And now we're all, really the whole planet, heading into an expedition or an adventure completely unprepared. Even so, you can take the time to think, hey, what would be cool to be able to talk about at the end. And if you've ever thought of something like that on your own, or if you've ever considered something like that, it gives you a lot of strength.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.
Today with Thomas Dörriat and Lucian Haas at the microphone.
The Swiss Thomas Dörriat made a name for himself in the paraglider scene when, in 2009, he completely redefined the role of a supporter during Kriegel Maurer's first X-Alp victory. He wasn't just a driver, cook, water carrier, organizer, etc. Even during the preparation, he was also Kriegel's psychological coach, helping him break down the goals for the race in his head into systematically executable tasks. Since then, Kriegel has been the dominant force in all X-Alp races. And Thomas has a reputation for being a kind of mental magician, not just for top performances in paragliding. With his company OneDay in Interlaken, he now also helps other athletes, entrepreneurs, and private individuals recognize the feasibility of their visions.
When I first reached out to Thomas Dörriat as a guest for an episode of Podz-Glidz, I still had the idea of him telling me a lot of background information and anecdotes.
But then the new coronavirus came along and grounded the paragliding world too. So, the idea to spontaneously and collectively refocus this podcast was born. Because the corona crisis, with all its consequences, is a challenge for everyone. And a mental coach can provide appropriate questions and prompts to help people get through this time better. Of course, the conversation also revolves around paragliding, and not in a minor way. That's how Thomas Dörriat tells it. Thomas, why some of the typical virtues and experiences of a pilot are so valuable right now. It's about, among other things, what enduring the corona period has to do with flying over unlandable terrain and how to maintain your confidence there. And of course, insights are also discussed that Thomas gained during his time as an X-Alb supporter together with Kriegel Maurer.
Thomas, we're living in a time with the new coronavirus. The world is in crisis mode and has to limit its freedoms. And we have to, too. We're not allowed to go paragliding anymore. And that's for a time that might not even be foreseeable right now—as to when things might change again. This idea is frustrating for many people. How are you dealing with that?
I don't even know if it's frustrating for that many people.
For me, it's actually just exciting to see how the topic of change—which interests me a lot—works now, let's just say, on a global scale. Often, changes happen because one person wants to change something, or because a company or a sports club says, "We want to develop something from within." And now, as a whole planet, we are challenged to deal with this news as quickly and as well as possible. And it's not just a matter of "being allowed to," like for example, there were many changes, such as digitalization or WhatsApp, or things like that, which spread across the entire planet. But those were only pleasant and had no costs. And now, a topic like this comes along,
that covers the entire planet. But above all, it comes with costs.
Yes, but it also has to do with the fact that, at least at first glance, we have to significantly restrict many of our freedoms that we've enjoyed so beautifully until now, at least for a while. Because it means, okay, maybe you're not allowed to go out anymore. You're not allowed to go out. You're not allowed on the mountain. You're not allowed to go paragliding and stuff like that. Isn't that frustrating?
That's true. It certainly involves a lot of restrictions. But I think these restrictions are just like a first reflex. When you don't know something, the first thing you do is hit the brake.
And I think that us stopping everything right now isn't just directly because of this coronavirus, but it's just that everyone is being asked to do something and then you just stop for a bit. But I think if someone were to start a single-handed circumnavigation of the world right now, that wouldn't change anything regarding corona, for example. He can do that. Or I think there are also a few people who are currently up in space or in Antarctica at a research station. Corona probably doesn't even exist there yet and they're just carrying on as normal. So I think this restriction is our society. Because we're stressed, we just stop everything. But I can imagine that people realize that staying at home constantly is also unhealthy and then you find a good balance again somewhere.
But if I'm sitting here as a paraglider pilot and see that the sun is shining over there in the Hinterlaken too. I'm looking out here. I've had beautiful blue skies for days. Okay, the wind is sometimes a bit strong, but it's still basically at a point where you'd say you could maybe go flying.
But now I'm sitting inside. Okay, I can go out, enjoy the sun and all that. But at the same time, what's actually bothering me deep down, what I really want to do, I just can't do right now. And yeah, how do I get out of that? I mean, out of this maybe negative cycle where I'm like, hey, shit, everything is shit.
Yeah, and I think there are many others who, for example, have football, and football is very, very important to them. And now there probably won't be any football matches for at least the next three months or so. Yeah, that's difficult.
What might help is understanding the significance of it a bit. Like, is it about freedom for me, or is it about being out with friends? And can I still do that if, I don't know, I exchange things virtually with my flying friends, or can I say, okay, I can't fly right now, but I finally have time to put my thousand photos together into a good document. I think flying is so crazy because it touches us and excites us so much. And maybe you can celebrate that excitement in a different way this spring.
I personally have a lot of photos, and I've always told myself I'd make a photo book so I can show it to my kids or to people who don't fly. You suddenly have time for new things, don't you? Or I've wanted to learn the handstand for a long time, and when the flying weather is good, I actually never have time for things like that. Now it's perfect. Have you already started learning the handstand? Yeah, of course. And how far along are you? I'm at the point where it's irregular, but when it goes well, I can do 30 seconds.
