Since retiring from competitive diving, Olympic medallist Leon Taylor has become a huge advocate of physical and mental wellness and is now helping people all over the world to improve their health, happiness and performance through the Olympian & Paralympian Online Experiences available on Worldwide Olympic Partner Airbnb’s platform.
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It takes more than a strong body to make it to the Olympic podium; a strong mind is essential too – just ask Leon Taylor. The British diver – who won a silver medal at the Olympic Games Athens 2004 alongside synchronised 10m platform partner Pete Waterfield – attributes much of his success to the mental tools he learnt from working with sports psychologists throughout his career.
“I was very fortunate to work with top practitioners in all areas, particularly sports psychology,” he explains. “I’ve always been fascinated in this notion of mindset and, over the years, I learned fantastic tools, such as visualisation, breathing exercises and self-meditation practices. You need those to perform at the highest level under untold pressure. The edge of a 10-metre diving board with 15,000 people staring at you, and you’ve got 1.5 seconds to get it right – to perform under that pressure, there’s a lot that you need to work on from a mental fitness point of view.”
Having seen the benefits that these mental tools brought to his sporting performance, which included winning medals at world and European championships, Taylor is now eager to share what he has learnt with others, enabling them to reach their own potential too – be it in sport or just life in general.
And in order to reach as wide an audience as possible, he has begun offering a Mindset and Movement Masterclass through the IOC and Airbnb’s Olympian and Paralympian Experiences, combining the mental tools he learnt during his career with a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workout that aims to get your body moving and your blood pumping.
