Winner’ s Thoughts
Emotional Conditioning
Winner’ s Thoughts
I hated every minute of training, but I said,“ Don’ t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”- Muhammad Ali
You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy.- Arthur Ashe
Without self-discipline, success is impossible, period.- Lou Holtz
Show me a guy who’ s afraid to look bad, and I’ ll show you a guy you can beat every time.- Lou Brock( Cardinals baseball)
If you have everything under control, you’ re not going fast enough.- Mario Andretti
Just keep going. Everybody gets better if they keep at it.- Ted Williams
To uncover your true potential you must first find your own limits and then you have to have the courage to blow past them.- Picabo Street
What would you attempt if you knew you could never fail?- Robert Schuller
Emotional Conditioning
Think about it. If every Olympic athlete is in the best possible shape, what gives one an edge over another?
At the very top, elite level most athletes will have a similar speed, technique, or strength, so what’ s the differentiator?
The key is often emotional conditioning.
Nerves, doubts, or fears can often be eliminated with mental preparation, allowing the athlete to focus on their performance. Being able to handle any sort of unforeseen situation calmly is incredibly important and makes the race entirely their ow, n, unable to be altered or ruined by some outside force.
“ Emotional conditioning is crucial because once you get to any level in a sport— whether high school, Division I collegiate or the Olympics- everyone is pretty equal physically. It’ s those who can handle noise, stress, pressure, and distraction who are the ones that win,” says Jenny Susser, Ph. D., a sports psychologist in the Women’ s Sports Medicine Center at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.
It’ s not surprising then that swimmer Michael Phelps, who holds the all time record for Olympic Gold Medals, uses emotional conditioning in his training. Phelps retreats to himself, wearing a hood and listening to earphones to block out anything but what he wants to fill his mind before he competes.
Phelps knows a thing or two about how to come out on top and, for him, it’ s all about visualizing the race.
After beginning his swimming career as a tense and moody seven-year-old, Phelps’ coach taught him to imagine himself swimming a perfect race. Phelps saw himself make smooth strokes, touch the edges of the pool, and rip off his goggles at the finish to check his winning time. Phelps pictured all of this with his eyes closed. He calls it watching“ his videotape.”
Phelps also has an extensive pre-race ritual. He eats the same breakfast( eggs, oatmeal, and four energy shakes), works through the same stretching routine, completes the same 45 minute warm-up, and listens to hip hop while he waits for his race to start.
It was this consistent emotional preparedness that allowed Phelps to set a world record for the 200 meter fly in the 2008 Beijing games despite having water-filled goggles. He could have given in to panic and lost his focus. Instead, he swam the race he had always pictured.
When asked what it felt like to swim blind he simply said,“ It felt like I imagined it would.”
Adrenaline- Cont. from P. 2
The very first key to mental success in competition is learning to focus on your job and to not let negative thoughts intrude. The mind can only concentrate on one thing at a time, so rather than try to suppress what you don’ t want to happen, try focusing on what you DO want to happen.
So your job is to fill your mind with that one, GOOD, WINNING, POSI- TIVE thing. And that has to be a“ do” and not a“ don’ t”. Here’ s an example. The law of dominant thought says you will remember your most dominant thought. Say you’ ve been sitting down too early and that’ s causing your horse to drop in and hit barrels. So you tell yourself over and over“ don’ t hit a barrel” and you’ re looking in your mind at the barrel and trying to concentrate and your mind hears over and over“ hit the barrel, hit the barrel, hit the barrel.” If you think about hitting a barrel then a plus five is likely what you will get.
Instead of doing that, put something good into your head that drowns out all your thoughts about doubts and bad images. In this instance, say over and over in your head,“ drive all the way into the turn, drive all the way into the turn.” A mind works best when you tell it WHAT to do rather than WHAT NOT to do.
When you begin to worry, say that phrase( or whatever your focus thought is) over and over in your mind. It will block out all those negative thoughts and direct your powerful adrenaline-charged mind and body to the task at hand- what you need to do.
Try it. While you’ re warming up your horse, in your mind or aloud, say your directive over and over; repeat it in your head as you come into the alley and head for the first. Warning; halfway won’ t work. If you give lip service to this but are really thinking about your problem, your fears, your negative mind set, you’ ll have trouble making this work.
Try to be disciplined enough to clear your mind of anything else in the moments before your run. It may be tough at first but this is a skill you can learn.
That’ s a starting place for mending what Motivator Zig Ziglar calls“ Stinking Thinking.”