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the
manager
WINTER 2011
that he’s in his fifties, Peters still
regularly competes on the track in
‘masters’ competitions. “I’d been a
regular runner until I was 40,” he says.
“I was just on the point of giving it all
up when I was told about the British
Masters Athletic Federation. I went
along to the British Championships
and, despite the fact that I hadn’t
really trained, I won the 400 metres.
This rekindled my love for the sport
and, for the first time in my life really,
I started to train seriously.”
So successful, in fact, was his
new training regime, that Peters
even attracted interest from a very
unlikely source. “When I started to
train seriously, my times improved
dramatically, to the point where I ran
a 200 metres in 21.9 seconds… at the
age of 44. This resulted in me getting
a letter from the Olympic selection
committee, asking if I would like to
attend an Olympic training camp with
other ‘up and coming’ athletes. I had
to write back to say that it was very
flattering, but that I was probably a
little too old for that sort of thing.”
Peters’ success with Britain’s cyclists
has led to invitations to work with
other sports; he’s done some work
with rugby players and even some
Barclays Premier League footballers
(although, to date, none have been
willing to go public about the fact that
they are working with him). Whatever
the sport, though, the process remains
the same. “Sportspeople always come
to me with an agenda,” he says. “We
usually start by me asking ‘what do
you want to do and why can’t you
do it?’. Once those basic facts are
established, I get to work as what the
professionals call a ‘mind mechanic’.
“If I had to summarise it succinctly,
I would say that I teach athletes about
their brain; I teach them what it does
and doesn’t do and I get individuals
to recognise that we’re all working to
an individual blueprint. Once that’s
established, I can get them to start
managing their mind the way they’ve
always managed their body.”
Dr Steve Peters first book,
The Chimp
Paradox
, will be published by Ebury Press
on January 5th 2012