Well, you're a coach who works a lot with athletes, including extreme sports athletes. You just mentioned a single-handed sailor—the kind who sails around the world alone and such. You talk to people like that too. Are there things where you'd say, from this mindset of the athlete, the extreme sports athlete, there are things we can learn from that can be applied to the current time with this coronavirus, or what can be brought into everyday life from the mindset of the extreme sports athlete?
Yes, I'd even say three things. And one is that almost practically all nature athletes I know are very good at self-leadership. That is, they can manage themselves well. Whether it's in small things like eating regularly or setting good seasonal goals for themselves. And I believe that how you lead yourself is something that's particularly relevant right now with home offices or self-employed people who don't know how to deal with all these complex topics at the same time. You can learn a lot from that. Then I think many nature athletes are very good at switching from complaining to taking action.
They do complain too, but relatively briefly, because maybe there isn't much time during a storm or because you're often alone in nature and no one is listening. How do you get from this victim mentality to "I'm getting back on my feet" or "I'm doing something"? And the third thing I find interesting is this concept of hardiness. So, how can I see a very complicated or hopeless situation as an opportunity? And say, okay, hey, a normal person might only see the problems right now, but someone who is mentally strong or perhaps has that extreme sports personality sees a lot of great challenges in there too.
Is that something that also defines the character of an extreme athlete? Like, that they're constantly seeking out challenges, but also saying, okay, I see the opportunity in every negative challenge. Is that what makes someone a successful extreme athlete, an extreme athlete? I
I sometimes don't know how important personality is, because personality is something more stable, like maybe height or hair color. That stays the same for a relatively long time. And yet, there are people who suddenly find access to this sport somehow. That means it's not just personality, but also something you can learn or develop. And there are also people who are very successful extreme athletes for years. And then they step back and are still great people and have a good personality, but they don't live it anymore. I believe that sport—or, I'll say it now, sport in nature—has a lot to do with learning and behavior. And it's not like you are one or you're not.
And anyone can become that, I'd say.
Now we talk a lot about extreme athletes. But many paragliders are also just completely normal people who go paragliding. Would you still say that there are, so to speak, special characters among paragliders? Or would you say that paragliders, because of their attitude—the fact that they dare to do things like flying and other stuff—are perhaps even more capable of making something productive out of situations like the current one with Corona?
Yes, well, I would say that paragliders impress me because they can sacrifice or invest so much for their goals and their dreams. So, if you imagine someone sitting in a sleeping bag for eight hours, unable to eat properly or use the bathroom, just to reach their mileage—you have to be able to do that first. Or maybe pushing through unpleasant situations and letting yourself be shaken for a few hours. And I think if you also know, hey, I can do this for a goal, and you notice it during the day, or in everyday life, or in this Corona situation, I only see problems,
you can also take a look and ask yourself, yeah, do I even have a goal? And I think if you can maybe do something, I'm saying now, better than others during this time, I think it's worth considering what I actually want to be able to tell people, for example, in the autumn. What do I want to say after this Corona story—and we don't know how long it's going to last—but what do I want to be able to say about this spring in the autumn? And not just as an entrepreneur with, ah, I made this and this strategy adjustment, but maybe also as a father. What would make me proud, how I provided stability for my family in this crisis? Or as a family member, how did I react towards my parents and my siblings?
Or also, what can I learn about my own personality during this completely crazy, unprepared time? Yes. I think this leap in time—putting yourself at the end and thinking about what you want to be able to tell at the end—can give you a lot of strength. And that's maybe something every mountaineer does. He flies to Nepal, wants to climb the 8,000er, and somehow writes down what he wants to tell on the flight back. What he did, how he did it, what he didn't do. Whether health is more important than the summit or not, and he writes those things down. And now we're all, really the whole planet, going into an expedition or an adventure unprepared. You can still take that time and say, hey,
what would actually be cool to be able to tell about it at the end? And if you've thought about something like that alone, or if you've considered it, it gives you a lot of strength. And I find it quite funny, with this X-Alps story, I think we've thought a lot about that 2009 situation lately, when we went to the X-Alps for the first time and really didn't know what was coming. But we already had, for example, a three-page document of what we wanted to tell each other in Monaco. And I still remember it, Arial 12 font, I still have it; Regel knew exactly what he wanted to tell in Monaco. Most of us had no idea about anything, but we already had such a clear vision of the goal.
And something like that can actually give you an incredible amount of strength in any adventure.
If you're in a lockdown right now and saying, "I can't fly," is there still something you could say, like, from this time I can also... from basically this extreme situation we're experiencing right now because we have to do things so differently than usual... is there something you can take away from that which I can say, "I can use this later for my flying just as much"? Like, can I learn something from this now that I can then apply when I'm up in the air?
