In this episode of Martial Attitude Voice, I sit down with Darren Harris—dual Paralympian in football and judo, motivational speaker, and advocate for visually impaired athletes. He is England’s highest capped and most decorated blind footballer, with 157 appearances and ten World and European medals. We dive deep into the psychology of adaptation, exploring how blind footballers navigate ever-changing environments, the role of touch in building confidence, and the hidden power of movement in overcoming trauma. Darren shares his personal journey from being a skeptic of sport psychology to becoming a scholar of the mind, revealing what he wishes he had known earlier in his career. He also challenges common misconceptions about blindness, explaining why simply closing your eyes doesn’t replicate his experience. “If you close your eyes, this is not my experience of being blind,” he says, highlighting how sight loss is about far more than the absence of vision—it’s a unique way of perceiving and interacting with the world. If you're curious about the mental game behind elite performance and the resilience of Paralympic athletes, this is an episode you won’t want to miss!
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Mathias Alberton (00:03)
Hello everyone, this is Mathias Alberton, this is the creator of Martial Attitude and this is Martial Attitude Voice. As you know, I am busy investigating, let's say, the challenges on a daily basis that visually impaired and blind people might incur into. And as a trainee sports psychologist, I have done some research in my masters in touch confidence and participation in sport activity. So it is one field of research that I am trying to explore a bit more through the month, which will come in the future. But as well, you know that I connected this with my idea of creating a training program for visually impaired and blind people in order to have more confidence when moving around in social settings. So in this line of research I reached out to different organizations in order to get a series of podcasts not only with athletes in different disciplines as you know but also with athletes who are visually impaired, who have suffered of visual impairment in the past or have achieved certain results in their sport lives. Today I am very very pleased, I'm very super happy, because I did have the possibility to have as a guest Darren Harris, is a class of 1973 and is not once but a dual Paralympian both in judo and in football in UK. He is actually the most decorated blind footballers in the with something like close to 160 appearances in world and European medals. is an incredible guy. I'm really keen about speaking with him. So Darren, thank you very much for being on the show. How do you do today?
Darren (02:18)
Hi, Mathias. I'm wonderful. Thank you. And thanks for inviting me on to your wonderful podcast.
Mathias Alberton (02:23)
look, the honor is mine, honestly. Not only because of your time, you... I mean, I know that you are very busy. You might be retired now, but you are still writing books, you are keynote speaker, and so forth. It's not the right...
Darren (02:43)
Yes, I was speaking, training, coaching, and I still do bit of training. I mean, I might be retired from competitive sport, but I still keep myself busy. In fact, I was out this morning at 5.45 a.m. out in the park with a group of guys doing a session.
Mathias Alberton (03:03)
This 5.45 a.m. being out with a group of guys I mean 5.45 a.m. because is this morning routine is one of your routines or is just happened today and normally doesn't happen?
Darren (03:16)
Yeah, I just think most of us realize that the morning is the best time to get things done. you know, so often when you've been at work and you've had a long day in the office, it can be a real struggle to get out in the evenings. And if it doesn't happen in the morning, it's very unlikely to happen at all. And so I just found over the years that I'm more effective and productive in the mornings. Yeah, that's when we go out. It's kind of before the kids are up and go to school and all those sorts of things. And there's no other distractions. There's nothing else to compete with your time at sort of six in the morning while, you know, if it was six in the evening, you're competing with making dinner or watching a show on TV or maybe the football is going to be on or something else. There's other things that you could be doing. But besides sleeping, there's nothing else that you could be doing at six a.m.
Mathias Alberton (04:11)
And you came, I mean, you made up your mind back in the days about this approach, a long time ago, or it took time for you to understand that morning was your thing.
Darren (04:27)
think I've always known, yeah, I mean going back as far as when I was at school, you know, I used to go and do a workout before I started school and so yeah, it's been a very, very long habit of mine and also just through experience, just knowing that when I didn't do it in the morning and I thought, okay, I'll have my breakfast, I'll do something, maybe I'll go at lunchtime. And then lunchtime came and I kind of thought, I've eaten too much and I've got a call to make in half an hour. And then it kind of got to the afternoon and then literally experiences taught me that if it doesn't happen in the morning, it takes an even greater effort to get it done later in the day.
