Start Now

Developing mental skills takes time.

Mental toughness, grit and resilience are attributes that come through refinement and practice.

Like learning an instrument the more you deliberately practice, the more naturally they come in challenging and adverse situations.

Let’s take self-talk as an example. Trying to practice with a mantra you learned just hours before a race may help some what. But let’s say there are unexpected challenges during the race, you use the mantra, but find it doesn’t quite fit. It sounded nice just hours ago but it doesn’t really fit in the moment. Or you simply forget about it and lose focus.

Now let’s say when you first started training for the race 18 weeks or so ago, you had a couple of mantra’s, you wrote them out on your hand, tried them out during workouts, long runs, when things got really hard. You noted them in your training journal. You found one that you gravitated to more and more, practiced with it in more challenging situations, refined it. Race day comes, you’re 20 miles into a marathon, really starting to suffer - but the mantra you practiced since your early training is memorized and paired with the tired feeling you have, you repeat it, you visualize it, It has meaning, it gives you power. You believe it. It comes naturally. Because you’ve practiced - your rate of perceived exertion is less and you are able to exert more for a longer period.

So start now. Whether it’s imagery, self-talk, mindfulness or any number of skills - start now.

Many runners and cyclists hit the gym in the fall and winter. Base mileage starts to increase - this is the time to start integrating mental skills into practice, whether you’re picking it up from a book or a mental performance consultant like myself, start - now. And with COVID-19 keeping you out of races - now is a great time to experiment, find what works what doesn’t. Build it into repertoire as an athlete. This is your opportunity.

If you have questions - give me a holler, I am always happy to answer them and discuss.