Hmm. So
I think we can maybe first observe, before we immediately learn how I function when things don't go according to plan? Am I someone who first hits the brake and says, I'm not doing anything at all? Or am I someone who quickly looks, yeah, what are the others doing? And also asks around, how do you do it? Or looks for advice? Or am I someone who defines it for myself? And says, okay, I'm setting a goal for myself for this period. I think we will, or we have to, get to know ourselves very well very quickly during this time and find out a bit how I tick? Also, what do I need?
And what doesn't work for me at all? Personally, for example, I only check the news once a day at noon. One website. Because I think that's it; I also have this book, The Art of Digital Living, which did me a lot of good in terms of thinking clearly, even though we actually constantly have too many news stories. And I probably don't check the weather much at the launch site either, because I have the feeling it won't get any better if I have seven models,
I focus—so I dial back the news completely. I don't have to click on the world's suffering ten times a day. I have more time and a clear head for the rest. That's how I function, and others are perfectly happy being online all the time and knowing everything. But I think learning and figuring out what I need, how I tick, or how I protect myself from certain things—we can certainly do that now. But that might have more to do with life and only indirectly with flying.
Well, for many pilots, especially cross-country flight pilots and the like, they might have set a lot of goals for the season. And now they can actually say very early in the year, my entire season's goals are basically down the drain. Namely, I'm grounded for the best cross-country flight season. That beautiful spring where I had planned that great triangle or something else, that's not going to work anymore. How can you flip the switch in your head and say, hey, I'm going to make something positive out of this?
I'm completely fascinated by how ski racers deal with race delays. You're standing there at the race, having already had breakfast at five o'clock because you know you should eat your carbohydrates two or three hours before the exertion. You're standing at the ninth start, there's fog somewhere, the race director comes over and says the start is delayed by an hour. And there are some who just fall apart because they were already in that tunnel in their heads, in that competition countdown. And others just put on their down jacket, go somewhere to have a hot tea, and say, "Well, okay, someone wins an hour later, the fastest wins. That still applies in an hour." And I think, here is really,
There's this great term, overthinking. It means you're thinking too much.
And so, purely technically, our agreement is valid until April 19th. It's also possible that one could still have a great
So, purely meteorologically and technically, there's still a lot possible. And the other thing is that you have goals and it's just not working out right now; I think we can reframe that a bit and say, hey, what kind of luxury problems do we have? As paraglider pilots, all the professional Olympians have trained hard, did their build-up training in November for the muscles they need in the 21st, right? So, I think as athletes, you could maybe also look at what other athletes who also have to make a living from it have. It's completely different issues. I also think, for example, everyone who has sponsors makes a deal with them in November. You give me money, I give you something...
Wake-up results or attention. And of course, that is much, much harder than if you're not flying your 200 triangle now, but only in the 21, right?
Because their very livelihood is basically being taken away, because then sponsors say, "Hey, we can't pay you because there's no consideration."
Yeah, or that it might not even be regulated at all. I mean, I spoke to someone yesterday who got a lot of money for a sailing ship. Now the sailing races aren't happening on the Atlantic. So, yeah, give the money back. But he used that money to build the ship in the winter. So, these are just new questions that you might—I'm saying this now—not even ask as an individual athlete with a very intrinsic goal. Or I don't know if a lot of football clubs will somehow go bankrupt and won't be able to field all their teams in a Bundesliga or something in a year's time.
But those are all questions we don't even have to answer yet today.
can. No,
no. But
I just want to say, when you see yourself as an athlete with your goals or how difficult it is to achieve them, I always find it helpful to zoom out a bit and look at where I stand as an athlete compared to other athletes. And then you see, others might have much bigger... we paragliders don't even have this scheduling issue, or rarely do; we just have good days and then we can fly, or most of us go to competitions. But I think there will probably be many good days left this year. It's not like the Olympics were canceled or the ten best hammer days of the year were scrapped. It's not that far gone yet.
Well, for the athletes, the big competition flyers, it's things like, maybe the Superfinal was cancelled. All the upcoming PWCs are up in the air for now. Who knows if the European Championship can even take place, and all that kind of stuff. So, basically, those questions do exist. But maybe let's put the Corona topic aside for a moment and talk a bit about you, or rather your story. You became known in the paraglider scene as a sort of congenial supporter of Kriegel with the X-Alps. In 2009, he was the first. How did you two actually, both of you, meet back then?
That was actually very, very simple. It was through my wife Judith. She was doing agro-flying in Mürren back then. That's in the Lauterbrunnen Valley. And in that Lauterbrunnen Valley, there's actually something special: the base jumpers and the paraglider pilots have the same landing field. And that leads to you keeping a good eye on each other, being in the same gondola—the test pilots and Kriegel was still testing back then, and I was skydiving. You inevitably meet each other like that.