Mathias Alberton (05:16)
And if I may ask, I mean, of course, I mentioned you being an exceptional guy in sport in two different disciplines, but as a Paralympian, your visual impairment, can I ask you what level of visual impairment do you have?
Darren (05:37)
So mine's really simple, I am classified as B1, but I have no vision at all now.
Mathias Alberton (05:45)
And this has been a progressive degenerative condition of yours or.
Darren (05:51)
Yeah, it was degenerative in the sense that the treatment I had, so I had a condition called bilateral retinoblastoma, which is a cancer that affected both my eyes. My left eye was removed, but my right eye was treated with radiotherapy. And that radiotherapy actually destroyed my tear duct. So over time, because of the scar tissue I had from the radiotherapy and the lack of moisture in my eyes even though I've used drops over the years just my corn ears just sort of degenerated and and that vision just became more more blurred over time until a bit.
Mathias Alberton (06:32)
And this overtime was at what age?
Darren (06:36)
So from sort of 15 months old until my early 20s, in my early teens I could just about read large print, but you say year on year. Again, it's never something you notice day to day or week to week or even month to month. It literally was a kind of year by year thing where you realised that you couldn't do the things that you could do the year before for a while you put it down to other things, maybe the conditions around you, the light, your level of concentration, but eventually that reality sinks in that no, it's not any of those things, it's my sight is getting worse.
Mathias Alberton (07:21)
I have researched a bit in sight loss in terms of from a psychological perspective and I came across with, let's say, the idea that it's very important to understand, let's say, the timeline of sight loss, that is, I'm speaking with someone who has never had sight in his life or someone who has recently lost his sight or someone who has lost progressively his sight in time but many, many years ago kind of thing. These are three different kind of people. They are very different because psychologically they are confronted with very different realities, very different adaptation to the condition, or the condition is not perceived as a condition at all, because it's always been like this. So this is my unique reality. Now, I mentioned you are class 1973, just to give the audience an idea that what you just described, for instance, has happened quite a bit ago. When you think now in retrospective how you started in sports back then, what do you think was most important for you back then that allowed you to start in sport?
Darren (09:05)
So when I began my sporting journey, I still had sight, you know, I was considered partially sighted. And so it was much easier for me to, to kind of just join in with all of my fellow classmates and do the various sports. And there were some sports which are harder than others. So here in England, we have a game called Rounders, which is a little bit like baseball, but you know, had to hit a ball and catch it, you know, but the ball's not much bigger than say a tennis ball. So that was much harder for me to do, rounders. But football was much easier, you know, the ball's bigger and it was easier for me to see. Obviously running around was fine as well. Although if you were sort of running outside on sort of cross country route or something like that, then I might not spot tree roots or things like that to sort of trip on. But yeah, you my sporting journey in those early days was very, very natural. I didn't really think of myself as visually impaired, to be honest.
Mathias Alberton (10:18)
Even if you were, do you reckon you were? Yeah.
Darren (10:21)
Hmm Even though I was I didn't necessarily feel Massively disadvantaged or excluded I would say as my sight started to get worse and even say by the age of sort of 10 11 and I'm playing football with my teammates Maybe they didn't pass the ball to me as often because they thought you know, I might miss control it all you know, maybe, you know, we were kids and we're super competitive or, maybe, you know, back in the day when we used to pick teams, you always, you always wanted to, you always wanted the best players on your team. And so maybe I started to sort of drop down the pecking order of, of where I was selected, which kind of made you start to be a bit more consciously aware that you weren't quite as good in other people's eyes as you were.
Mathias Alberton (11:15)
And well, we have been, let's say, reading each other's posts on LinkedIn for a while. And most recently, you were talking about, you know, a way to improve and to give positive or negative feedback in order to promote performance or progression in performance. I'm thinking about the team and to be chosen. And I'm thinking about that at that time, in that moment in time, kids around the age of 10, 12, they start to shift from, let's say playing just for the fun and playing because they are actually better than others is a shift, which is a cognitive shift in development, So they literally do not behave anymore as they were behaving a bit before. So is a very intriguing moment in time where you start to understand that well actually you know this guy is better than me and he's better than me because he's more skilled than me and he might be more skilled than me because he trains more than me but if they don't pick me I cannot train as much I cannot get better so do you have in retrospect in any memory of this shift?
