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Raise Your Game: What motivated you to write a book on mental toughness?

Graham Jones: Adrian's been there and done it. I've spent a long time supporting people like Adrian, helping them to develop mental toughness in the sporting and business worlds. We wanted to allow other people to learn this as a set of life skills. Life skills that Adrian's extremely good at having been an Olympic swimmer.

Adrian Moorhouse: We've both worked for 25 years in this area, myself as a sportsman and Graham as a sports psychologist. For the last 12 or 13 years we've been running a business using sports psychology principles to help businesses develop their staff.

Through that we started to see that these were great tools that most people could use. We set out to bring all these together in a book, with businesses as our primary target audience. They apply to everyone from school kids to retired people.

RYG: What's the key to mental toughness?

GJ: It's all about how you deal with pressure. How you think about it. In sport and business the top performers are decided by how they handle pressure. It's a choice between thriving on it or folding under it.

AM: It's also about self-awareness. A good starting point for developing a level of mental toughness is an awareness of your own strengths and weaknesses. If you're shaky on things like goal setting and motivation, you need to realise that and plan how you intend to improve.

I think it's important to want to be better and most people want to improve themselves. Toughness comes down to having an awareness of your strengths and weaknesses coupled with that desire to be better. If you don't want to improve, or you've got a negative outlook, then you immediately set limits on yourself.

RYG: In sport a level of mental toughness is obviously essential - is it important in everyday life?

GJ: It's very important. Things like motivation, pressure, belief and focus can be applied anywhere - in the sports world, in business, working in a hospital - the principles are the same: performing under pressure.

AM: It's absolutely massive. Self-belief is everything in sport, but even in children and older people it's essential. If you're 60-years-old and you're made redundant, you've basically been told that you're worthless, so it's inevitable that your confidence would take a hit.

If you're doing exams and they're not going well then self-belief is a huge factor in helping you to turn things around. Sport is all about believing you can win, believing you're better than your competition. Belief in your talents and abilities is everything, so understanding self-belief is relevant to all walks of life. In the book we look at various techniques and exercises to help people learn how to build their self-belief.

RYG: Can you give an example?

AM: I'd start off by looking back at the last five years and writing down 10 or 12 things that you're proud of. Things you think you did well. It can be quite hard sometimes but it's not just about winning things and beating competitors. It may have been helping out a mate that was in need. That's a good platform on which you can start to build your self-belief.

RYG: Looking back at your swimming career Adrian, were there any exercises you used to handle the pressure of a big race?

AM: There were two specific ones - mental and physical techniques. In terms of the mental then it's all about minimising the nerves. If you panic in your head then the physical symptoms are stronger. You get tense and then you get sweaty palms, that kind of thing. You have to manage those physical symptoms. I found that if I could control my mental state then the physical symptoms were that much easier to manage.

I'd tell myself 'right, it's just another race, I've only got to beat seven people not the whole world, I've done this thousands of times so just enjoy it'. By telling yourself that you minimise the stress of the situation and lessen the physical symptoms.

If I did get physical symptoms of stress and anxiety then I'd do some simple breathing exercises that used to help. I'd take longer, deeper breaths. Just basic meditation techniques and stretching for muscular relaxation. The Great Britain Olympic team actually gave us classes in the run up to the games. I found it's best to manage the cause, which is in your own head.

Focus on smaller goals and don't get overwhelmed by the enormity of what it is that you're trying to do. Think about the things you can control. In the latter part of my career, just before a big race, all I'd have in my mind would be to get a good dive. I'd break the race up into a number of smaller goals.

When Tiger Woods is on the final fairway, en route to winning the Masters, he says his goal isn't to win the Masters, it's just to hit the ball. If you divide the process into smaller goals you're less likely to get overwhelmed.

RYG: Was there a point in your swimming career when the pressure got to you?

AM: There definitely was. It was at my first Olympics in 1984. I had just turned 20-years-old and I was the favourite to win the race. I got it all wrong when it came to the final.

I remember being in the warm-up room beforehand saying to myself 'you've got to win, you've got to beat everyone, there are millions watching, it's the biggest thing in the world and it's got to be the best race ever'. I heaped a huge amount of pressure on myself and just got overwhelmed by head stuff. I couldn't manage the symptoms and I came nowhere in the race.

That's how I know that these techniques are learnable. Four years later I was the World record holder and an Olympic gold medallist. I learnt how to manage the mental stress, which is most important, along with the physical symptoms.

RYG: What advice would you give to someone that's about to take an important exam in school?

GJ: Planning I'd say. Know that you're going to be under pressure and don't be surprised by it. Try to keep a sense of perspective also. Any exam is only as important as you choose to make it in that moment.

AM: I'd tell them to think of three things they're good at or have had success with. These can include any aspect of life. I'd tell them to approach the exam a bit at a time. Don't get overwhelmed thinking about the whole paper, or all the exams. Divide the exam into questions or even parts of questions.

If you think you've messed up a question, don't let your head go down, move on. We see it all the time in sports like tennis. A player gets beaten in one set 6-2, then they reset and come back in the next set to win the game. Just remind yourself that there are other questions you'll do well at, other papers.

RYG: Can pressure be positive?

GJ: Undoubtedly. Performers use pressure to maximise their performance. It's only when pressure turns to stress that it becomes very negative. Stress is a mental state where the pressure has overwhelmed you.

AM: Everything has some form of pressure attached to it. Whether it is meeting a deadline or even making a phone call, there's always some form of pressure at work. Gravity is pressure, it's just that our bodies learn to deal with it. Pressure is turned into stress in our heads. I think people who are successful are those who can handle pressure and thrive on it. I always swam faster in a race because I learnt how to use the pressure to enhance my performance.