Mental techniques for enhancing sports performance must be used correctly.
Very often, in fact, athletes make mistakes in their use that preclude their effectiveness resulting in distrust and frustration. When this happens, the athlete experiences a "dislike" of these mental techniques and will hardly use them in the future, considering them an unnecessary waste of time. It is therefore necessary to be on guard and try to recognize and monitor as much as possible the mistakes that can be made in the exercise of mental training techniques.
Mental techniques: some advice to make them productive.
- Not having magical expectations. To think that they will turn us into champions, that they will allow us to win an Olympic medal or that they can replace physical training is misleading as well as unrealistic. Commitment, training and constancy in practice are not discussed and are essential to achieve good results in any sport you practice.
- Mental techniques are not a guarantee of success. Rather, they are the "condiment" of good physical training. Fundamental because they support and motivate the athlete to persist and develop a mental attitude that allows him to get the most out of training and competition situations.
- Then you have to give time to these mental techniques to work. It is unrealistic to think that a technique works after only a couple of times.
- Don't be in a hurry. Mental techniques require continuous exercise, constant refinement and readjustment according to the context of application, be it training or competition. Being in a hurry doesn't pay off, in essence. Like all learning, it takes time to consolidate.
- Focus on a single possible scenario. Many athletes in their mental work focus on a single perfect scenario, the perfect race and excellent results in their competitive efforts. This is a big mistake as it does not train for the unexpected, for the effort of achieving the goal. Although it is necessary to train to visualize a positive result, as it represents a fundamental motivational lever, it is essential to think of such a result in a wide variety of possible alternative scenarios.
- Focus on a single possible scenario. Many athletes in their mental work focus on a single perfect scenario, the perfect race and excellent results in their competitive efforts. This is a big mistake as it does not train for the unexpected, for the effort of achieving the goal. Although it is necessary to train to visualize a positive result, as it represents a fundamental motivational lever, it is essential to think of such a result in a wide variety of possible alternative scenarios.
- Identify alternate scenarios. For example, it is not useful for you to focus on the perfect race by imagining yourself ahead or winning from the start, but rather to consider races in which you recover from a disadvantaged situation, despite material problems, bad weather, a change in the race course or start time, and other "imperfect" conditions. If you have mentally trained to deal with different and difficult situations, you will be more likely to remain calm, focused and confident regardless of what may happen on the day of the race.
- Retracing mistakes made mentally. Another typical mistake that athletes make is to mentally retrace over and over again the mistakes they made during a race in an attempt to understand what went wrong. Obviously learning from their mistakes is very useful and fundamental in the competitive life of an athlete, but fossilizing on the error and brooding over what happened prevents you from detaching yourself from the past and focus on the present.
- Letting go of negative thoughts are useless and misleading. The imperative is therefore to let go of overly invasive thoughts and ruminations, replacing the image of error with a correct execution of the athletic gesture. Our body follows the instructions that the mind gives it, so if we do not rewrite the error and replace it with a "correct" image, there will be no room for good execution.
- Mentally repeating a well executed action over and over again until it becomes natural is an excellent training that will bring important benefits to the performance once it is performed concretely.
Emotional activation.
Emotional activation deserves a special mention. A further error that athletes may encounter is that they activate too much or, on the contrary, activate too little on race day.
Too much
Too much energy and tension before the race results in a collapse or worsening of athletic performance. Being overly charged and wanting to overdo are attitudes that don't pay off. When an athlete is in this condition, he risks pushing too much, to exaggerate in the conduct of the race going beyond what has been tried in training. In addition, excessive tension can "make you forget" the mechanisms established in training and can compromise the accuracy of movements. When the activation is excessive since the day before the race, it can have a negative impact on rest, preventing the athlete from recovering during the hours of sleep.
Few
On the other hand, poor activation can lead to a renunciation or devaluation attitude such as: "I don't care, this race is not so important". When the athlete gives little importance to the race, if he did not get a good result he was able to prevent personal disappointment and other people's judgment. This a priori attitude prevents the sportsman from fighting, from investing in his own commitment and in the race itself. Ultimately, the athlete pulls himself out of the games before he even starts. In these cases it is a defence mechanism that the athlete uses to protect himself from frustration when he feels that he is not sufficiently prepared, that he does not have control of the situation or that he fears the race.
The right compromise
A fair amount of mental activation is therefore essential for a good race. Athletes need to give themselves time, train and gain experience to learn what their ideal level of activation is to express themselves at their best.
Mental techniques are a valid support to the improvement of performance as long as they are used in the right way and cannot be ignored or trained if you think you want to achieve results in sport. The role of the mind in the process of training and performance is fundamental, don't forget it!