The Razors Edge: Toggling Between Joy & Rage
- Jack Fleming
- Apr 11
- 3 min read
In Full Sweat, Hawthorn Football Club Head Coach Sam Mitchell emphasises the need to balance rage and joy in elite performance. He urges his team to find the equilibrium between the drive to get better and the fun you had as a child, that will help maximise where the team wants to go.
In coaching or athletes, often when it all goes south it has gone too far on either end of the joy/rage spectrum. The team that has too much rage, they are so obsessed with winning that they become fragile - that anything else is a failure. Then there is the joy without the rage, the 'Kumbaya' where everybody is too comfortable and not being pushed.
Either side is right on the razors edge of catastrophe. Not enough joy has caused certain athletes to retire, burn out etc.
When your career or team is in the Sweet Spot of the Rage Joy Spectrum, they can easily turn the dial up and down when required without too much resistance.
You might look at that bottom image and that is what I want to see in my team or myself. That is true as long as you can turn on the appropriate amount of rage when needed.
The master coach knows exactly what button to press with their team or the individuals, when to help turn up the rage or the joy to get a response.
Here are some examples of turning up the JOY:
Turning up the RAGE and using it:
"It just became something so violently personal."
"Who on this fucking earth, would still be going right now?"
"At that time, it got me to the finish line of that fucking race." - David Goggins
The rage was alive, got him through those last 19 miles in the most immense pain you can imagine.
Here is an example of Rick Pitino trying to turn on the rage in his team at half time.
You can agree or disagree with the term rage, and what that means to you. Whether that means anything during competition, but there is a dark place sometimes we need to go to find another level.
The rage comes at great physical and emotional cost, so it is not only your ability to turn it on but also turn it off. The elite powerlifter can turn on their rage to 100% and immediately turn it off once their set is over, to reload for the next set in 5-10 minutes time.
Those who cannot turn off their rage cannot recover, relax or replenish.
The Alter Ego Effect
Often the great performers have used an alter ego to help channel their rage, and direct it into the arena. Their performing self is borrowing the best things about that person. When Kobe went to Todd Herman about his alter ego, he was going through trauma in his life. In 2003 his entire life was falling apart, the assault trial.
In his mental movie theatre, they built the Black Mamba that lived in a cage in his head. As he is going into his routine, he is getting into the cage with it and closes the door - harnessing the superpowers of the Mamba.
Kobe loved animals and National Geographic shows, and the Black Mamba is the second deadliest snake in the world. Most importantly, it has a 99% accuracy rate in combat. That was the kind of killer precision Kobe wanted to play with, under the most pressure when it counted.
The Black Mamba
Bo Jackson - Jason (Friday the 13th)
Bo Jackson said that Jason only lived on the field. When he walked out of the locker room, Jason would enter his body would take over and turn him into a relentless killer.
The examples live on in many of the great performers. Their alter ego provided them with the capacity to turn up the dial on their rage, but also switch it off when it wasn't needed.
"There’s the undulation, most people in high-stress, decision-making industries are always operating at this kind of simmering six, or four, as opposed to the undulation between just deep relaxation and being at a 10. Being at a 10 is millions of times better than being at a 6. It’s just in a different universe. Same as being all-in on a discipline is millions of times more intense than being 98 percent or 99 percent." - Josh Waitzkin, World Champion in Multiple Domains
You either create your world, or your world creates you.
Forge your fire, or be consumed by the flames.
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