Knowing the Ropes — An Elite Sailor’s Roadmap to Mastery
Lessons from an elite athlete’s experience of learning: optimising performance through the power of technology and experiential knowhow.
The expression to know the ropes is widely believed to have its origins in the mid-1800s, when sailors’ knowhow in handling ropes was essential in order to control the ship’s sails. The only way a sailor could become competent at this was by gaining hands on experience of the appropriate procedures.
Elite-level sailor, Jake Farren-Price started learning the ropes at the age of 9, but only truly fell in love with sailing aged 12 whilst racing his second-hand Optimist dinghy, “just a small bathtub of a boat”. This marked the beginning of an arduous journey to reach the top. With a Master’s degree in Engineering Mathematics and a part-time job as a data analyst, Jake now sails for Great Britain, spending the best part of his time out on the water training in his ILCA 7 Laser dinghy with hopes of reaching the 2024 Olympics.
An elite athlete’s career is a continuous and adaptive learning process shaped by gruelling physical and mental experiences. Basketball icon Michael Jordan once said, “I’ve missed over 9000 shots in my career, I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game’s winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over & over & over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Jordan’s route to mastery is both an inspiration and a lesson in the power of experimentation, failure, perseverance, and resilience to secure a place among the very best. In other words, the power of experience.
As a data analyst, Jake likes to reflect on his own journey as a learning curve, plotting those periods when he’s had tough times and felt like he’s gone backwards, and marking the times he’s battled through them and made good jumps to become better as a sailor. He believes in the need to trust the process and build up who he is by focusing on individual points. “Seeing yourself improve and develop from where you were yesterday is where the real motivation comes from. Focus on that, and the gap will take care of itself”, he says.
In sport, as in many other fields, success happens through a combination of opportunity, support, and drive. Mastery, however, is achieved through the process of living through events, a notion famously represented in Benjamin Franklin’s quote, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” Jake’s experience of learning to sail follows the same principle — “Learning really happens when I’m in the boat, and I feel that something is working,” he says. “Watching a video is different — you think you can see what is happening when a certain manoeuvre is performed, but every day the conditions can be very different. It’s not until you’re out on the water that you know what that feels like.”
Jake can see a parallel here too with his experience of learning at university. Learning to master a mathematical concept was about being able to adapt and apply it to different problems and scenarios, in the same way he would adapt a sailing manoeuvre to different conditions. The real-life experience gained from trial and error, success and failure is what leads to proficiency. Simply having the knowledge is not what makes a champion; it’s knowing how to use and adapt that knowledge effectively — having the knowhow — that sets you apart.
This year, the EdTechX Summit will explore the ability of technology to become a veritable enabler of learning, a tool which can transform knowledge into knowhow through the holistic experience of learning. We can take inspiration from Jake’s own experience of learning, leveraging the power of technology as a data scientist to track and learn from his high points and low points. This, combined with his experiential knowhow, allows him to optimise his performance and truly know the ropes.
If you are interested in following Jake’s progress to the 2024 Olympics, visit his blog page here. You can also meet him and his boat at the EdTechX June event in London.
