Athlete Stories - Charlie Myers

“ I turned up to the track and he took me over to the pole vault coach and I had my first session. Understandably, I was terrible”

The Beginning 

When someone finds out I do pole vault, the first question on their lips is “how on earth did you get in to pole vault?”. Unfortunately, I don’t have any crazy stories to tell of how I started. As a kid in school, I loved all sports and just being active, but was never amazing at anything. I played for my local football team (Coulby Newham) from a young age and from the age of 12 I got convinced to join a Sprinting group with my Friends at the local track, Clareville stadium. A year down the line I was the only one out of my friends still in the group. During one sprint session, when I was about 13, I saw a group across the track training for pole vault and it looked like so much fun. Sharing my excitement with my training partners, my sprint coach overheard me and said, “next time your down you can have a go if you want”. One of the most influential people in my sporting career was my first athletics coach, Dave Welford, because before he had even seen me jump, his words were, “I could see you jumping 5 half meters in the future”, to which I just laughed. True to his word the next session I turned up to the track and he took me over to the pole vault coach and I had my first session. Understandably, I was terrible, but it was the most fun I’ve had just flinging myself off a pole and over a bar. From that first session I never thought I would ever achieve the things I have, travel to the places I have and met all the people I have but thanks to Dave Welford, that’s the path I was destined for. And who would of thought I would actually jump 5.71m, but Dave. 

There Came a Point where I was doing a lot of different sports and had to make a decision on what I wanted to concentrate on. To Put it into perspective how mad about sport I was, one Saturday I went to an athletics competition at 10.00am ran 2 sprint races, left the competition and went to a football game for 12:30pm Kick off and played the full game, after that I went back to the athletics competition and high jumped. From this I decided to make the hard decision to tell my dad, who was my football coach and loved football, that I didn’t want to do it anymore and that I wanted to concentrate on my athletics. 

In my First year of doing pole vault, I achieved the standard to go to the English schools Which was the national event for my age, in which I did terrible. I came dead last. I was so upset and embarrassed I made sure it wouldn’t happen again. Over my School years I ended up winning 2 silvers and 1 gold at the same competition and an England international vest in 2015 which I went on to win that event. Year 11 was the point I knew pole vault was the sport for me, not because I was talented and doing well just because I loved it and worked hard. I had a big decision to make in my career and I decided to leave my friends in Middlesbrough and go to Gateshead college to be able to train with Chris Boundy while I studied. This meant a 5:30am wake up and 2-hour bus ride to college and back to my house in boro at 10:30pm every day for two years. 

“Hard Work Beats Talent When talent doesn’t work hard”

This Is the motto I work off. I’ve never classed myself as talented or that I’m amazing at what I do. If anything, I always put myself down thinking I’m not good enough in a lot of things not just pole vault. But I truly believe in this quote. I’ve worked my socks off and from that me and my team; Paul Parker (S&C/Nutrition), Chris Boundy (Pole Vault) and Alison Gorell (psychologist) have achieved things I never thought I would. From using this motto I made that decision to move away for college and it paid off because all those early mornings and hard training sessions, my first year of fully concentrating on Pole vault I gained my First ever Great Britain and northern Ireland vest to compete at the European Juniors in 2015 to which I finished 5th and jumped a PB of 5.25m after that. I then said to myself I don’t want this to be a one off and a fluke, I wanted to compete for GB at least once every year. My Coach Chris Boundy says to me all the time, “give them no option but to select you, take the choice out of their hands” and that’s what I have done. I have since competed for GB every year since 2015 at least once a year in competitions such as World and European Junior Championships, European u23 Championships, European Indoor & outdoor championships, Athletics world Cup, European team championships and world university games. 

