’t necessarily more valuable than others.
Something like the Ultimate Games strikes me as very transactional.
Money is nice. It can give you the
possibility to travel more or hire a nice physio, but it’s not going to make you
exponentially happier.
And if you are operating with a true sense of purpose, money is probably not high on the list of what motivates you.
McThrows: So would you say the short answer to my original question of how might the prize money at the Ultimate Championships influence an athlete’s motivation and/or mental preparation is, “Hopefully, not much”?
BH: Yes. And especially when you are talking about throwers, because the money situation can drive you crazy if you put too much emphasis on it. There is a huge disparity in our sport in the ways athletes from different events are paid, maybe not in terms of prize money, but behind the scenes with appearance fees. I remember doing a comp in Holland with Robert Harting where he got 13,000 Euros as an appearance fee when a sprinter who had never made an Olympic final got 70,000.
So if your sense of worth relies on
what other people think of you or how much they pay you, life as a thrower is not going to be very fulfilling.
It all comes down to identity, to doing the work on who you are outside of whatever sport you compete in. My dad used to say, “With or without a medal, you’re still just another bare bum in the shower.” Throwing became a lot more fun once I embraced that idea.
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