What are you thinking?

Psyching for Sport: Mental Training for Athletes by Terry Orlick is required reading for any endurance athlete. It will change the way you think, and it will change what you think about. All of Terry's books can be found here. Do yourself a favor and get a copy of Psyching for Sport. [Out of print.]

Here's a quick review of some of the important topics that Terry covers:

In high-performance sport you should focus your energy on yourself and on the event within your potential control.

Goals for the Competition Day

All world-class athletes have the dream of some day becoming a champion. That underlying goal helps many athletes maintain motivation and carry intensity to training and competitions. However, when you get to the line and it is time to compete, a focus on outcome is not what helps most athletes perform best, even if the underlying desire is to win. You can have the goal of winning, but not while you are competing.

I have never encountered an athlete who had an all-time best performance while focusing on winning or losing during an event. The problem with thinking about winning or losing within the event is that you lose focus of what you need to do in order to win. In that sense it is self-defeating.

Olympic champion Larry Cain (canoeing) and World Cup champion Laurie Graham (alpine skiing) prefer to be highly energized before the start of the event and have found that thinking about wanting to win before the event has sometimes helped them to activate (become fired up or charged). However, once they are at the starting line or performing within the event, the focus must be on what is within his or her own immediate control. You can’t control judges or officials and you can’t control the performance of other athletes. You only control yourself and your performance.

Most athletes with whom I have worked have found that thinking about winning, or focusing of the goal of winning before the event, creates additional unwanted stress. They usually find that they are already activated enough, prefer to be more relaxed, or are unsure of their capacity to win. Under these circumstances, highlighting an on-site goal of winning usually increases stress or worry takes the athlete’s focus off the specific task and is therefore not likely to be helpful.

Extending your Limits

When normal, untrained people are confronted by fatigue signals, they do the sane thing: They slow down or stop. When you are faced with fatigue signals, you may also be tempted to slow down because iit seems like the easiest thing to do. However, if you listen to fatigue signals and interpret them in the same as untrained people, you will fall short of your goals and potential almost all the time.

For trained athletes, muscles screaming with fatigue do not normally represent a physical risk, nor are they a valid indication that there is nothing left in the muscle. It’s a question of calling on upon the reserve that remains. It is a cue to begin drawing from the well. Committing yourself to do this before the race will help immensely as will highly energized cue words in response to a predetermined kick point.

When highly conditioned athletes fail to draw from the well, it is usually a result of their not making a pre event commitment to do so or not having a focus strategy to do it within the event.

Event Focus

If we look at top athletes’ best performances, it is clear that their focus allowed them to remain completely “connected” to the task before them. Preplanned points in the race can be used to check pace and make adjustments. Preplanned checkpoints and focus cues are designed to help the athlete perform efficiently and to stay on the event plan.

In longer events it seems best to have some general psychological cues and also to break the event down into critical parts. General cues serve as reminders that you can use throughout the event or game whenever needed to maintain your best focus. They may be related to technique, to a relaxed focus, or self-encouragement (“I can do this”). If, in addition to developing these general cues, you can break your event into critical situations and prepare specific sues for dealing with each of these situations, you will have a good chance of holding your best focus throughout the event.

Refocusing within the competition

Distractions, errors or worries within the event can lead to negative self-talk or self put down. The negative focus or distraction will only hinder your performance. Focus back on what is likely to help your performance.

A refocusing plan for use within the competition is a way of staying on top of things even under adverse conditions. This plan should break you away from unwanted distractions, negative thoughts, and frustrations and get you back into the game or refocus on the specific task you want to accomplish.

Mitch Gold