And so it was in the summer of 2008, that was exactly it. I was at the end of my psychology studies. I was very interested in industrial psychology and sports and at the same time did a lot of skydiving. And I had regularly received the selection for the X-Alps and simply knew a bit of what the X-Alps is, but had no plan at all on how to do it well. And I had no plan at all. I remember, I had a long break in my paragliding and hadn't been on a paraglider for like ten years. And then we thought, well, he can already fly great, he doesn't need anything extra. And maybe the other thing, like how to set up such a project or, above all, how to do the preparation well with good simulation,
that wasn't common at all in the X-Alps scene back then. And I brought that into it. You
but you weren't working as a coach back then the way you do today, was that basically with, was that the start of your coaching career, so?
Even back then, during my psychology studies, I knew that I liked developing people or organizations. And I was very much in a business context. But it was already very clear to me that it's completely stupid to separate sports and business. I don't really distinguish between them much, whether someone is an athlete or an entrepreneur. I think on many topics, you don't have to separate work psychology and sports psychology, but rather things like goal setting. It works exactly the same way. And that's why, looking back, when we look at this X-Alps story, I sometimes have to laugh with Triggel because I...
I didn't see it as a sports project at all. And I think what we did had very little to do with sports. We looked at it more as a project where, for example, we thought about high average performance. You don't have to deliver peak performance like an athlete; if you can just achieve a high average speed, then you win the thing. And we thought about how to get a high average? And that is exactly the same in every factory and in every sales department. You don't even have to be incredibly good, you just have to get a high average every day. And whether it's a McDonald's branch or an insurance salesman or an X-Alps participant, if you can influence that average.
So, and that was somehow back then, we calculated it with Alex Hofer—I don't remember the exact figures anymore—but he was somehow at a daily performance of, I think, 113 kilometers. And if you can just manage that every day, then you win the X-Alps. And we somehow knew we had to get 117 per day, then we've got the thing. And at the first meeting, I remember exactly where it was, I mainly pulled out the calculator and looked at what he actually had to be able to do. And we had these key figures and basically built the whole thing around those numbers. They are
Were those the things you brought in? Or did Kriegel himself come along and say, "Hey, I think I need to work on my average speed"? Or were those the ideas you brought in from your psychology background? And where you basically got Kriegel on the path to being able to think in that direction as well?
Yes, I'd even say there's a third thing. I didn't even know what was being asked for. So I think we have together—and I think that's the important part—in a team, there's always the one, the other, and then there's the team itself. Just like in a good band, you might not be able to say who invented the song, but you just jammed together. At the beginning, I didn't know at all what his goal actually was or what was being asked for. And we figured that out together. And then I could already—I'm talking about the operationalization, the implementation of a goal—there's a lot of knowledge there, and I think even during a race or during a paraglider flight, there are many ways to keep that going.
So, for example, if you have an individual success cockpit, or I also remember very well, Seiko Fukuoka wanted to fly 400 kilometers for the first time in Australia. And I remember, she was hanging in her harness in our office and we developed how she could fly a 40 km/h average for 10 hours. Because that's actually the issue, isn't it? This implementation—I know what I want, but how do I lead myself for 10 hours so that I don't just fly fast enough, but actually as fast as possible at all times, even when it's uncomfortable? How do you do that? And I think sports psychology can handle things like that.
And how do you do that? I mean, how do I stay right at the limit of my comfort zone for 10 hours straight?
Yeah, I think in Germany it's quite simple. You can practice on the highway. There's like a cruising mode, maybe 120, 150, depending on the daylight and the car. There's a certain speed you can maintain for longer. And then there's this speed where you really have to push yourself. You have to press a bit harder than you normally would. Or you can do it on a bike, on foot, or on a stationary bike. There are these thresholds. You'd say, if it's purely physical, threshold power. So, where is the point where I really have to exert myself?
And I think once you figure out, even for a short time, how intense it is, there's an individual factor. And I don't think this is just about flying through acceleration. It applies to answering emails too. You can say, "Hey, I'm going to get, I don't know, this many emails out in an hour." If you make yourself aware of that, you can be more efficient.
But you really have to train for that. You say, okay, now you're going to drive on the highway for an hour at 150 and try to maintain that as your average. And then you have to be able to do that for three hours.
Yeah, or I'd say you have to notice, maybe during a workday or on the highway or when flying, that I'm like, or I have this gear shift. I eventually fall back into this cruising mode. I fall back into a pace that makes perfect sense because it's comfortable. And if you look at people who, for example, work in a factory...
or hikers who are somehow on a pilgrimage, they have this, this good rhythm, this good stride. That lasts over a long period of time. And that's great if you know it, but you don't win anything with it. And then you just have to find some kind of trick, how I get from this, I'd say, from this work pace into record pace and how I can push myself. And I think, maybe, to get back to myself, alone, that you have to think and think, what is a good pace? Or what does an optimal day look like?
And I can quickly do a simple calculation now. If you walk or fly ten percent faster for one hour, that's quite strenuous. For example, driving 132 instead of 120 uses a lot more fuel and so on. But you only gain six minutes.
