Sports Psychology, Mantras, Yoga and Breathing, Part 1 of 4
JUST IMAGINE! IT WORKS!
At least 50% of your performance is psychological.
Racing wisely means making choices that align with your intention and goals while properly managing your energy. The key to this wisdom lies in your mind, not your heart, lungs, or legs. It’s the ability to know when you can and should work to change a situation—in your pacing, equipment, nutrition, or hydration—and how to do it efficiently. It’s also the wisdom to recognize what you cannot change, and to respond to those moments with grace and even humor.
Your mental skills will make or break your race. Being mentally sharp and strategic can help you overcome spotty or mediocre training. Conversely, crumbling mentally will lead to a subpar performance, no matter how well prepared you are.
Good mental skills are honed in training. You develop them organically as you challenge yourself—learning to focus and stay relaxed even when you’re working hard. Every time you surpass a perceived limit in training, you reinforce that you are capable of more than you think, especially when you stay focused.
Mental skills help you stay present in the race. We call this presence mindfulness.
Just imagine
Simply put, imagery training involves sitting in a chair, with eyes open or closed, and in the quiet of your mind, rehearsing what you want to see and feel happen during a workout or a race.
It is a conscious effort to use your mind in a way to achieve goals, versus daydreaming or wishing they will come true.
The potential impact it can have on performance IS HUGE. Olympic athletes many times cite this is the reason they won a medal.
Imagery works because it stimulates the same areas of the nervous system that are used during physical training. It's a way to reinforce learning. In endurance sports, it's a way to learn how to deal with pain and fatigue, because you can see yourself in your mind's eye transcending pain and fatigue. Or it can be a way to improve skill development, like stroke technique in swimming, breathing more slowly, improving posture, etc.
Visualizing it All – “I’ve got this”
A main reason why the majority of athletes underperform is that they may have prepared to win their event but they have not prepared to beat the competition… The competition in this sense can be defined as understanding all the physical, psychological, tactical, technical inter- personal demands of an event such as… [SWIM: crowded warm-up lanes, the noise, officious officials, slipping off the block at the start, your goggle elastic snapping, hot /cold conditions etc, or RUN: rain, cold, snow, tweaky ____, not your favorite breakfast, dislike course; ROWING: wind, cold, other environmental factors, coach sick, blister, etc.
AND YOU STILL GO FAST / WIN / GET A PR / WHATEVER
AND remember: Our unconscious beliefs drive our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. They're how we create our made up version of reality. We live as though our version is true. It's not. The World's Deadliest Belief says that "Other people and events are responsible for how I feel and behave." But they're not. The corollary to that belief is "I'm responsible for how other people feel and behave." You're not.
Stay TUNEd for Part 2 next week: The Power of Mantras!