|
 Hyondo
Chung (no relation), Lincoln College Lead Faculty for Exercise
Science, has been a key member of Hyeon Chung’s training team since
2014, focusing on the tennis star’s mental conditioning. Hyondo
Chung works with the tennis star during the summers and visits
regularly with him at other times during the year.
Hyeon Chung became the youngest player to advance to the Australian
Open semifinals in the past eight years. He was the only South
Korean player ever to advance beyond the fourth round of a Grand
Slam, before having to pull out of his semi-final match against
Roger Federer due to a foot blister. Along the way Chung defeated
world number four ranked Alexander Zverev and six-time Australian
Open champion Novak Djokovic.
Lincoln College’s Chung began working with Hyeon Chung at the
suggestion of Hyeon Chung’s coach at the time, Yongil Yoon.
Hyondo Chung has worked with Korea’s legendary Hyung-Taik Lee as
well as for the Korean Davis Cup Team as a tour manager until he
moved to the U.S. to pursue a graduate degree in sport and exercise
science.
Professor Chung works with a number of professional tennis players
and says he takes a holistic approach to mental conditioning; that
is, biological and psychological factors.
He was born and raised in South Korea. In college he majored in
physical education and played tennis as an undergraduate. After
graduation, he came to the University of North Carolina, where he
received his master’s degree in sport and exercise psychology. He is
in the final stage of completing his PhD in kinesiology at the
University of Illinois.
He joined the Lincoln College faculty in 2017 to establish the
College’s new Exercise Science bachelor’s degree program, which
follows an interdisciplinary approach integrating the
biopsychosocial elements of exercise and sport to promote lifelong
health.
For athletes at the level of Hyeon Chung the rigors of traveling and
competition can be extremely stressful. That stress can adversely
affect the athlete’s performance, Hyondo Chung explained.
“Traveling around the world competing sounds glamorous, but for an
athlete, especially a young athlete, it can be very stressful,”
Chung said. “They are away from their homes and families for 35 or
more weeks out of the year. They are living out of hotels, changing
rooms every few nights, traveling to different cities, different
time zones and different cultures with different languages.
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“Something as basic as food can be very stressful for an athlete.
They arrive in a city and one of the first things they have to worry about is
whether or not they will able to find a restaurant that has food that they
like,” Chung explained. “I try to introduce them to new foods and experiences.
We go to different restaurants, for example, a Brazilian steakhouse. I try to
make it a fun thing to explore new foods. So that instead of it being a source
of stress it becomes something enjoyable.”
As anyone who has ever flown knows, there are few things as stressful as trying
to navigate through a major and unfamiliar airport. Imagine having to do that
for weeks and months on end. Chung will work with the athletes so they know how
to find strategies to reduce the stress of travel so they feel at home wherever
they are going.
One of Chung’s major goals, he explained, is to make the tour feel like home to
the athlete. For most of the year, the tour is their home and in order to
succeed they must feel comfortable with the lifestyle.
“If a player feels like they belong to the tour, they will play better,” Chung
explained.
That includes educating them on what to expect and how to adapt, raising their
comfort level with media interviews and helping the athletes gain proficiency in
English. While it may sound surprising, Chung said that it’s not uncommon for an
athlete to go into a finals match worrying, “if I win I have to do the
post-match interview.”
On the tour, interviews and press conferences are usually conducted in English
and can be a source of tremendous mental stress for athletes, who know that a
poorly chosen word or phrase can affect their careers.
Chung worked extensively with Hyeon Chung on improving his English skills.
Together, they watched contemporary American television programs like Modern
Family and Prison Break, first using Korean subtitles, then with English
subtitles and finally with no subtitles. Together they watched and reviewed post
match interviews with other players on You Tube so that Hyeon Chung could better
understand the context and culture around the questions.
While some of these strategies and exercises may seem simple, Hyondo Chung
explains that the larger goal is to help the athlete learn mental tools and
techniques that they can call on throughout their professional careers.
[Mark Gordon
Public Relations and Media Manager
Lincoln College]
[attribute] |