If you tie your shoes six minutes faster in the morning, get something ready faster, or somehow charge your phone while on the go or do something like that, it's much easier to save six minutes than to be traveling six minutes, ten percent faster for an hour. And I believe that efficiency isn't just about pushing yourself harder, but also about knowing all those time-wasters very well and looking at where I'm not making them. That means you have to switch off the time-wasters? You have to switch off the time-wasters, or now also fly ten percent faster for three hours during the cross-country flight, which is difficult. But starting 18 minutes earlier, that's much easier.
At least if I then catch the thermals and actually get up, and don't end up back on the ground 18 minutes earlier.
Yeah, exactly. But there are also people who stand at the launch site for so long that they only see it's time to climb when they've already seen the 20th one, instead of just being brave and saying, okay, that's enough, I can take off from here now.
A few questions back. You used a nice keyword, "success cockpit." What exactly is that? I mean, how can a pilot, who normally has a cockpit in front of them with instruments and all that, have a success cockpit? How am I supposed to imagine that?
Actually, a success cockpit is nothing more than a mirror. Because we know all the time what's going on with the devices around us. I know how much battery my phone has. I know how much gas my car has. I know, somehow, how much reception my GPS has. I always get feedback about myself through devices. But I often don't know how I'm actually doing.
And a success cockpit is something you think about during coaching: which indicators, which three or four things do I want to know about myself? For example, it could be how much energy do I have? How fit am I? Tomorrow, I'm doing a coaching session for people in the hospital for the next 100 days, and they will take a moment every morning to think about: how fit am I actually, right? But it can also provide feedback. Am I actually thinking with my head right now? Like with a gear shift. When I'm driving a car, I always know which gear I'm in, I know that. But in aviation, there are people who are sometimes overthinking things a lot. And sometimes they switch off their heads and they actually fly with their heart or their intuition.
And a success cockpit is actually the idea of me thinking: if I were a machine, which three or four displays do I need to have to know that I'm operating in my best version? And what's interesting is that so many people have a sports watch. Even if you're running a marathon or just in everyday life. They know, for example, how fast my heart is beating. People who are diabetics have a very good sense of what my current blood sugar level is.
But how I'm doing mentally—for example, am I feeling cool or stressed? Very few people know that. People who trade on the stock market, for instance, know that well because they are trained for it. Or certain airline pilots, who know if they're leaning back against the seat or nodding their upper body forward under stress. But if I say, a normal Gleitschirm-Blog makes a huge difference if it also looks at, how am I actually doing? Should you then...
Do you have to do that before every flight? Before takeoff, you say, hey, I'm looking at my instruments, okay, the device is charged, GPS reception is there, the XC track is running, and all that. And then you ask, what's my brain doing roughly? Like, how is it? How full is it? Or rather, what's my own energy status with my body and so on?
That's a very good question. I think taking a small moment of self-awareness at the start brings an enormous amount. And I don't think it's even just about mental aspects; it's also about things like, am I full? Am I hydrated? Have I eaten and drunk enough? Or it's also about things like, do I still need to use the bathroom? Or very banal things? And in stressful situations, you forget all of that. And then there are surely two or three more questions that can contribute a lot to clarity. For example, do I have to prove something to someone today? Am I doing the flight for myself and is it good if I'm satisfied? Or am I in a conscious or unconscious competition situation?
Do I have to beat my colleagues now? Or is there also a club championship today? Or will I have a problem if I somehow upload this into the XContest and this and this number is standing there? So, who am I doing it for? And I also think that if you know, hey, today I want to show everyone, it's very useful to make that clear to yourself. Because then you fly differently too? Yes, or because that has, for example, a huge influence
on the decisions or even on the motivation. Because there are, I know so many people who always tell me they find it so bad with the thermals and how it shakes you. And then you can ask, why are you putting yourself through that, right? Because if they know why they're doing it, they can make much freer decisions about whether they want to do it. You can ask yourself, do I want this? But if you don't know at all why you're actually doing it or if you have to endure it because everyone else is doing it, then that surely becomes important. And maybe also in other activities now; for example, in Switzerland, there are relatively many accidents in the mountains. So that's three per week. Three fatal accidents per week.
And with these mountain accidents, including avalanche accidents, what's really interesting is that it's rarely a lack of knowledge. They always knew it was dangerous. But for some reason, they wanted to do it anyway. And I think the same applies to paragliding: if you're very clear about what your motivation is, what drives you, and how you feel, then you're basically much freer mentally because you've already asked yourself those difficult questions in the valley or on the ground, and they don't just pop into your head while you're up there flying.
Are there also questions I should be asking myself while flying? I mean, one thing is basically before the takeoff, where you say, I'll do an instrument check and a mental check for myself. What other questions might be important during the flight that I could visualize?
I just know what works well for a few people. A good question is, am I in this ideal state of performance? That was, for example, last summer with Patrick von Kernel on the Vario. Just a question like that. ILZ, right? So, am I in the ideal state of performance? And if he notices, no, I'm not, he can somehow change it. So you can practice that too, either taking the gas off a bit or eating more or breathing better, or somehow understanding what's currently preventing him from flying freely. Then there are other questions, other people, where the topic of breathing and relaxation actually already helps. They're just chronically a bit too tense. So if they constantly pay attention, for example, to loosening their hands on the grip or sitting in the harness with a really relaxed back, then they're just cooler and fly accordingly better.
