{"id":31125,"date":"2025-09-04T11:49:56","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T11:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=31125"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:10:37","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:10:37","slug":"you-could-see-the-relief-of-young-female-athletes-when-i-started-talking-about-body-image-self-esteem-and-self-worth","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/you-could-see-the-relief-of-young-female-athletes-when-i-started-talking-about-body-image-self-esteem-and-self-worth\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018You Could See the Relief of Young Female Athletes When I Started Talking About Body Image, Self-Esteem and Self-Worth\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 4 Sep 2025 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

\u2018You Could See the Relief of Young Female Athletes When I Started Talking About Body Image, Self-Esteem and Self-Worth\u2019<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Coaching & Development<\/a>, Human Performance<\/a>, Leadership & Culture<\/a> <\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/you-could-see-the-relief-of-young-female-athletes-when-i-started-talking-about-body-image-self-esteem-and-self-worth\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
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At July\u2019s Women\u2019s Sport Breakfast Rachel Vickery spoke of the problems facing female athletes in \u2018Lycra-based sports\u2019.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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By John Portch<\/h6>\n
Rachel Vickery arrived with podium potential at the 1991 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships and 1994 Commonwealth Games but never claimed a medal.<\/h6>\n

\u201cI could do it no problems at all in low-level competition,\u201d said Vickery in reflection, \u201cbut I fell on the international stage and it cost me a medal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some Leaders Performance Institute members will be familiar with Vickery\u2019s work as a high-performance specialist helping teams in the worlds of sport, business and the military perform under pressure. A smaller number may be aware that she competed for New Zealand between the ages of 13 and 19 and won New Zealand Gymnast of the Year in 1993.<\/p>\n

Upon her retirement, Vickery retrained as a physiotherapist and began to explore what went wrong for her in gymnastics when the going got tough.<\/p>\n

The latter was top of the agenda at July\u2019s Women\u2019s Sport Breakfast in Philadelphia, which served as a prelude to the Leaders Sport Performance Summit.<\/p>\n

These popular morning gatherings were started by Rachel Woodland (who left Leaders in August) and will remain a staple of our performance summits in North America, Europe and Australasia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want this to be a space where, if you don\u2019t know people, you can go into the main room with a bit more confidence from knowing that you\u2019ll see some familiar faces,\u201d said Woodland in setting up her conversation onstage with Vickery.<\/p>\n

An audience of largely female coaches and practitioners were keen to hear Vickery discuss her work supporting female athletes in what she calls the \u201cLycra-based\u201d sports of gymnastics and swimming.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re an athlete who goes through puberty in a Lycra-based sport as a female, it sucks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Vickery recounted a recurring issue from her time working as a physio. Young female athletes would occasionally be sent to her with what was assumed to be exercise-induced asthma. It turned out their breathing difficulties were often anxiety-induced.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could see the look of relief on their faces when I started talking about body image, self-esteem and self-worth,\u201d she continued. \u201cSo I started a seminar series in 2008 for female athletes and their parents called Growing Up in Lycra around body image identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The seminars were picked up by Swimming Queensland. \u201cI project managed the transformation of these seminars into an education DVD resource that was sent to all female athletes, parents and coaches State-wide.\u201d It was later turned into a national resource by Swimming Australia. \u201cWe got some former Olympians involved and that resource went to all of our female athletes, their coaches and their parents. That resource is still used today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chase excellence, not perfection<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vickery, who competed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, spoke of her \u201ccomplete loss of identity\u201d in an era where little thought was given to either an athlete\u2019s self-perception or their post-retirement transition.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything up to that point had been wrapped around this identity of me being a gymnast: what I ate, what I wore, where I went, what I did on my weekends,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Gymnastics, she added, is a \u201cvery negative, perfection-driven sport,\u201d which didn\u2019t help in those competitions when she fell short. \u201cMy sense of self-worth was poor by the time I retired. I had connected to the external validation that came from the media or my school and I\u2019d use that to define whether I was good enough as a human being \u2013 which is crazy when I look back on it, but I did not have the emotional maturity to know how to process that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is critical to help athletes understand that they are not defined by what they do.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerfection tends to shut us down,\u201d says Vickery. \u201cOur nervous system sees perfection as a threat because the next logical step is, \u2018well, if I\u2019m not perfect, then I\u2019m not enough\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The key, as Vickery now tells young athletes, is \u201cto shift from chasing perfection to chasing excellence.\u201d Anyone, she believes, can aspire to excellence, which she describes as a \u201ccurious and creative state that opens up our nervous system and allows us to tap into performance in a really cool way\u201d.<\/p>\n

She says it also \u201callows you that separation to ride through adversity in tough times\u201d and is \u201cfreeing\u201d.<\/p>\n

Failure is necessary<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vickery then raised the spectre of failure. \u201cOne of the things I took from gymnastics into life is that failure is not only an option, it\u2019s actually necessary.\u201d She made her point by discussing the satisfaction she\u2019d feel at executing a difficult routine. \u201cThe only way to get to that point is to fail, fail, fail and fail,\u201d she continued, adding that she would regularly end up in a heap on the gym floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose failure iterations are so important and just being able to stay open to that in life is essential but, as high achievers, we are often defined against it. Yet failure is just one more iteration closer to getting the thing right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vickery applies the same thinking to sport, medicine and the military or indeed any elite field. \u201cAt a deep human level we\u2019ve all got the same fears, self-doubts and insecurities,\u201d she continues.<\/p>\n

The solution is the same for all too. \u201cIt\u2019s in the ability to regulate one\u2019s own arousal state or threat response, and not only in the moment of pressure and execution, but that ability to front-load puts a lot of buffer in the system to absorb the elevated state. You always have a \u2018go time\u2019 but you are then able to self-regulate and come back down again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Embrace the chaos backstage<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anyone can increase their buffer. It involves doing \u201cdeep work to explore our own messiness \u2013 whatever it is that drives our own fears, self-doubts and insecurities \u2013 and whatever we know about ourselves. I call it our \u2018backstage\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

One problem is that when we turn up and see others performing, we see their stage but not their backstage. \u201cWe don\u2019t see their chaos.\u201d That said, we can<\/em> assume is that they\u2019ve put in the hard yards. \u201cConfidence can only come from doing big and difficult things. It means doing the preparation, doing the work, and just waiting for the confidence to show up.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is also a role for receptive coaches \u2013 the kind of which Vickery lacked in her own athletic career.<\/p>\n

She told the audience that five or six years ago she bumped into her first female coach, an austere woman who \u201ctaught me how not<\/em> to treat people in a high-performance environment; how not<\/em> to set them up, how not<\/em> to coach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vickery, now grateful for the lessons her former coach inadvertently provided, told this woman she was inspirational in ways she probably didn\u2019t expect. This time there was no rebuke when Vickery spoke her mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a powerful and pleasant conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Debrief \u2013 a Snapshot of Powerful Discussions Happening Right Now Across the Leaders Performance Institute<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n