Darren (12:52)
Well, I suppose that was a period of transition for me in terms of my school. you know, I was in a mainstream primary school, you know, where I was basically surrounded by people who were fully sighted. But then when I was 11, I went to a special school where the majority of the pupils were blind, you know, some partially sighted, but some totally blind.
And I suppose it was at that point where I really realized my level compared to other people in the same situation as myself. I mean, there's a concept in sport of playing up, where you, you basically, you improve more because you're playing with better players. And so in primary, I suppose I was, I was always playing up because I was, I had this inbuilt disadvantage where I couldn't see as well. And so in the desire, in that internal desire to kind of keep up and to compete, I was obviously experiencing some sort of technical and sort of physical growth to kind of just to stay at that level. And so then I went to a special school, I suddenly thought, I'm like one of the best ones here. Yeah, and you know, and that was like, boom, and it just, and then it just kind of kicked on another level then because that positive feedback loop that I talk about all the time of where, you know, you do something, you do something first because it's fun and then you discover you're good at it and because you're good at it, you want to do more of it and because you do more of it, you get even better at it. And so in secondary school, I just, I just went on and on and on.
Mathias Alberton (14:50)
And the secondary school you're talking about was always for special needs or it was again public?
Darren (14:57)
It was just for people with vision impairments. yeah, there was, you know, it was a very high achieving school because it was a grammar school, but it was a boarding school as well. we had access to, you know, some really amazing facilities. You know, we had a swimming pool on site and then we had playing fields and things like that. And we had a track as well. It wasn't a full size running track, it was just one strip of, of, of tartan, but you know, you could go on there and, and do your sprints and things like that. it was, it was great really, because I said that was, that was, that was the sort of beginnings of that early morning routine where I was this very active child and I would wake up at sort of six o'clock in the morning and think, God, I've got two hours before I get up you know, to have breakfast and go to school. So what am I going to do with that time? Well, I might as well go and do some training. Why not?
Mathias Alberton (16:03)
And in regards of the sport of choice, you mentioned football, I understand it was your first contact with sports in a way. But then you have been successful, a big achiever in judo as well. Isn't that right? And when did you meet judo, so to speak?
Darren (16:10)
Yeah. You know, I began judo when I was 11. There was a... Yeah, I was a bit of a kind of angry child basically and I was always getting in trouble and getting detentions for fighting and, you know, aggressive behavior. I think a lot of that came from, you know, just that trauma of losing my sight and other things that were going on in my life. And so I went to a judo club.
Mathias Alberton (16:36)
At the same time then. So you did both at the same time.
Darren (17:02)
And, um, but I didn't actually stick at it for very long. Um, I think judo in those days, the sports halls, you know, was mats in a, in a sports hall. There'd be a cupboard where they keep sort of spare judo gears for people who've, want to try judo for the first time. But you know, it was in some musty cub cupboard and they take out, I always remember they take out this judo kit and it was sort of covered in cobwebs and sweat stains and, know, It wasn't that appealing. And then the other part of it, and I again, I understand this entirely from a judo coach's perspective in terms of keeping all of your participants safe. So one of the first things you do when you start judo is you learn to break fall, you know, you learn how to fall safely, because that's really important. But the thing that I'd really kind of excited me about going to judo was just like launching people, you know what mean? Like when you turned up at a club and you saw people flying through the air off a throw, that's kind of what I wanted to do to other people. it was like those first few sessions, all I ever did was practice break falls and practice a few hold downs. And I really wanted to get into the action and that took far too long. I didn't actually stick at judo for very long, but you know, it was something that I kind of came back to in my early 20s.
Mathias Alberton (18:31)
And the question arises also because I'm very curious about two aspects of the two different sports for visual impairment. One is first important distinction. Football is a team sport. So when it's adapted for visual impairment, you might have a smaller team, a smaller field, know, the sounding ball, but then again, it is a team sport. So how do you coordinate with others who are visually impaired or blind in a team sport? That's one question. On the other side, instead, we find judo, which is an individual sport, and it is very much into contact all the time but then again the difficulty is when you are not in contact and when you are approaching the opponent how do you train that moment so my question is two-folded on one hand what was difficult for you or beautiful for you in terms of playing a team sport and how difficult was to approach judo in terms of being constantly in touch with someone even if you don't see where they are coming from.
