Resilience is made not born, as Lewis Moody explains in episode 58 of the Performance People podcast
It’s a recurring theme on the Performance People podcast. Life will put obstacles in your way, many of them sizeable. It’s how you choose to negotiate them that defines what comes next.
On the outside looking in, successful athletes may appear to live an empowered and entitled life of smooth sailing but - newsflash - it turns out that they are just as likely to face hurdles as anyone else. Perhaps more so, in fact.
Because when you apply a sporting mindset to the hurdles life throws at us, they aren’t just formative experiences, they can be transformative.
England rugby stalwart Lewis Moody is well known for his all-action approach as a fearless flanker. You don’t get the nickname ‘Mad Dog’ for nothing. The blonde locks, the physique, the in-your-face style - he personifies the idea of a player on an ordained path to sporting success.
“People talk about resilience as if it’s something you’re born with,” he says. “I don’t think I was any more resilient than anyone else, but my experiences meant I had to overcome a lot of things that I wouldn’t have expected to as an 18 year old who thinks he’s invincible.”
The realities of professional sport often come as a jolt to any young player - injury, form and finding yourself out of the team - but not long after starting at Leicester Tigers, Moody also found himself struggling privately with undiagnosed ulcerative colitis.
“I had to put an extra set of clothes in the car in case I had an accident,” he remembers. During his playing days, an illness affecting your toilet habits was very much taboo. “It wouldn’t have gone down particularly well in training.”
It was an enormous shock when he was diagnosed. Doctors told him that operations and medication were the only way forward. And that this was now it for the rest of his life.
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Lewis Moody
The Obstacle Is the Way
Thinking it might count against him on the pitch, in a sport known for its power and physicality, he kept the news private.Of course, the stress of not being out in the open about such things can exacerbate symptoms further. For the next year, he lost weight, strength, muscle mass and was more prone to injury.
“It sounds silly now because we understand the merits of sharing your vulnerabilities, but at the time I was worried it was a sign of weakness,” he says.
When he finally told a coach at Leicester, it turned out he was going through something similar.
“It relieved a huge burden,” he explains. “The weight was off my shoulders, someone else was struggling with it, and he (the coach) wasn’t going to not pick me because of it.”
It gave Moody the impetus to take steps to try to manage it through diet and lifestyle. “I’ve almost got to the point that I’m symptom-free,” he says, over twenty years later.
In his 16 year career Moody had 14 operations, and once lost 30% of his vision in a trademark charge-down. On the flip-side, he also played in two world cup finals, coming off the bench in 2003 to win the line-out that set up Jonny Wilkinson’s winning drop-goal. He also captained England in a third world cup in 2011.
Moody now harnesses the highs and lows of his sporting career in his approach as a personal coach, helping people overcome their own obstacles and setbacks.
“Because I loved what I did so much, I never saw what was put in front of me as a barrier to my progress,” he declares. “I just kept getting the chance to prove that I could overcome difficult things.”
Watch the full episode here.
