BODY, MIND, and BALANCE
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I appreciate you taking the time to read this article and hope that in some small way that it assists you in meeting your triathlon goals for the 2007 season. This article is a bit longer than some of the others that have been published in transitiontimes.com, but I feel that the following might be of value to you for your 2007 year. Many of the athletes that I have coached over the past five years at powerfulathlete.com start out by communicating to me their annual goals for the upcoming season. These athletes are highly motivated to succeed, diligent with their efforts, and passionate about the pursuit of their goals. One of the jobs as an online coach is to make sure that each athlete is training intelligently in order to ensure their success. The following are four common and crucial areas (italicized and underlined) with a key ingredient (bold faced) in each. By learning more about these areas and ingredients, it should provide a greater chance for you in achieving and exceeding your triathlon goals in 2007. The first area is paying attention to your physical training. Specifically, this involves avoiding the trap that many of us have fallen into known as overtraining. It can be described as feeling burned out from training and/or competing, having dead (very tired) legs, decrease in athletic performance, and a higher resting heart rate. It is important to remember that as the season wears on that we are more prone to this due to the cumulative effect from the miles and hours of training. One useful way to avoid overtraining is to either use a heart rate monitor or to go by perceived exertion to train in the correct training zones. The majority of training days should be on the easier side (aerobic ranges) with the minority of training days at a very hard effort (anaerobic ranges). The concept becomes even more important as the distance increases in training and/or racing. It is much better to come into a race 5% under trained compared to 1% over trained. This has been found to be highly beneficial for the novice through the professional triathlete ranks. The second area that can greatly contribute to a successful 2007 season is your psychological training. One area that is crucial to pay attention to is called cognitive scripting. This is basically a branch of cognitive psychology that states that the way we think about our situations will largely determine whether that situation will have a positive or negative outcome. Although this was first used for treating patients with clinical depression in the field of clinical psychology, it is now also widely used with athletes to remove negative thinking patterns. Let’s take an example where a triathlete estimates that her swim time for an event should be twenty minutes, but actually takes thirty. 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 asks 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. If you are looking to increase your athletic performance, don’t forget to pay attention to that important free piece of equipment above your eyes and between your ears! The third area relates to nutritional training. Specifically, hydrating and eating within an hour after your training sessions and races. This becomes even more important as your training and racing increases in intensity and/or duration. If you do not hydrate and eat within an hour after training and racing, you are decreasing your chances for maximum recovery. Furthermore, at that point, you are basically burning off muscle mass since there is no fuel for your body to burn. Having something as simple as a sports drink with sodium, potassium, and electrolytes plus something solid such as a banana will help allow your body to absorb and improve from your training. If you can start hydrating and eating within half an hour following your workouts and races, all the better! The fourth area has more to do with regards to racing and competing in triathlons. This examines paying attention to your preferences of ecological variables. Most of us do not get paid to compete in triathlons and usually have to spend our own money to enter events. Therefore, we are not obligated by prize money and sponsors to enter certain events. If you are looking to maximize your performance and enjoyment in your triathlons, it is pertinent to find a goodness of fit between your personality characteristics and the environment of the triathlons that you enter. For example, if you prefer a low key race with a couple of hundred participants and excel at bike and run courses with mostly flat terrain, it would probably be detrimental to your performance and enjoyment if you enter a triathlon with a thousand people with significant hills on the bike and run courses. Do you like ocean swims or lakes? Do you want to go all out in a sprint triathlon or chip away gradually at the Ironman distance? Are you looking to time trial on the course or do you want enormous hills? Do you want to travel two hours in the morning to a race or enter one that is thirty minutes away from home? Knowing your answers to these questions will help you more accurately select triathlons that will maximize your performance and enjoyment. Thank you once again for taking the time to read this article. If you have any questions or comments about this article or would like to learn more about www.powerfulathlete.com (there are limited spots still left for 2007), please feel free to contact me at coryic@aol.com. The best of luck and success to your 2007 season! Cory
Bank, Ph.D. |
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Created: 12/24/05 |
