For any top athlete who takes up a radically different career after walking away from their sport at a relatively young age, it can be a case of sink or swim.
It is perhaps fortunate then that Jack Burnell, a performance mindset coach at Premier League club Brentford, is very much at home in deep water.
Thinking outside the box is a hallmark of the west Londoners, who have made an encouraging start to life in the top flight, and allowing a former Olympic swimmer to work one-to-one with some of their players is part of that process.
“I’m very performance driven. Even as a kid I’d race my mum doing the buttons up at the bottom of the bed sheet – that would be a big competition,” Burnell, 28, told BBC Radio Lincolnshire.
“For me, to be able to be in something now that also has that same feeling is mentally rewarding – even more rewarding than swimming where your major events are every four years, whereas with Brentford the Olympic Games is every single weekend.”
Having struggled with a shoulder problem, he retired from open water swimming in April after deciding not to try to qualify for the Team GB squad for the Tokyo Olympics.
Controversy in Rio
It must have been a tough choice following a controversial ending to his dreams of a medal at the previous Games in Rio.
He was disqualified in the closing stages of the 10km race in Brazil – a decision he described at the time as “absolutely outrageous, ridiculous, a joke”.
Burnell claimed he was pulled back by Tunisia’s defending champion Oussama Mellouli and was so angry he had to be escorted away by security.
Having won a silver medal at the European Open Water Championships only a month earlier, he found it hard to come to terms with his Rio disappointment and struggled with depression for a time.
So how did he cope when he took the decision to give up swimming altogether?
“I’d definitely come to the point in my career where I was happy to leave the sport,” he said. “It was a big decision for me, but with the support of my family and friends around me, it was made at the right time.”
‘Football is a passion’
Burnell was first brought to Brentford’s attention three years ago by performance psychologist Tom Bates, who asked him to give a talk to the players.
“I wanted to get into football because that’s where my passion lies within sport,” Burnell said. “It went so well that some of the players started asking to work one-on-one and I thought ‘there’s obviously something in this’ and it all built up from there really.
“For me it was just a chance to go in there, have a good day, speak to some of the players, maybe make a few mates and that’s about it, but my story around what happened at the [Rio] Games, I think really connected with them because life isn’t linear, it doesn’t go in one direction and smoothly.”
At the time, Brentford were in the Championship and after the heartbreak of losing to Fulham in the 2020 play-off final, they sealed a place in the Premier League in May with victory over Swansea City at Wembley.
‘I’ll play Fifa with them, they’re my mates’
Scunthorpe-born Burnell’s approach is all about building a bond with players.
“I take it right back to basics,” he said. “I had a lot of psychologists in my time, and I really struggled with the ones that would just ask about my feelings and give me no real tools to implement within my life that would impact on my performance.
“I’m a very practical person, so everything I do with the players links tangibly to a physical cue, so they almost feel like they are carrying something with them – it’s not just me saying ‘oh guys, you need to think like this’, it’s got a real resonance for them.
“You’re working really, really closely, and you build a close relationship with them so those cues that we put in place, they have a meaning for them. They’re not just one cue fits all, it’s very individual and very bespoke.”
He continued: “I’ll go for dinner with them, I’ll play Fifa with them, they’re my mates. We get that close because we talk about stuff that’s really, really important to them in their life.
“[But] I make it quite clear, I’m not a clinical psychologist, I don’t have the title of psychologist, I’m a performance mindset coach. My only goal is to make them perform better.
“Every week they go out on the pitch they can use the tools that I give them, and that we come up with together, and hopefully that translates into results.”
Driven to succeed?
While continuing to work with Brentford, Burnell – whose partner is singer Ella Henderson – is contemplating the possibility of using his talent in another sporting arena, Formula 1.
“One sport I really do like the idea of is F1, that’s very high-pressured. It’s individual so it’s a little bit away from football, but obviously I came from an individual [sporting] background,” he said.
“It’s a lonely place when you’re in an individual sport which is what I try to get across to the [Brentford] players as well, they’ve got a massive benefit in being part of a team.
“It’s very difficult to get into F1 because there are few drivers out there but for me, that would be a good goal. I am a big fan and I think there could be a lot of learning in that space as well.”
Jack Burnell was speaking to BBC Radio Lincolnshire Sport’s Rob Makepeace.
