WHERE THERE’S A WILL, THERE TURNS OUT TO BE A WAY
Peter is granted an audience with Ken Way, a former windsurfing champion who has become part of the world’s biggest sports story.
I’ll watch football, the big games. It is incredibly skilful. But I’m not a football fan. It’s mainly down to the money. It breeds unfairness and, amongst the obscenely wealthy owners, a belief that sporting success can be bought. And sadly it seems that much of the time it can. Which is why for the first time since I was a tweenie, I have found myself actively anticipating the Premiership results and specifically those of Leicester City. You surely know what I’m talking about. A minnow club struggling to avoid relegation last season, at the time of writing is 5 points clear at the top with 4 games left to play. They dared take a lead early in the season. Pundits presumed it was plucky a flash-in-the-pan effort that would surely fade. But it hasn’t. They have been thrashing teams bulging with global super-talent. The sum worth of their players is 23 million, 200 million less than Chelsea. This team is punching so far above its weight that it’s like Billy Average winning the F1 season in his Go Kart. So imagine my surprise and delight when someone shared an online article, which attributed much of their success to their performance therapist, Ken Way. Surely not THE Ken Way, top racer and very naughty boy from windsurfing’s glory years? The very same. Ken and his brother Gordon sold me my first board in 1978. Their new Sea Panther brand, based in the Midlands, caught fire (not literally). Their national and ‘world’ championships were legendary. Ken and Gordon then went on to form Ultra Sport EU, still going strong today, who distribute a host of adrenaline sport brands. This was too good a chance to pass up. We needed to talk. Would Ken, now living in rarefied circles deign to take my call? Of course. He’s a windsurfer and above all a Sea Pantherist and therefore by definition a kind and generous person – besides which I have too many pictures of him behaving badly in the bar at Rutland Water SC for him to decline.
He sounds just the same. So off we chatted …
PH: Back to the beginning, how did you make the transition from windsurfing to therapy?
KW: I got my degree in applied psychology and then trained as a psychotherapist. I asked Gordon if he’d mind if I left the office one day a week to see clients. He said that was fine. Soon after I asked for 2 days out. And then when I asked for 3, he turned round and said, ‘’you’re not fully committed to this are you?!’’ So we went our separate ways very amicably. He was very good to me.
PH: But that’s still a long way from working with a Premiership Football Club!
KW:: So I took a year out to see if I could make it work as a business. I trained in specific areas and found more and more of my clients were sports people and they were the ones that lit my fire. And after that I started working with football clubs – Ipswich Town, Derby County, Southampton, Hull City …
PH: Wait a minute! That must have been quite early days for sports science and performance therapy. So how did it work? Did you just turn up at the door and say, ‘now listen boys, you all need your heads seeing to and I can help?’
KW: (laughs) No, I was a dedicated Ipswich Town Fan because we grew up in Felixstowe (where we windsurfed) and we’d got into the play-offs three times …and failed. Each time we screwed up at the last minute. And then I did approach them and said that something was not quite right; met with the manager George Burley, he took me on..and … we got promotion!
PH: And it was all down to you!
KW: Off course! No no no, I have to be very careful. Someone wrote an article just recently saying: is Leicester’s success down to their performance therapist? It’s embarrassing. After that and an article in the Times, the boys in the dressing room took the piss out of me good and proper. They took it well but I have to stress I am a very VERY small cog in a very big wheel.
A lot of the work Ken does is with individuals and due to confidentially agreements he obviously can’t share those details but he is forthcoming about general advice to the team. So much of it is relevant to windsurfing.
KW: Because it’s a team sport, it’s about making everyone feel positive and happy about it. It’s when an individual feels disenfranchised because they’re not selected and don’t feel part of it, that’s when I act. The truth is when everything is going well I back off so I have done less work at the club this season than last when we were down amongst the debris in the relegation zone.
PH: I suppose it’s when you’re ‘in the zone’ with all sports, you’re actually not thinking of anything.
KW: Absolutely. I don’t want to sound too grandiose but I’ve written 2 books. My first one was ‘Mental Mastery’ and my second, the working title is ‘Unconscious Excellence.’ The idea is that with regards to ‘the zone’ you can only operate to the level you’ve trained your unconscious mind. So it is all about NOT consciously thinking about things but letting your unconscious mind take over.
And there we have to stop. Sadly the back page is just that … a page. We jibber-jabbered for another hour covering some fascinating ground so much of it 100% relevant to windsurfers and what they can do to help themselves in stressful situations. It is such gold that my conversation with Ken will continue in the next issue. In the meantime, come on Leicester. Put all negative thoughts in the bin and go for it!
PH 20th April 2016
PHOTO // Ken, standing and pointing meaningfully, and brother Gordon, sitting, atop their Sea Panthers circa 1979 giving a certain HRH The Prince of Wales a few windy pointers.