BODY, MIND, and BALANCE
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Mastering the Body and MindFeatured in www.transitiontimes.com December 2004I appreciate you taking the time to read this. Besides the time that you commit to training for your sport(s), I am sure that you are juggling many other activities in your active life such as family, work, school, and volunteer organizations among others, so once again thank you! While this writing is intended primarily for the newer athlete, it can be a useful review for the seasoned veteran. Most athletes (myself included at times) have not met their expectations for a particular event. In several instances, this can be due to two primary factors that have handicapped us. These involve our physical preparation and our psychological preparation. Fortunately, both of these can be addressed with favorable outcomes. Below, I have highlighted some useful suggestions that might be beneficial to you in mastering your body and mind. The first suggestion regarding physical training is to stimulate race conditions. If you are racing in a triathlon with a mass swim start, a bike course with no shade, and a hilly run course, then you want to stimulate these conditions in your training. One athlete that I have trained at www.powerfulathlete.com, had his children invite a few friends over and then he proceeded to swim in his pool and offered each of his children and their friends a dollar each time they could dunk him underwater while he was swimming. Now mind you, the oldest child was only eight, but he certainly stimulated what could happen in a mass swim start! If the bike course has no shade, you might want to think about doing the majority of your training in areas that offer little to no shade instead of inside on the bike trainer. When I was training for Ironman Lake Placid in 2002, I spent over half of my running workouts on hills since Lake Placid’s run course is more than a bit hilly! It is also useful, if at all possible, to at least drive the (bike and run) course prior to the race. It is even more beneficial to actually swim, bike, and run the course before the race, especially if you are shooting for a personal best. The second suggestion for physical training is one that has been around for a while, but often overlooked. This is the concept of tapering. Athletes are very vulnerable to deleting this from their program. We train and get faster, train a bit more and get a bit faster than before, so therefore if we train hard all the time right up to the day of the race we should be in the best condition possible. Unless you are Scott Molina or Karen Smyers, you are probably going to hurt your chances of doing the best you can unless you include a taper for your priority races. This is simply reducing the training frequency, duration, and intensity of your workouts leading up to your race. This will vary from athlete to athlete and also will need to be modified due to the distance of the event. When I wanted to establish a personal best on a 5K run course that I had done the previous year, I reluctantly included a taper in my plan so I could at least convince myself that tapering really wasn’t useful at all (I am a former overtrainer). Well, I broke my time by over thirty seconds when I had expected to maybe improve by fifteen at the most. Needless to say, I have become a big fan of tapering! In terms of mastering the mind, there are some useful psychological techniques that can serve us well in our athletic pursuits. The first is called progressive relaxation. This is a process that can take as little as five minutes where one tenses and then relaxes different parts of their body, while simultaneously breathing slowly and deeply. Many athletes also include visualization in this as well. For example, while you are going through the process of progressive relaxation, you can visualize yourself swimming smoothly, biking efficiently, and running lightly. I know that this sounds a bit out there, but I have seen this work with the athletes that I coach as well as patients in my clinical practice who are dealing with stressful situations as well as phobias. Another psychological technique that one can incorporate into their training is the power of asking oneself effective questions. This is a branch of cognitive psychology that states that the way we think about our situations will largely determine whether that situation has a positive or negative outcome. Let’s take an example where a triathlete estimates that her swim time for an event should be ten minutes, but actually takes twelve. She might ask herself, “How come I swam so bleeping slow and how am I ever going to make up all that time?” This will probably lead to a negative outcome in which she will feel doubt, increased stress, increased body tension, and ultimately a slower time because of this. Now what if she asked herself, “How can I make up a bit of time in the next few minutes and enjoy the race as much as possible?” This will most likely lead to a more favorable outcome because she is already assuming that she will enjoy the race and is focused on only the next few minutes compared to the entire race in terms of making up some time. When we feel we have more control and power over a situation, we tend to respond more favorably. Asking effective questions is one way to increase our sense of control and power. There you have it for now! It is hoped that this will be useful to you during the racing season. Hopefully, I will be asked to write again for Transition Times and to have the opportunity to assist you in having your best season ever! Cory Bank, Ph.D. Founder of
The Abington Center For Therapy And
Sports Psychology and
www.powerfulathlete.com |
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Created: 12/24/05 |
