MY ROUTE TO WELLTH

Team GB Olympic sprinter Dina Asher-smith

TRAIN

Right now, I’m in winter training – I’d say 99% of athletes (including me) don’t like it. It’s about putting in the groundwork to see fast performance increases, so I train six days a week at a high volume. Yesterday, for example, I did 16 100m runs, then 500 total reps of conditioning exercises, such as crunches and press-ups. I’ll lift kettlebells, but I don’t do many Olympic lifts or put much weight on my back. I’m hypermobile, so if I compress myself, I put my flexibility at risk.

AMPLIFY

As a sprinter, so much of my performance is down to my brain’s ability to coordinate itself, so I train with electromagnetic stimulation [where an electric current is used to target specific muscles and increase muscle contraction]. When someone puts a current through you, you switch on.

That’s exactly the same feeling I want to have when the gun goes. My coach has me doing other brain-teasing exercises, too. I might moan whenever he has me standing on one leg, but I know this work will make me faster in the long run.

CHILL

I know that the happier and more relaxed I am, the better I’ll perform. I have aromatherapy massages and unwind by reading – I loved This Is Going To Hurt

by doctor-turnedcomedian Adam Kay. Pruning my Instagram feed has helped, too. Why should I compare myself to something that’s fake? It’s made more space for posts from my friends.

FUEL

I find my athlete’s diet boring – the boundaries are essentially grilled protein, rice, steamed vegetables and water. The most exciting things I eat when training are passion fruit and kiwis. But as soon as I’m allowed, I’ll be ordering pumpkin ravioli with sage butter, followed by a warm chocolate brownie with ice cream.

SHARE

Running a relay is an education in the importance of being honest with your teammates. You need to tell them exactly where you’re at – both physically and mentally. I’ll need to tell them if I’m not feeling 100%.

If I didn’t, the person before me could charge at me at full speed, which might make me drop the baton.

IMPROVISE

Breaking my foot while doing plyometrics in February 2017 left me with two screws in my navicular bone. I was told it would be two years before I could sprint properly again. But the World Athletics Championships in London were that summer and I refused to miss them. Months spent on an underwater treadmill paid off when, 10 days before the race, my coach announced to me, ‘You’re back!’

BELIEVE

I used to roll my eyes at phrases like ‘trust the process’, but that’s exactly what getting injured taught me.

I had to have faith that this alien type of training would translate when I put my spikes on. I felt so unprepared, but it was fine. [Understatement, she took silver in the relay.] It’s made me more relaxed about my running, so now I can channel that energy I wasted worrying into performing even better.

CHANGE

The other day, an eight-year-old girl asked me, ‘How do I lose weight?’ It made me really sad. If I could use my influence to achieve anything, it would be to give young women more confidence. It frustrates me that society reduces women’s bodies to their aesthetics. In sport, we’re taught to think about our bodies in terms of what they can do. We need to change the conversation for all women.