Darren (20:03)
Okay, so there's a further differentiation which I'll make, which was I learnt football predominantly when I could see and although I did start judo when I was young, the majority of my judo education happened when I was blind. So that's a further distinction which we may or may not explore. But in terms of the team versus individual aspect, a lot of what we did with football was certainly at the sort of the top level, at the elite level is what we did in the classroom so to speak, know, the conversations that we had with each other, the tactics boards that we used. So, you know, we had a very clear idea of how we wanted to play, you know, so what was our formation, what were the scenarios that can happen in a game. And so, you know, been really clear about where you expected your teammates to be in certain situations took away a lot of that kind of guesswork. And obviously we used some really high level communication, know, trying to communicate the most amount of information and the fewest amount of words so that, you know, you weren't constantly talking all the time because, you know, the more noise there is on the pitch, the harder it is to hear the ball. But I say a lot of it was kind of pre-organized, pre-planned. That was kind of the level of detail. So that's the essence of teamwork, really. If they do this, this is what we do. If this happens, then these are the options that we can have. And you can go through an awful lot of the game kind of like that, because there's always going to be restarts in the game when you've got a goal kick or a corner or free kick. I suppose it's in broken play, even in transitions. So, you you lose the ball. you know, you might play with one, you might with the ball, you might have one formation and without the ball, you might have another formation. And, and the skill in any level of football is how you transition from one to the other. So that, was, that was football really. It's a lot of the work he's done in the classroom. Judo is very, Judo is very different.
I mean, there were overlaps with all sports in terms of physicality, you know, you need to be fit, you need to be strong, you know, power, flexibility, all of those elements, the coordination, all of those kind of crossover between sports. again, with judo, judo was very different for me because I was pretty much always the only visually impaired person on the mat. So until I went to until I went to international competitions or maybe national training camps, which were only a few days a year. The entirety of my training was with sighted people. And this goes back to my earlier point about playing up, you know, when I was in primary school, been partially sighted, playing football with other sighted kids. Here I was doing judo against fully sighted people all of the time. And again, there's that element of having to play up, know, they are challenging me and testing me in ways that a visually impaired athlete might not. Now the styles of judo were a little bit different actually, so when you went to international competitions, you had to kind of adjust in little ways because the movement wasn't quite as flowing as it might be and the throws that sight people did on me probably didn't necessarily happen in the same way against when I was visually impaired. But that process of training was very similar. And I think I also, was also, the biggest challenge for me was the learning. I think we are just visual learners and it's very hard to describe something in words think this goes for both any sport, football or judo or any other sport. so often you see something, can you replicate it? A coach will demonstrate something and then you will try and replicate it and you absorb that information visually. But to actually, for them to actually describe it in words is really, really difficult. And so it had to be sort of shown to me physically, you know, people would put my hands and feet and in the right positions that, you know, and so that kind of cognitive learning was much harder, much, much harder. It took me a long time to understand certain concepts that visually you might see. And also we, say in both football and judo, there's a lot of video analysis, isn't there? So in football, there is a system called huddle, where you can sort of clips of you performing and the coach can say, you know, this is what you were doing here and this is what you were doing there. And you can kind of see it for yourself. And the same in judo, you know, they would film the matches and you could watch it back with your coach and you would talk about things that you were doing. But again, you can't see it for yourself. So you're always taking that information secondhand, which somehow loses its, its quality.
Mathias Alberton (25:49)
This conversation is going of course in parallel between two disciplines and this kind of super interesting but also is kind of challenging. I have a question for the football, I have a question for the judo. Of course, as you might know is training for visually impaired and blind people based on Kung Fu Wing Chun, which is a tactile, very tactile set of techniques in self-defense originally, but I thought it was a very good idea to break down some of the basic movements and to pick just on those in order to stay consistently in contact between people and to learn how to react and to hold your stance when applying pressure or having pressure applied to you that is touching and being touched by other people. So this is what I'm trying to do. And I am, of course, I am with you understanding how difficult it is to convey the message by words when the concept that you want to describe is a movement or a stance or, for instance, you mentioned latest how to position your feet, which is extremely challenging to make someone understand how their feet are positioned if they cannot see for themselves. They have to feel for themselves, which is kind of what I'm trying to do there. So I'm trying to understand what the right feel is. So you see... This is what you should feel. Can you feel that? Okay, hold on to that feeling. And that is more right than what you were feeling before. That kind of conversation, which is complex. And in this regard, I was thinking about judo and your training with the fully sighted people. But then, allegedly, the opponents you met were also training with fully sighted people so let's say that possibly the training journey that you went through was very similar to the one of your opponents do you think that was the case or not?
