I have two outcomes for my talk today. First I want to share a series of great mental training tips and strategies. You can actually practice these on your training runs. It is a way of getting double the benefit of your training runs.
I also want to remind you to use my blog. It has lots of articles on very similar topics to what I am talking about today. Many are from previous presentations I’ve given.
My Top Ten Tips for Psyching up for a race:
My friend Stewart Hughes lives in Utah and bought a home near Salt Lake and it had a tennis court. So he decided to learn tennis and hired the U of Utah tennis coach to give private lessons to his family. One day during a conversation it came out this coach was doing some research for a sport psych degree on the personality makeup of world class tennis players and athletes.
The coach said there were five key traits and one of them accounted for 80% of the effects. They are: self-confidence
Character
Emotional stability
Athletic Ability
Self-Motivation
Self-Motivation was the most important factor in sports excellence and probably in marathon training as well.
How do you get Self-Motivation? By setting goals and meeting commitments.
2—Goals are usually considered as the single most important tool for improving performance in sports. Think of developing smart goals: S specific; M measurable; A achievable; R recorded; T timebased.
I ran across an interesting way to look at goals: a Pyramid with 3 layers, allowing you to see the big picture.
The base of the pyramid is your vision or story describing the big picture and how you want it to look. These are your long term goals, precise levels of achievement you want to accomplish: finish the marathon, qualify for Boston, a time goal.
On the next level are your weekly performance goals, specifying frequency, intensity, duration of workouts for the week.
At to top are your physical and mental goals for each training session. Daily goals.
By using this pyramid approach, every workout is directly connected to your big story. Feeling good about achieving your daily and weekly goals is motivational and has a cumulative effect on your attitude come race day.
3—Know the course---good to practice this on training runs; helps to plan race strategy accordingly.
4—Learn to regulate level of tension and use relaxation techniques before and during the race to control tension. Stay loose and Centered.
Relaxation training; Deep breathing; muscle tensing and relaxing.
Bud Winter San Jose track coach Relax and Win book; 90% rule
Bud was probably first sports psychologist. 100% effort not as fast as 90%
Glen Mills went to one of his workshops; he later became the coach for Usani Bolt.
5—develop Positive affirmations/power words
Using Positive self-talk
“I am comfortable being uncomfortable.” “All the Way” Yes I can
Smooth and relaxed Tough Strong
I am doing the best I can
Mood words like Power and Strength
Use these thoughts and words especially at those moments when negative thoughts show up; they are sure to do so during a race.
6—Use Imagery before and during the race. Why imagery is effective: free throw shooting studies.
Influences performance; it can enhance athletic performance and can be a more effective practice tool than no practice at all. Effective in basketball shooting, volleyball serving, tennis serving, golf shots, placekicking, figure skating, swimming starts, diving, skiing, running, dance and rock climbing.
For example:
Imagine yourself at difficult points in the race, feeling calm, focused and energetic.
If fatigued picture your lower body as a horse on which you are riding; going downhill picture self as a sled; Frank Shorter Gold in 1972 Munich imagined his legs as bicycle wheels
Plan for and during the event use, specific images(visual, phrases, words) at particular cue spots.
Experiment: close your eyes and imagine you can see yourself running in your mind’s eye
7—Use thought strategies
Association---scanning your body, stride, respiration
Dissociation—musical phrases, counting trees, thinking of friends
Reframing the Pain: Sensations of Endurance Sport Effort
This is the body’s way of telling me I am running at my race pace
The feelings/sensations are feedback
8—Run for yourself, not against someone else
9—Expect at least something which you planned on won’t go the way you planned it. Decide now how you will forgive yourself then.
10---similarly, when you know you will be facing an emotional dilemma you have to make a decision on how you will handle it before hand, not when you are in the emotional dilemma. Decide now that you will Never Never Never Quit.
