Charlie Unwin - Inside Out: Elite Performance from Within

My sport involves split-second timing and decision making, as well as the ability to stick with it. This book brilliantly illustrates how your mind really can triumph over matter.

Frankie Dettori MBE, champion jockey

A fascinating book about how we can be the architects of our own minds. Charlie makes a highly compelling case for the defining importance of temperament, mental poise and self-awareness to high performance in any walk of life. And he tells us how to get there. A must read for anybody who wants to excel!

General Sir Peter Wall, former Chief of General Staff of the British Army

Charlies Inside Out approach is immensely valuable. I have learned so much from the book.

Lizzy Yarnold OBE, double Olympic champion

Inside Out provides a very modern approach to personal leadership, packed with valuable insights blended from science, conventional wisdom and Charlies own unique experience.

David Nicol, former CEO, Brewin Dolphin

Working with Charlie and his Inside Out approach was instrumental to my performances in Tokyo.

Sophie Wells OBE, four-time Paralympic gold medallist

Anyone interested in exploring their own performance potential is going to benefit immensely from this book.

DS, former SAS squadron commander

When it comes to performance psychology Charlie truly is an expert in his field. He played a huge role in helping me achieve my goal of becoming an Olympic champion.

Kate French MBE, Olympic champion, Tokyo 2020

This book provides great insight into the inner world of elite performance. It will help you in those key moments that define the difference between success and failure.

Joe Choong MBE, Olympic champion, Tokyo 2020

Charlie is at the forefront of performance psychology and his authentic approach is superb. He has helped me as a fighter pilot, as an advanced fast jet instructor and, more generally, in the way I live life.

Group Captain Rob Caine MBE, RAF fighter pilot

A ground-breaking philosophy for understanding and unlocking elite performance essential reading for business leaders today.

Tom Willis, CEO, Shoreham Port

A wonderfully insightful and engaging book that can help us all meet the challenges we face and have some fun along the way.

Owen Clay, Partner at Linklaters LLP

Just superb. This book combines science with practical insight and tips to help all of us constantly improve while performing under pressure.

Ed Williams QC, barrister

Charlie says all the things which as a parent you want to say, but you just cant find the right words or the right time to say them.

Parent

Meet your secret weapon.

Tatler (extracted from a January 2019 feature on the author)

Inside Out

Train your mind and your nerve like a champion

CHARLIE UNWIN

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I am so lucky to have had some amazing mentors on my journey through the military, sport and business. Thank you for asking the questions I was too scared to ask.

Thank you to my beautiful wife, Rose, without whom this book would not exist. You inspire me every day to be better and gift me the space to achieve it.

And finally to my mother, Jacqueline Unwin, who indulged me in my passions from the beginning and taught me lifes most important lessons.

Curiously, we only ever see ourselves on the outside, yet everything happens on the inside.

The Cairo sun was blazing outside and making its presence felt inside. Little effort had been made to air-condition the enormous hall, presumably to give the local athletes home advantage. Despite the heat, my focus was squarely on the target stood 10 metres away. I had completed 15 shots of a 20-shot pistol shooting competition, just the beginning of a very long day. Still to come were three hours of fencing, a 200-metre swim, a round of jumps, riding a horse that I had never ridden before, and a 3-kilometre run. I had always dreamed of being James Bond, but competing for my country in the sport of modern pentathlon was the next best thing.

As I awaited the command, for your sixteenth shot, load, the silence in the hall gave way to a disturbance at the back. A full-on brawl had broken out between the Egyptian and Russian coaches, who had clearly taken a dislike to each other. Menacing insults quickly turned physical, and security had no option but to wade in and eject them both from the hall. Despite their swift action, the damage had been done and the orderly line of 30 athletes on the range had become visibly agitated, pacing up and down along their firing positions and sipping water from their drink bottles in an attempt to stay calm and focused. It took at least 10 minutes for the competition to resume.

What happened next changed the course of my life.

On the command Load, I fed the pistol grip into my right hand and took a deep breath as I loaded a pellet into the barrel of the gun. Feeling a wave of relaxation run through my body, I raised the pistol onto the target, repeating the usual mantra in my head Calm, control, sights. As I squeezed the trigger and released the shot, I felt total focus, control and ease. The shot went straight through the centremost point of the target, known as the Centre Ten.

Over the course of the last five shots of the competition, the scores across the leaderboard dropped off a cliff. I can only imagine that EgyptianRussian tensions had stolen the concentration of many of the athletes. Conversely, I achieved something I had never achieved before, not even in training. I shot five centre tens in a row and climbed from fifteenth position into the top three.

In itself, that wasnt enough to change my life (as great as it felt). It was more what happened immediately after. I packed up my pistol and walked to the back of the hall, where I was greeted by my coach. That was amazing, he exclaimed. How did you manage to hold it together after that fight?

I was confused by his question. What fight? I genuinely had no recollection of there being a fight, or indeed that there had been any delay in the competition at all. At that point the Austrian coach approached me. He had noticed that, while all the other athletes had been walking around during the disruption, trying to stay calm and composed, I had remained rooted to the spot. Having observed my body language and eye movements he was convinced I was hypnotised!

At first I didnt know what to make of this information. Any of it. All I knew was that something had happened to me it felt like a profound experience, different from anything else I had experienced before. And I had reason to believe that it wasnt a fluke rather, it was thanks to a dramatic shift that I had made a year earlier in my approach to training.

It was around this time that I had been competing in another World Cup competition in Budapest. My experience could not have been more different. Under the pressure and expectation to get off to a good start, I remember feeling intense pulses of anxiety coupled with catastrophic thoughts of everything that could go wrong and what my coach would think of me if I didnt get the right result. It was my first ever World Cup and I remember thinking that I had to justify my selection on the team. Its amazing how many negative thoughts can race through your mind when they become untethered. Raising my arm to take the first shot, I literally had no control of the pistol. Shaking violently, I pulled the trigger and completely missed the target. It was 7.30am. I had 10 more hours of competition to go and already I was bottom of the pile. These are dangerous thoughts for an athlete and, unsurprisingly, the day didnt get much better from there.