Darren (28:19)
Yeah, That would be true. Yeah, because there are, there just aren't, there aren't enough blind people around, I suppose, or vision impaired people around to, to make up a whole club of just blind and partially sighted people. You know, we all live throughout the country. So unless, unless you were to move, you know, to a center of excellence and kind of all be together, that's probably unlikely. Yeah.
Mathias Alberton (28:46)
And the second question would be something like, in my martial attitude training for visually impaired and blind people, I kind of took away everything that is not in contact. Therefore, I tended to avoid, as much as I can, situations where something that is... You know, let's say... a blow, a stance, or something that is reacting to something that cannot really be perceived because I cannot really see it coming. So for me it doesn't exist, let's say. And when it exists, it's far too late to understand it. So I avoid those. But in judo... Of course, there is a lot of contact because the two opponents grab each other and then they try to... ...miss balance each other so that one of the two fall down and get stuck or get out of the ring, the mat. But before that, there is, let's say, an all lot of preparation in... Let's say position oneself against the other and waiting for the right moment to tackle in which way, blah, blah, blah. All this prep thing, does it apply to the sport when visual impairment is involved or not? It's just when you are in the contact that the real thing starts. And how does it go? Because sometimes when you look at people wrestling in judo, from the outside, everything seems to be so quick, so fast. So that's my question for you. Where does it start, the Jude of Fame for visually impaired and blind people?
Darren (30:39)
I would say as soon as you've got one hand on. So in competitions we start with a grip. that's, yes. in, but you know, when I used to do mixed competitions, you know, I remember going to, I used to do sighted competitions all the time and the referee would give my opponent new option. So, you know, because he doesn't have to start gripped up. So he might say to him, you see. So you are positioned in... Okay. That's it. Yeah.
You your fight is only vision impaired. Are you happy to start gripped up or not? And I, and I always knew that if they were happy to start gripped up that they were, they were a hundred percent confident that they could beat me. And if they didn't want to start gripped up, I knew that they were a little bit apprehensive about losing to me. So yeah, that, kind of gave me a clue, but yeah, the rules are that you start gripped up. You can break the grip. However, there's rules in terms of how long you can fight with just one hand on to kind of equal out that chance that you're kind of more aware of where they are.
Mathias Alberton (31:59)
And the other question instead talking about football is about the different nature of the skills that football implies. By this I mean, let's say in football for fully sighted people, one of the major factors in being a good footballer, regardless of the role played, is pattern recognition. Meaning, one knows where one is in regard to other players and what's going on so that you can intervene, make it better adjust for something that is going on, let's say, outside of you. So you recognize the pattern that is happening in front of you and your part in. This is a characteristic of football, generally speaking. Now, you were mentioning before this idea of signaling other players with the less words available in order to not create too much confusion and to be very specific and that is in your opinion something that has to do with this pattern recognition or is just one strategy against another strategy and then let's see how it goes how do you understand it
Darren (33:43)
Every time I play the game, one of the first things I would do is build up this sensory map of the whole pitch. You know, trying to map it out in my head. So you you walk the width of the pitch, you walk the length of the pitch. You're trying to consider every environmental cue that you can use to know exactly where you are on the pitch. So it could be something tactile like the slope on the pitch is a slight slope, you know, or you can feel the, you know, the, cut of it, I suppose of, you know, which way is, there might be little bear patches on the pitch that you might detect. we play with boards on the pitch. maybe how the boards are joined together or whether there's tape on them, but it could be auditory. So there's sounds that you can hear that maybe there's a road nearby or there's a stand that the sound will rebound off.