And I think that's the really exciting thing about the mental side. People function very individually there. So, if you look at a launch site, for example, everyone else probably has different shoes on, right? Because everyone else has different feet and that's completely okay. You might have the same glider or the same vario, but everyone has different shoes. And the mental side is also very individual. One person needs more pressure and is especially good when they have the knife to their throat and are about to drown; then they pull themselves together and perform well. The other is more stressed and needs relaxation. The third might need a friend who provokes them and says, "Today you're going to go wild again," and that gives them, like, a nudge that makes them have their best flight today.
There are people who are perfectly fine without expectations. So if they think it's not going to take off anyway and they're just going to scratch around a bit, they don't expect anything and then they fly amazingly well. And if they expect a lot, they fly poorly, and they benefit a lot from clarifying their expectations. What kind of person are you when it comes to paragliding? For me, it's very important to fly alone. Because I'm around people a lot otherwise, or maybe I'm working, or if I'm coaching people for example and we're at the launch site and we're making sure they have a great flight, then I have to let them go and fly for myself, otherwise it's like a transport flight for me.
So, for example, I always go up the four-thousand-meter peak with people again and again, and then I lead them to the summit, then we make sure they have a good start, and then sometimes it's also difficult with the wind or something, the air is thin, nerves are sometimes frayed. When they are all in the air and I'm the last to take off, I usually sit down for another ten minutes so that it becomes my flight too, because otherwise I'm in a service provider mode and just fly the way I'm told.
And actually, I prefer to walk to the launch site alone and fly for myself. That's when I can fly well.
You're a coach and you basically take this coach, you always take yourself along. So how much of this psychology and these questions and goals and everything else—all those tips you have for others—how much is the little Thomas always standing next to you, like this psychology-Thomas, where you're coaching yourself? Does that happen to you constantly too?
Actually, I can switch it off quite well. For example, I can switch it off at home at the table with the kids. I'm just there, or I practice being completely authentic. For instance, even when something upsets me. I don't want my children to always have a self-regulated father or anything like that; if I find something bad, I say it pretty directly. And I can set aside this coaching role well. And the other thing, which I also find really interesting, is that I feel
I often just find that helpful, not annoying. For example, if I'm somewhere and there's a difficult conversation, or if I'm somewhere and I don't know what to do myself right now, I think it's extremely great that I have these tools again and can say, for example,
That was such a good example just now, for instance with this Corona situation that has hit me and our company very hard in the last few weeks. That I'm also used to immediately separating facts from emotions and saying, what are the actual facts? And now, what is my feeling about it? And that's not a trade-off, but these are two building blocks that you can actually do something with. And that often makes me very capable of taking action.
Can you coach yourself well, or is it actually to the point where you'd say it makes sense to always have an external coach?
So, I'm very lucky that the people who work with us at OneDay, first of all, have to do coaching in order to work here, and I'm usually the client. And I also believe that coaching is completely overrated. I mean, if a good or attentive counterpart asks a good question, that's already coaching. It's not just the people who have somehow read those ten books or have that specific training who are coaches. That happens very often. Just like with leadership. There are many people who lead others even though they aren't in this conscious leadership role. And it always helps. I think having a counterpart always helps.
Let's jump back a bit to that time at X-Alps, you and Kriegel together. Are there things from this collaboration and from going along with Kriegel and everything else, things that you personally took away as something positive or really learned? I mean, with Kriegel, everyone sees it from the outside and says, okay, he's probably learned many systematic questions through this coaching and supporting and all that, and now other teams are trying to implement that too and stuff like that. That's being copied. What did you personally take away from this collaboration with Kriegel?
So, I think a lot, on many different levels. For me, it's two things. One is really that the person opposite you decides how much coaching they need. You can offer a huge toolbox, but the other person might not need anything at all, or just a screwdriver, or they take out something specific. And I think that, for me, was clear again—for example, in 2011 when the weather was so bad—you always have to organize it so that the athlete or the client chooses what they need and whether they need anything at all. You can't just coach someone when they're simply saying, "Everything's fine, I'm running along this road and I think it sucks, and it's also okay that I think it sucks."
I don't have to be in a good mood or anything. And how to provide that without being intrusive—I think we learned a lot from that ourselves. We had a good system back in 2003, even when things moved so fast in those six days. I wore different hats and Hegel could actually choose what he wanted from me—whether he wanted me as a mountain guide, as a coach, as a tactician, or just as a buddy. And by actually organizing it well, since everyone has different roles in this race, I think that was a good point. And the second thing, which I really also now in 2015...
what I've learned again is that one thing is the team, and the other is these X-Hubs. And the other is the whole project, and that's a triangular relationship. There's the race organization, there's the athlete, and there's the support team. You don't just have to manage the relationship with the athlete to maximize performance there; you have to build this whole triangle well. Because, for example, during the race, there was the threat of disqualification, and we also got a time penalty and such. And in this triangle, those were the corners—the organizers and the athletes. And then you have to consider, am I mediating this relationship now so that they don't start fighting?
