For most hockey players, the biggest fear on a field might be losing a match or taking a painful blow to the hand. For the Indian men’s hockey team, Paddy Upton wanted to take that fear somewhere else.
Earlier this month, the team travelled to the Swiss Alps for a three-day training camp at an adventure base. It was not a conventional hockey camp. There were mountain-bike rides, steep climbs, difficult descents and sections where players had to lower themselves down vertical mountains on ropes.
The point was not to turn hockey players into mountaineers. It was to change the way they respond when fear takes over.
“In hockey, the biggest probably fear or threat might be breaking a finger or losing a game, where when you’re in the mountains on the slopes, the biggest danger there is losing a life, not breaking a finger,” Upton explained.
That difference is central to Upton’s work with the Indian team. The South African mental conditioning and performance coach, who was part of India’s 2011 Cricket World Cup-winning campaign and later worked with the Indian hockey team around the Paris Olympics, is not trying to remove fear from athletes. He wants them to understand it, experience it and learn how to function through it.
The Swiss Alps camp was designed around that idea.
“To be able to accomplish some of the tasks that we did with the players, you really need to work excellently as a team,” Upton said. “It just takes the team building, the team support, backing each other to a new level, rewiring the players’ thinking around fear.”
That thinking has a direct connection with what India experienced in Paris.
In the quarter-final against Great Britain, India were reduced to 10 men after a red card in the 13th minute. They had to play the remaining 47 minutes with a numerical disadvantage against a side they had not beaten in four years.
On paper, it was the kind of situation that could break a team. Instead, India held their nerve and eventually won the shootout.
For Upton, that match remains one of the clearest examples of what mental preparation can achieve.
“At halftime, Coach Craig Fulton said, right guys, you know, the whole world will have written us off and our history will write us off,” Upton recalled. “But we have a plan. So let’s move into action, not blame anyone, not point any fingers.”
The lesson from that night is now part of the team’s broader preparation for another demanding stretch, with the World Cup in the Netherlands and Belgium followed closely by the Asian Games in Japan.
Upton believes the current Indian side is being built with a longer view. The World Cup and Asian Games are important, but both sit inside the larger journey towards the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
“The World Cup, the Asia Games, they’re viewing this as part of the journey towards the LA Olympics in 28,” he said.
That also explains why India’s recent Pro League results do not concern him unduly. The team has been using these years to introduce younger players while keeping experienced campaigners around them.
“We’ve got a nice balance between youth and experience,” Upton said.
EXCLUSIVE ️Paddy Upton
“We expect things to go wrong. The key thing is, how do we respond?”
From the Swiss Alps to Paris, Paddy Upton is helping Indian hockey prepare for more than just opponents.#IndianHockey #PaddyUpton #HockeyWorldCup @Rahul_01Giri @OlamAgri_… pic.twitter.com/Af2g10oGMb
— RevSportz Global (@RevSportzGlobal) August 11, 2026
There is another, very modern layer to his work. During the World Cup and other major tournaments, Upton cannot spend hours with each player every day. Training, recovery, meetings and matches leave little room.
So he has created a digital version of himself, an AI-based “digital twin” trained on his mental coaching work.
The system can speak with players in Hindi through WhatsApp, around the clock.
“The players can just simply via WhatsApp, go onto their WhatsApp and have a mental coaching conversation with me at any time, any point,” Upton said. “So I’m available to them 24-7 in a language of their choice.”
The idea is not to replace the coach. Upton remains involved personally and can track the conversations. The digital twin is another tool that allows players to access the same mental framework when he is not physically around.
But perhaps the most important part of Upton’s philosophy is much simpler. He does not expect a tournament to go perfectly.
“We expect things to go wrong,” he said. “We don’t know what it is.” It could be an injury, a red card, a poor start or finding themselves two goals behind. The preparation is built around accepting that adversity will come.
“And if and when it does happen, we won’t panic,” Upton said. “The key thing is, how do we respond?”
That is the thread running from the terrifying slopes of the Swiss Alps to the 10-against-11 battle in Paris.
Upton is not preparing India for a perfect tournament. He is preparing them for the moment when the tournament stops being perfect.
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