The temporary withdrawals of Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka and Ricky Rubio to take care of their mental health have been an impetus to talk openly about what happens in the minds of elite athletes. Normalized, more or less depending on the discipline, sports psychologist Mar Rovira insists on pedagogy to fully understand what mental health is. “It is important to differentiate between a person with symptoms of mental health problems and a disorder.”
Mar Rovira, psychologist at RCD Espanyol and athletes such as Ricky Rubio and Álex Abrines, highlights the importance of guiding these athletes to not exceed their limits and avoid falling into pits from which it is more difficult to recover.
Mar Rovira: “It is not correct to say that one in three athletes suffers from anxiety”
There is more and more talk about mental health in sport, but it seems that there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of education. What do you think is still missing in this area?
Mental health is the ability that human beings have to interact with our environment in the most adaptive way possible. Having an adaptive interaction means that if someone dies, I will be very sad, but not sad for two years, because then we would surely be developing a depressive disorder. More or less stable mental health means feeling all the emotions that affect you in the moments that affect you with the intensities that affect you. It doesn’t mean not suffering, it means surfing life.
It is important to differentiate the symptoms of mental health problems from a disorder. Mental health is a continuum that goes from the absence of symptoms to the appearance of disorders. When it is said that one in three elite athletes suffers from anxiety, it is not correct. Some of these symptoms may fall within the umbrella of anxiety disorders, but it does not mean that they have a disorder.
Ricky Rubio is one of the athletes you work with. He stopped in 2023 and has spoken about his reconstruction process. How important is your speech?
At Ricky Rubio’s presentation as a FC Barcelona player, he taught us about this, he did it incredibly, I told him I was very proud of him. He never had a label like the ones that have been put on him in the press, where they have talked about anxiety or depression. He has had symptoms, several, that are typical of depression or anxiety disorders, but he has not had a disorder. Those symptoms caused his body to become deregulated and he had to stop. He decided to do it and it is one of the bravest things he has done.
How important is it for elite athletes to be able to decide their times?
With Ricky, for example, we have worked on understanding that, as an elite athlete, you are not obliged to decide things when asked, with the idea that you always have to give your best. We are not going to do that anymore. It was a job of reflection, of taking care of yourself, and of deciding for yourself what you want and when you want it. This causes anxiety.
No matter how great they are, they are people first. If you need time, you have every right to do so, apart from the fact that it is a necessity. You have to take care of yourself and act according to what you, the person, need. Ricky is doing very well.
“Ricky Rubio decided to stop and it is one of the bravest things he has done”
Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka stopped for mental health reasons. Other athletes rebuild themselves by competing. How is it decided?
Normally, it is they who decide how they want to do it. When an athlete rebuilds while competing, I think, “My God, how they must be suffering.” Those who usually stop do so because their body has become deregulated and many of them are feeling or suffering from symptoms of mental health problems.
There is always talk about the lack of health in high-performance sport itself. Now that we are talking about the mind, are we facing the same idea?
High performance sport is not health, we cross lines that everyone accepts. I always ask if we agree to do something because we know it has risks. We have to be very attentive to help them not cross that line both physically and mentally. On a mental level, there are a number of sources of stress that are specific to the competition or external, which can unbalance your body.
We have to be vigilant in order to minimize the source of stress that we can, and provide them with resources and techniques so that they are more adaptive in their daily lives, knowing that their body is going to receive a series of stressors. It is science, you cannot be at an optimal level again if you come from a level of stress. We have to explain to them that self-demand has to have room for flexibility.
«Athletes have to have excellent emotional regulation in competition»
One of Ricky Rubio’s mottos is ‘Never too high, never too low’. How present should emotions be in competition?
At the time of competition they have to do an exercise, if they can, in quite excellent emotional regulation. Those emotions will go away, but what I ask of you at that moment is to regulate them. If they are at 9, they have to get down to 7.5 as soon as possible and stay there. If they are in energy four because something has happened and they are sad, I ask them to go up to a 5 or a 6 and I will understand what they are going through, but they have to raise it. This is the idea of ’Never too high, never too low’, but it always has to occur at the time of competition or training. The rest of the day, they are people.
There are nuances. There are athletes whose emotions help them to perform. Those who don’t, we regulate. It can also happen that you need to get out of it during the competition, for example if you are losing and need two goals in five minutes. In that case, the correct intervention is total loss of control, maximum madness, we let ourselves go until the end. That control is only during the hours of competition. The rest of the day you are a normal person.
Mar Rovira: “Emotional control must occur in competition if they need it, outside they are just people”
In your talks you talk more about the need for prevention than rescue. What do you find?
When they come in rescue mode they come with a lot of work to do. The concept of prevention is to avoid avoidable pits. There are holes that are not avoidable, but if you have the tools to surf them in the best possible way, the fall will not be as deep. I would like them to see us as a guide, not as someone who turns off light bulbs.
What I have found most often is that what I am most asked for starts with the personal and then goes to performance. Depending on the discipline, you have to work with the brutal environment, it is not something that we can separate. There are many athletes who will never win anything. If you focus on that, you will be miserable all your life, so the focus is totally different: you look for objectives that have to do with the way you do sport, how you compete, what values you do, how you are feeling about it. Always looking for maximum performance but in an integrated way.
Working as a psychologist for RCD Espanyol, which is promoted to First Division
This year you have participated in the promotion of RCD Espanyol to the first division. What is it like working with a group to achieve this success?
We work on reading what is happening from the most realistic point of view possible. The footballer has to be exquisite and what has happened has to be told well. In the promotion playoff we went to Oviedo to play the first leg and we lost 1-0, but we left the field knowing that we were going to win at home. This is a job that begins in the locker room tunnel. Ideas like “they have awakened the beast”, “we would have signed him at the beginning of the season”, “we only have to win one game”, “we don’t have to overcome anything”… These are messages that you send and that become part of the team .
How much does the training of psychologists change with the move to another category?
Every year you start is a new year. I’ll tell you in advance that it’s going to change. From Second to First it’s going to be a huge change that we’ll work on as we see it. We’ll analyze and see what the most correct approach is to always perform at your best. Is it a lot? A lot. Is it a little but it’s your 100%? Well, fantasy if you achieve it, and enjoy it. From that emotion you go with everything, brave, determined.
Federer gave a talk to university students in which he told them that he had lost most of the points. Is this ability to concentrate on the moment of the point and give it the importance it deserves only the best have?
It has a lot to do with the ability that is complicated nowadays by the number of attention stealers we have, that moment of concentrating on what you are doing at the moment and not something else. This seems very easy but it is one of the keys to high performance. The other is how you tell yourself the result and how you evaluate yourself.