Or do I align myself with the athlete? Or what is the most useful position there? And I think we learned an extreme amount from that as well. Like, how do you deal with this race director and this organization so that there's a good race, where one side is sitting at a table and the others are doing 5,000 meters of elevation gain on the same day and have completely different concerns? Or also, not having those resources, because you're doing the sport the whole time.
Then in 2015 after the race, I think it was November, you announced that you were stopping, that you were no longer this supporter team or whatever a supporter team means? Team Suites 1. And everyone thought the dream team was broken, for whatever reason. What was the trigger? Why did you say back then that you didn't want to do it anymore?
For me, a main thing was—I can't ramble forever—I had two kids at the time. Our company, One Day, had grown extremely. In 2015, we saw, hey, it's mega difficult to be very good at this X-Hub when you're somehow doing completely different things on the side. And how much time can you actually pour into that? I reached a point where I said, I think I've seen enough of the X-Hub now, and we'd rather communicate a clean break so that Kegel can look for a new supporter and I can focus on our company and other athletes. It just became too much.
And I always think it's good to draw a clean line and say, hey, those were some cool X-Hubs.
And in hindsight, we maybe didn't communicate very well that these are really only the things concerning this X-Hubs period. Because, if we're seeing each other regularly now and at the moment we're writing a book and doing a lot of high-level stuff and discussing various things... but I also think, how should I put it, and I'll say it the other way around, I think coaching is always good when the coach tries to make themselves redundant as quickly as possible. And if you're truly empowering someone, it also means the other person becomes so strong that they don't need you anymore. And I think you have to do that with full consistency.
And for me, it was really clear by the end of 2000 or in 2015, the rule has grown: he's got everything, he can win an X-Hubs, so he doesn't need me for that. So he should do it on his own, and then I have free time again for other clients and maybe even more difficult projects.
Now, you do a lot, coaching other athletes and extreme sports enthusiasts, and you also have a few other paragliders you coach now and things like that. Are there differences where you say, hey, paragliders tick differently than other athletes? Like, are there typical things where you say, hey, there's a Gleitschirm-Blog, why is it different? Or what makes paragliders as extreme sports athletes special to you? Where do you place them? I mean, what's special about it? I don't see the
I don't see paragliding as a cluster. I just see individual athletes in nature. And communication and personal responsibility are certainly key themes there. Whether it's a mountaineer, a sailor, or a pilot, they tick quite differently than football players. Or if we're talking about opportunities, many individual athletes are simply good because they are maximally flexible. But there are also a lot of reactions and frictions. So if three good mountaineers go on an expedition, everyone is out for maximum gain. And that starts with Reinhold Messner and these eight-thousanders, where somehow not everyone was woken up in the tent on summit day, and not everyone made it to the summit, and so on.
So you're like in a
prisoner's dilemma. You need each other, but everyone wants to be the hero, right? And then people go up the mountain in threes, but on their Instagram, everyone acts like they're alone on the summit. So there are some crazy stories, right? And I just think these paragliders learned early on that if the other person bails, that's their problem, I'm going to keep doing my thing. And while that's much clearer in other sports, you have to look, you start, there's a lot more of this social fabric and also communication skills. For that, and it impresses me, paragliders are extremely reliable.
Or I would say pilots. I know, when you make appointments or agree on certain things, many individual athletes, including those in extreme sports, have a very high level of conscientiousness. Even in everyday life. They are punctual, they are reliable, and others—well, that's what we notice, for example. Can you
explain that? I mean, what's the reason for that? Or what does punctuality have to do with flying? It sounds a bit strange at first because you say I have to constantly adjust to the new situation. You can't say I'm starting at ten, because maybe the thermals only start at half past ten or something. So there's not that much to be gained from punctuality there. So how does one thing, how does one thing fit with the other?
There is a lot of research or a major field of research. Are there predictors, so are there prerequisites for success? And simply put, there are two things: intelligence and conscientiousness. So, people who are conscientious and smart, no matter what they do, they will be successful. And I believe, in paragliding, the other way around, if you aren't conscientious, then you probably won't last long. You won't have this self-discipline or this sense of personal responsibility to be old. To do things correctly. And I believe the people we deal with are all already really good at something.
They already know what they're doing and now they want to get even better. And I just notice that they bring that with them.
So, when you say that many pilots simply have a certain level of conscientiousness—is that perhaps also something, to jump back to the very beginning, in the current Corona situation, where a lot of conscientiousness is required to say, "This is how I'll get through it best"? Conscientiousness in the sense of "I'll stay home, I'll wash my hands constantly," or whatever one takes as a measure to say, "I'll get through this, however risky, situation perhaps better." Are pilots perhaps relatively well-positioned for that?