The Dream Team 

Now to talk about the making of the dream team. So, I was awarded the pleasure of having Paul as a S&C coach on a one-to-one basis through my scholarship to Northumbria University in 2015. When me and my coach Chris first sat down with Paul at the beginning of the semester, I won’t lie I hated the gym and all things to do with weights. I was a skinny, lanky kid and always tried to get out of S&C session during college because I was embarrassed of my ability. The first thing Chris asked Paul to do was put some muscle mass on me because I weighed 70kg and was 6ft 3. I was very reluctant to the idea of S&C at the university at first but not because of Pauls ability, more of the fact that it was a step up from college and there was going to be professional athletes lifting big weights in the gym and I would be this young lanky boy in the corner, but I knew I had to do it to become better with in the back of my head I had thinking “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”. Over the first couple of weeks, I soon realised I couldn’t be more wrong of what I thought it was going to be like. To start, Paul was one of the smartest, nicest, and most positive guys I have ever met, who made me feel comfortable and got it through to me that it’s all relative to yourself, so who cares if the person next to you is lifting 100kg more then you, his sport can demand different things and he could weigh more which means he would naturally be able to lift more. This gave me lots of confidence in the gym and with that and the warm welcoming of all the staff and other athletes in the gym I grew to love the gym and to this day I get excited for my S&C sessions. 

I have been working with Paul for 6 years now and along with my coach, Chris, we work great as a team and have been through a lot of highs and lows together in and out of the sport which we have all help each other with. The only way I can explain Paul to other people is by calling him a S&C wizard. He just knows everything there is to know about performance. I believe that there are a lot of good S&C coaches out there at the moment with the knowledge and experience to back it up just like Paul, but the thing that I believe separates Paul from a good Coach to a world class coach is that he gets to know you as a person, not just an athlete. He knows how to coach you and understands not all athletes are the same. He knows how to motivate you when you’re not feeling the best or feeling down and everything in-between. I owe everything to Paul and Chris from what they have done for me. I know athletics I classed as an “individual sport” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. They work just as hard as me and every time I achieve a vest or a medal, they should be there with me. Not to mention the rest of the team, just as family and training partners.

Overcoming 

I think everyone can agree whether you’re a professional athlete, Sunday league footballer or just a gym goer, Injuries are a b*tch. Everyone gets them and I’m no exception, we all get them, and all have horrible stories of how they affected us. I've had many different injury’s small little niggles and big season ending Injuries have been hard and affect me mentally. I have torn my hamstring at big competitions such as British championships and world university games - causing me to pull out of the competition in warm up and those type of things hit hard. You work so hard for that competition for months on end and it’s gone in the space of one jump. The Injury that was the worst and haunted me for the longest was my Achillies. For the full season, Indoor and out, I had pain in my Achillies, effecting my ability to walk and do everything. I saw a lot of physios who did every treatment under the sun and all told me different things, and nothing seemed to work. I'm not one for excuses and never use them so the only people who really knew about it was my family and coaches. It got to a point where I was sick of it and decided to still jump and not waste a season. I would compete on a weekend in pain and just get through the competition and then it would be that bad the week after I wouldn’t train all week and then just compete the weekend after. So, for a full season I didn’t train and use to just jump in pain because I wasn’t going to use it as an excuse. Surprisingly, I Jumped my PB of 5.71m which was the World Championships qualifier and British u23 record whilst I was in the most pain I have ever been in with my Achillies but hey, the show must go on. This is why it’s important to find a physio who works for you and know your body, as a physio that might be good and work for one person might not for you. After over a year of being in pain I eventually found a way to help it and got back to training. It wasn’t till after this I found a Chiropractor who was a genius. He helped me sort my body and was able to clear up any achilles issue as soon as it flared up slightly or threatened to resurface.

Now for the hard part for me to talk about. I was debating whether mentioning this part as I know a lot of people have went through similar stuff and harder times than I have but I feel like now more than ever it’s time people need to talk about it more and more, so I am briefly going to tell you my experience with mental health. 