Um, or it could be the wind, you know, you can feel the wind, the direction of the wind or the direction of the sun. So trying to use all of that information to map out where you are on a pitch. Um, but then once, and obviously you want also one, when we're playing, we've got some fixed points as well. So, you know, we've got our goalkeeper, uh, who can see in our game. We've got a coach on the halfway line. We've got someone standing behind the opposition goal as well. So we've got these three other voices which act as reference points that we can always use to sort of triangulate exactly where we are on the pitch. And I'd say it's a skill that develops over time. You know, I always talk about my very first game for England where I was awful. Really, was so disorientated on the pitch, you know, just because of the noise and, you know, the shouts on the other players and my teammates and everything that was going on. And that cognitive overload made it very, very difficult for me to play and to perform. But I say over a period of time, your brain, you you all know how the brain sort of changes through neuroplasticity and neurogeneration. there must have been stuff going on in the brain to actually equip you to deal with that cognitive loading to be able to master those orientation and navigation skills that you need to get around the pitch. But then in terms of relationship with the other players, again that was just, yeah, call and response stuff, know, so if you lose the ball you just say lost and so you're helping all your teammates kind of know exactly what's going on on the pitch. One of the things we also used to do is which we'd use a word like red. So if I said red, all of my teammates would say red and literally within an instant, I know where everybody is. So, you know, those are some of the tactics and strategies we'd use to just build up this ever changing map because the players are moving, aren't they?
That's the problem. and often the coach might be giving you information, you know, do this and do that, but the opposition can also hear what the coach is saying to you. So they are, they are reacting also to what the coach is saying to us. and so this is the importance of doing a lot of this preparation in the classroom so that it requires less communication in the moment.
Mathias Alberton (37:37)
And in international settings, meaning that you have been, as I said before in the introduction, you have been the most recognized medalist in the blind community playing football nationally and internationally. I guess I would assume that you didn't just play on one pitch so that you know the ins and outs of that pitch particularly, but you move from pitch to pitch in different cities, in different countries even. So, you know, for as quick as you might be in learning the qualities of that particular pitch, you might not have honestly the hours to memorize it properly. So something that, you know, you're always in a foreign terrain, you're always somewhere else something very abstract, a very abstract space. Isn't that right?
Darren (38:38)
Yeah, we played in Argentina and their picture is quite near to a firing range. And so there was just these like gunshots going off all the time. which is quite quite quite worrying. I played on other pitches which are near a railway line and you say the train kind of goes rattling past and all the planes go overboard. And so there's these these almost these little black spots where you lose, you lose sound really. And sometimes I know a good referee will just stop the game. You know, if it's a, if it's an airplane going over or a plane going by, or just say, you know, it'll just blow the whistle and stop the game and wait for the train to go past. But yeah, you will, you will always, you will always adapting to, to the environment. the wind was one of those things that could make things really difficult because it meant that you're your judgment of distances was affected because if the wind is blowing towards you, then your perception of how far away the ball was or a player was would be skewed because the sound would be traveling faster than it would normally. And obviously when you're playing into the wind, the exact opposite, know, just like anybody who plays football or any sport in the wind, the wind changes it.
And you have to make these micro adjustments based on the environment that you're in. and it's just experience that helps you with all of those things. It's like, okay, I've been in this situation before. I need to be aware that I need to make these adjustments. You're not quite sure how big an adjustment you're going to have to make, but you're aware that you're going to have to make some changes and that the environment is going to be a little bit more difficult than what you're expecting.
Mathias Alberton (40:40)
Before closing this episode I have two questions which are kind of relating, related to, back to my research in one case and to you as an individual more than an athlete in the first place. The first one would be something that I have asked to the participants of my research and is related to the idea of touch. So the question would be something like what is touch to you and how touch made you comfortable, confident in playing sports? Or if you like, do you think that touch has something to do with your confidence in being a sport person?
