Kim Polling
Our collaboration began during a challenging time for me. Mentally, I had been through a lot in the previous months, and I also wanted to become a mother. These were challenges accompanied by uncertainties. Could I return to the top level after a pregnancy? After Claudia Zwiers in 1998, I was the first judo athlete from TeamNL who wanted to combine elite sports with motherhood, which meant that supporting a pregnant athlete and helping her return to the highest level was also new for Garmt. However, his enthusiasm immediately gave me the feeling that I could trust that everything would turn out well. Well, guarantees are never there, but at least we would gain the knowledge and resources to make it happen. The feeling Garmt gave me after our first conversation was one of trust. So, he set to work immediately, reaching out to experts in both pregnancy and mental guidance. Before long, I had a team surrounding me to help me regain my mental well-being and to navigate my pregnancy and childbirth as smoothly as possible so that I could return as an athlete.
Within five months of my daughter's birth, I returned to the competition mat. Eight months after her birth, I stood on a Grand Slam podium for the first time as a mother, and a few months later, together with TeamNL, I won bronze at the World Championship. A year later, my two-year-old daughter was in the stands at the Paris Olympics cheering me on. So I can absolutely say that we achieved the goal of returning to the top level. But more than the results, I am deeply grateful to Garmt for how he guided me as a person. As mentioned earlier, I was struggling mentally when we began our collaboration. But with his patience and empathy, along with the rest of the team Garmt assembled, I gradually regained my self-confidence. I also greatly appreciated how Garmt supported my decision to combine elite sports and motherhood. After the arrival of my little one, judo was no longer my number one priority. As a mother, I couldn’t and didn’t want to be away from home for long periods. This meant that I often couldn't participate in the longer training camps abroad. But instead of seeing this as a problem, he always thought in terms of solutions: “Okay, you can’t attend this one, but is there maybe a training camp closer to home that you can go to?”
More valuable than the performances was the way I was guided. Under Garmt's guidance, I grew as a person and learned, for example, that it's better to think in solutions rather than problems. “Okay, this is the situation, which you can't change, but what possibilities are there to still get as close as possible to achieving your goal?”
I believe that honesty and openness have always been central. Garmt always made me feel that my opinion mattered. And when we disagreed, we could discuss it openly and share our arguments. I always felt that I could be completely honest and say anything.
If I had the choice to work with Garmt again, I would say: do it immediately! Whatever your goals are, regardless of the field (work or otherwise), I am certain that Garmt will give 100% to make your goal his goal too, and that you will achieve this objective together.