If you know me, you would know I’m a very happy joking guy who doesn’t take myself or anything to serious. But during 2019 this was only the case on the outside, on the inside it was a whole different story. My close family, coaches and my best friend started to ask me if I was okay to which I always replied I’m fine stop asking me. They noticed a very slight change in my behaviour, just very slight, the kind of slight as in not as chatty or making one less joke a day. At this point I didn’t see anything wrong with myself, but there was. Behind closed doors I had just came back from a very frustrating injury, I was living off pennies because all my money was going into athletics and then my athletics wasn’t going great at the time. You might be thinking “so... everyone has problems like that”, and I agree and that’s why I just shrugged it off and tried to deal with it myself whilst pretending to be fine. This slowly over time started to escalate to where all that stuff was still happening, just a little bit worse. I was worrying about being able to pay my rent but was too proud to ask for help of my family, training still wasn’t going great, I felt like I didn’t have a social life and felt like no one would even realise if I was gone. From these events and thoughts, let’s just say I went to a very dark place. My dad had serious depression years ago and I was in denial that I was going down the same route so kept everything to myself. From all of this mounting up I had a very stupid idea that could have ended a lot worse than it did to say the least. It got to a point where I just wasn’t myself and my best friend Dan Walsh could see, so every day he would be constantly checking if I was good. This went on for a while where I was not jumping well and not wanting to pole vault anymore. It then all just hit me one day and I realised I don’t want to end up in hospital like my dad did or worse so after breaking down on the phone to my Mum on night on my way home from training I agreed to go get help and see a doctor. 

Still to this day I am on anti-depressants and only a hand people know about it. I feel so thankful to my family, friends and coaches for what they did and see that slight change in me because someone else could of being writing this right now. I now feel comfortable in talking about it when things aren’t going great, maybe not to everyone, but to my friend, Dan, I am if I need to and to my family about certain things. This is also one of those things I was talking about separating a good coach for a world class coach. Both Paul and Chris spotted this change in me and from that Paul introduced me to a contact of his, Alison Gorrell, a sport psychologist who I have now been working with for a year and it’s like I am a completely different person with the way I think and deal with everything life has to throw at me. I was that type pf person who thought you only got a psychologist if you were crazy, but I now know how wrong I was and would advise anyone in sport to talk to a sport psychologist even if you’re fine, as they can help with so many things to do with your sport, performance and mindset.

“A happy Vault Makes a good Vaulter” - The wise words from Chris Boundy. I’ve been round in a circle from starting the sport because of the love for it, to hating it and wanting to quit, back to realising why I started and falling back in love with it all over again. I’m not in the sport for the money and fame and never will be, I don’t make a lot of money from the sport, I coach on the side to make a little extra cash. I do it for the same reason I started in the first place because I love it and always will so I have no ambition to live a high life from the sport, as long as I can pay my rent and pole vault, I’m a happy lad. 

I feel like these days there are a lot of people who get caught up in “trying to be an athlete” i.e. Looking good on social media, wearing the best kit and forgetting about the training side and the real reason they started. I know this because I was one of them for a little bit, this contributed to my mental health problems and one reason why I fell out with the sport. Always feeling like you have justified a bad competition when really you should just say “sh*t happens”. When I got back to what matters and why I started the sport I was so much happier, and training started going amazing. Like everyone, I have my bad training days, but now I just laugh and move on. 

Currently I am aiming for the Tokyo Olympics where I’m 9cm off the qualifier standard and with covid making it that little bit harder I’m enjoying the challenge. Everyone is in the same boat with COVID so it’s pointless complaining about it. Over the next few years, I don’t want to put a cap on where I want to be or how high I want to jump because the sky literally is the limit. From starting at 2.10m in my first competition to now jumping 5.71m just shows hard work does beat talent when talent doesn’t work hard. 

The question everyone asks when you tell them you’re an athlete is “have you been to the Olympics?” 

I want to be able to say, “yes”. I want my parents to be proud in saying “yes, my son has”. 

With the team I Have @_PRPerformance @nepva @CoachGorrell and the support of my family I know we are going to do big things.

Thanks for reading.