Being conscientious might even go further. Maybe that's also something—or this diligence—meaning if I handle my equipment and myself carefully and do it well, then I'm much better in the air, but then I also, I'm saying this now, have a huge advantage in completely different topics in the valley too. What I see more with many good pilots is that if the facts are right, they can stay quite calm. So, if we're flying over a high valley or somehow we're flying over something that's not landable, but we can see the altitude and we also see the, how should I put it, the...
the glide ratio, we can be completely calm and say, hey, that's going to carry us there, over there, and over there. And I think this is because, well, it's perhaps predictable. We know roughly how far it goes, or we can glide over a long forest or a large lake. And I think this coolness can help us a lot, whereas, for example, a football player in the 85th minute doesn't know what's going to happen in the next five minutes; they're constantly on edge. And I think if we also—I dealt with a company at the beginning of the week, for example, that has massive liquidity problems. But if they take it coolly, like a jumbo jet that has an engine failure and just says, okay, hey, but we still have the altitude and that's roughly our glide ratio and that's what each day costs us, then it will probably somehow last until the end of June if the math adds up, right?
Then you can sleep well through the whole of May, because you know you've made a plan. And I think we can take this way of thinking with us from the air as well.
Well, with Corona, there's still the problem—in the current situation and with the image of me flying over a large, unlandable area and being able to say, "I have my glide ratio and I have my altitude, and I'll make it over there." At the same time, with Corona right now, it's like I'm saying, okay, we're flying over some unlandable territory for a while, but I can't see at all where it becomes landable again immediately. So, instead of saying my glide ratio is enough, right now it means maybe you need a glide ratio of 1 to 5, maybe you need a glide ratio of 1 to 20 or 25, or 1 to 50 to eventually get back to a safely landable meadow or something like that. What can you do in situations like that, when you're already up in the air and have to say, "Well, just keep going"?
No, I think that's also a good point.
This famous take-off theory matches the facts and what the eyes see. So, even if I also know,
I have so much fuel or so much wind or so much altitude, it's just enough, but I also know exactly what my job is, namely to find some lift in the next 30 days. So I just think,
to really look at the facts clearly and say, what is clear with the current forecast or even with the current lack of knowledge? And then say, as of today with this information, I have roughly this scenario. And I'm not thinking about the topic of illness right now, I'm thinking about the topic of the economy or the economic impact of Corona. Because as soon as I have a plan, even if it's mega tough, I know which direction my efforts need to go. And if I have no plan at all because I don't even have the courage to look the facts in the eye, then it gets really stressful. That also means, in order to
when flying, it can be that I'm in a situation where I'm maybe on a lee slope, I can barely hold on, I actually want to keep flying, but for now, it means I have to bite down here and just fly back and forth, hoping that the next thermals will eventually come. But I can't foresee right now when they will actually come, but I just have to show endurance, resilience, or whatever.
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a nice image, if I manage to focus on what I can influence. If I say, for example, the sun isn't there or the thermals aren't there, what I can do now is either go for a top landing and wait, or I can just sit here and fume for another half hour and focus on that, then I'm back with myself. Then I'm with what I can influence. I can also say, now I'm still fuming left and right and for that, I'll eat my sandwich in peace or take a nice photo. And then I'm in my strength or in my element and I'm doing. Whereas the opposite is, I worry about things I can't influence, which sooner or later puts me into a victim mentality,
...will bring the mindset into place. I'm a pawn of something I can't control. And that's what triggers so much stress in humans. Alright, Thomas.
I'd say that's a good way to wrap up, so that people can just move forward during this Corona time with that thought in mind—how they can persevere now so they can take off again with the next real highlights soon. Thank you for this super interesting conversation. I assume that many people can take something away from this. And yes, I wish you to get started again soon with the other projects you still have ahead of you.
You're very welcome. Thank you so much for the exciting questions, and best regards from Interlaken here in Switzerland. Thanks. Thank you.
That was Thomas Dörriard in conversation with Lucian Haas. If you want to learn more about Thomas's coaching offers, I recommend checking out his website www.oneday.ch. In the show notes for this podcast episode on my blog Lu-Glidz, you can also find several links to videos and texts about the collaboration between Thomas Dörriard and Maura Kriegel.
Finally, a quick note on a personal matter. The effects of the Corona pandemic are presenting many people with new challenges. Among other things, I am already experiencing a drop in commissions as a freelance journalist. It's not dramatic yet, but it's all the more important for me to mention that while I make the content of my blog Lu-Glidz and the podcast Podz-Glidz freely available, I'm not fundamentally giving it away for free. So, if you enjoy what I do, if you find joy and value in the many pieces of information and interviews, then I would appreciate your support for my work. How much you want to give as a contribution is entirely up to you. For those who are unsure, I recommend a non-binding guideline of one euro per podcast episode and two euros per reading month.
on Lu-Glidz. Payments are very easy via PayPal or bank transfer. You can find the relevant details on the Lu-Glidz website, specifically on the Support page. Now, stay healthy no matter what, glide through the Corona times, and let's all keep our fingers crossed that we'll be able to take off again sooner rather than later. Ciao.