Darren (41:46)
Yeah, think being comfortable with touch is not natural for a lot of people. know, some people, depending on what experiences they've had, I suppose, in childhood, I guess, that might affect it. I don't know if it's specifically to do with their vision impairment, but I think those things will definitely affect how comfortable we are being close to other people and I think sport does put us in positions where we are, we're really close together, know, whether it's that sort of that team huddle at the start of a game, as said in judo where, you know, someone can be pinning you on the floor and you know, and you can literally feel their breath on your face. So I think all of those things are really, really intensified in a sporting environment. and I suppose, but would it be, would sport be a good tool to help someone who had challenges with that? I suppose. Yeah. You know, through sort of near exposure techniques, we know where you, you kind of gradually expose them to more and more and more. They, they, they might eventually kind of become more used to it. And I think it's, it's a, it's a great kind of way of feeling human, think, you know, touch is a very natural sense. And we know from research around loneliness and isolation that touch is a real way that someone who's got a visual impairment can feel connected because, you if you can't see someone, then, you know, some people will tell me they can feel connected by looking into someone's eyes, you know, and there's that kind of you you feel connected in that way, but I don't think, you know, I don't know if you can feel the same effect auditory, so touch remains that preeminent sense that is going to give you that sense of connection.
Mathias Alberton (44:02)
And the other question is more related to you as an individual rather than a sport person in regard to what you're doing now. So to be a motivational speaker, to be an ambassador for people with visual impairment in the sport and to, I guess, connect new people to the sports. In retrospective, thinking about your own career, what do you think, let's say, sports psychology could have done for you earlier in your journey? And what kind of advice would you give to young vision impaired athletes about developing their, let's say, mental game?
Darren (45:00)
So I was, I mean, I was very fortunate to have worked with a sports psychologist, a performance psychologist. It didn't happen early in my career. It happened halfway through my career, really. It was just before I went to the Beijing Paralympics that I first kind of encountered a psychologist. And I would say at that point in my life, I was a skeptic. I didn't really believe in psychology, I thought that you only saw a psychologist if there was something wrong with you or you were weak or, you know, that was the kind of perception that a lot of us had at that time about psychology. But he persevered with me and by the end of our time together, I knew that I wanted to know more about it. So I went from a skeptic to being a scholar really, and I went away and sort of studied psychology. And I think one of the things that was massively important was just the understanding of the mind and how it was so important in all of the other elements that go into performing at your best. And so I think had I had exposure to it earlier in my career and certainly if I was willing to sort of take it on board, of course, because you know, you can all be given access to psychologists, you know, from early in your career, but you also have to be in the mind space to accept it and embrace it. That is something that can improve your performance. So yeah, that was really important for me. But I just think more generally, sport is just so powerful.
I haven't looked into the research around this, but it's something that I will be doing more of in the next few weeks or months. But I was having a conversation with someone the other day about the effects of trauma, and certainly losing my sight was an example of trauma, an adverse childhood experience. the idea that you can fix trauma through talking therapies seems a bit counterintuitive because trauma doesn't manifest itself in the cognitive part of your brain. It's going to be in emotional parts of your brain and also in your body. And so I think there's a real power in sport.
And, and if we want to reduce it to movement, because some people are frightened by the word sport or physical activity or exercise, let's just call it movement then. there's, there's a real power of movement to help people deal with trauma because say, no, it doesn't, it doesn't involve language, which I think can be quite difficult. It can be very difficult for all of us who've been through adversity, through trauma, through really difficult experiences to actually express that and talk about it. Whilst movement literally shifts everything with it. It changes our emotion, it changes our mood. And it's after that, it's after the kind of healing process that we can begin to find the words to kind of put all of those feelings into language. I just think, you know, what you're doing through being shown and encouraging people to do movement and sport as a way to help them deal with what they've gone through is absolutely the right approach. And I just think we need to be doing more of that because I just think people aren't necessarily in a position to talk and communicate about what they're going through.
Mathias Alberton (49:23)
Darren, thank you very much. Thank you very much for your time. I'm aware of it and I love to stay here talking with you more. Maybe we can do it in the future, for I mean, it was really, really super wonderful to speak with you and to have the insights that you have to, I mean, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
Darren (49:45)
It's a pleasure, thank you.
Mathias Alberton (49:46)
And thank you for everyone who has been listening to this episode. I hope you liked it as much as I did. If you do have questions for Darren, please, let me know. mean, write me, text me, message me, you know, you find my contacts on my channels as usual. And if you are visually impaired or blind or you know someone who is and might be interested in training with me in martial arts training, the workshops are running every Sunday in central London. So as usual, you know it. You keep in touch.