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Raise Your Game: How important has education been for you?

Jody Cundy: I think all my competitiveness came from school. I went to a fairly small school so if you were in the football team, you were in the cricket team, you were in the basketball team, you were in the swimming team, you were in every team. That competitiveness was always there when we had to compete for our school. That kicked me off and I learnt a lot of things from sport that helped me in school.

RYG: How did you manage to balance your training and your school work?

JC: When I used to be at school it wasn't as hard because, at the time, I didn't have the opportunity to train as many hours as I do now. It was literally two hours in the evening, five nights a week. It was fairly simple to do, you just need to fit in your homework around it, which isn't a problem if you do it when you get home from school.

When I was swimming weekends were left free for racing. You need to timetable yourself and get the work done when it needs to be done - fit it in around the sports that you're doing.

RYG: How important is good time management if you want to be a successful athlete?

JC: Good time management is what gets us by. If you don't say to yourself 'I've got to do this by this date,' you're never going to get things like schoolwork done along with training. You can't sacrifice anything other than your free time.

You can't say 'I'm not training because I need to do schoolwork,' you need to do both of them to the best of your ability. You need to plan it out so you can fit both in. Write out how you're going to divide your time between training and schoolwork. It takes a bit of practise but it's something I've done fairly well.

RYG: How important is it to set yourself goals if you want to achieve success?

JC: Little goals are how our whole sporting programme is put together. We have a big goal - which is to say 'I want to win a Paralympic medal.' To achieve that you have lots of little goals like 'Must go quicker on the first length.' If you manage to achieve those as you go along then that final goal that you've aimed for is attainable. If you try and do it all in one then it seems to be an impossible task.

RYG: How important is it to use maths in sport?

JC: In swimming you need to work out how many lengths you're going to be doing. You need to work out what time you're going to be turning around. From there you need to work out your split times and how you're going to break down a race. You need to complete certain parts in a certain time.

You know that if you go out in a 30 second first length then to do it in 60 seconds you're going to need to come back in 30 seconds. Maths helps you work out how you're going to attack races.

Within cycling everything's worked out in numbers. We have power charts, speed charts, cadence, we have altitude and heart rate measurements. All these things that we use in training use maths. You need to develop an understanding of all these measurements if you're going to become a better athlete. You need to understand the science behind the sport if you're going to progress.

RYG: How much does IT help you progress in cycling and swimming?

JC: Over the last couple of years IT has become central to both sports. All the programmes I have in cycling come from Excel spreadsheets. All the weights programmes I do get logged in an electronic chart.

The whole drugs system is computer based too. You have to do that so you don't miss any drug tests. UK Sport provides a database of all the banned and acceptable substances you can use. You can also use it to check medication you might be using. You type in the name of the prescription you've been given, the sport that you compete in and the programme checks it against the governing body's regulations. It then tells you all the ingredients that are in that product and if they're prohibited or not.

Basic IT skills are essential if you want to stay clean and to make sure that the drug tests never go the wrong way. All our performance statistics are recorded and you can use them to plot your progress through training and competitions.

RYG: How has sport helped you when confronted by problems and difficult situations?

JC: You can apply lots of the lessons learnt through sport to life in general. You know how to deal with sitting in a warm-up room with lots of nervous people around you. You learn how to deal with the pressure of having to perform at a particular time.

If ever you're faced with a stressful situation in life you can think to yourself 'I did this in the pool and it helped,' or 'I did that on the track the other week so I know how to deal with it.' Some people haven't had those experiences and wouldn't know how to deal with it.

The difference between the top athletes and the rest is the ability to perform under pressure. If you go to an Olympic final everybody's done the same amount of training. They're there because they're the best of the best. It comes down to their ability to deal with the situation better than the others, and to not crumble under the pressure.

If you've got a deadline in school you need to break the task down into small parts, stay calm and do it to the best of your ability.

RYG: When you're in the middle of a hard training session and every muscle in your body is telling you to stop, how do you stay motivated?

JC: There are lots of times when you doubt yourself or when your mind wanders off the job in hand. I like to think of certain bits of music to get me through or to count in my head as I go.

The prospect of winning gold medals, standing on top of the podium with your anthem playing reminds you what you're doing it for. You have to remember that to get the best out of something you need to go through some low times. The rewards that you get at the end of it make it all worth it.

RYG: What skills have you acquired through sport that have helped you in life?

JC: General teamwork. In sport you need a team behind you to be able to progress. You need your coach, you need your parents to take you around. You need your other team mates to support you. You need all those people to inspire you to go a bit faster. Those are all things that employers look for in the future. I think there are lots of good life lessons that you can learn through sport.