Physical training is a moot point. Everyone does it. But who does mental training? Without going into too much detail why, I hypothesize that targeted mental training can improve one’s performance AS MUCH AS physical training.
So who does it, and what do you do? If you don’t do it, why not?
I posted this the other day on some other thread, but when you are riding, running, working on a machine, swimming, whatever it is and your are pushing hard, and you feel like slowing down to rest, go a little faster for 5 more minutes. Does great thing for the mental part of the game that wants you to quit when things get painful.
Long indoor sets are stupendous for this. I do almost exactly what jhendric does. When I am near the end of my scheduled set, I make myself go 15 minutes more. And NEVER cut a workout short.
Personally, I think that working out when you don’t want to is great for that as well. Which is why I think the northerners have an edge. Working out in the dead of winter is brutally hard on the mind. Getting up at 5:30am spending 15 minutes scraping the car, and then driving in a freezing cold car to the pool and back does wonders for mental toughness. When the race gets tough, I just think about how tough training was at certain points. It takes my mind off the pain fairly well.
Used to do visualizations almost every night. The perfect swim stroke. The perfect pedal stroke. The perfect running stride. Feeling smooth and relaxed. The feeling of speed. Worked like a charm.
My best mental training workout is this:
I always struggle with going out too hard on the bike. I’m a strong swimmer (top 2-5% of my age group) but only a MOPer on the bike. So when I leave T1, I’m with guys who are substantially stronger than me on the bike. My ego doesn’t want them blowing past me, so I keep unconciously creeping up my speed (and HR). I end up being more spent for the run that I should be. This is clearly my biggest struggle.
Here’s my training solution: During my taper periods, I head out to the most popular cycling area in town (a 9 mile lake loop) around 2:00 on weekend afternoons. By then, all of the serious cyclists are gone and only the old grannies are there. I ride around the lake a couple of times, slow enough that even the beach cruisers are laughing at me. After a few hours of this beating, I’m mentally prepared to race. If I can get used to inferior cyclists blow past me, then surely I can let superior ones do the same.
This is an excellent subject for a thread. When i was a competative pistol shooter, mental training was a HUGE part of my overall plan. At that point, I was top 5% with a real chance of winning matches. I have never been that good with triathlon. I have however, when I would work with a Master’s coach, visualize what a good stroke was when I got positive feedback. Also, I use ‘cues’ when running about body position etc. I have a lot of books on mental training and always learned, always enjoyed reading them.
Visualizing seems to help.
I primarily focus on:
Transitions and missing equipment.
What I’m going to do if I have a flat, take a wrong turn, ect…
I also do some with what I am going to do the next day (i.e. hard training run, swim intervals.)
I don’t try to visualize perfection because it a goal you will never achieve, but making sure I don’t panic in T2 is a useful skill.
ditto on a great subject
I first did this when I played competitive tennis as a junior. Had great strokes and strategy, but a terrible mental game. Focusing on the mental aspect helped a lot.
Last year for IM training I did a lot of visualization for the swim start, including putting the prior year’s picture on my screen saver - 100% recommend visualizations. The pic of Peter Reid running the Kona marathon portion where he just has the stoned faced focused look of steel - helps to remain calm and focused even if you are suffering.
Affirmations are key also. On the run I like “relaxed and in control.”
I might catch a little crap for this since I live in CA. and like Lance, but his quote from the book - “train when no one else will train” is great when are faced with a rainy day. That to me is nothing but a mental test if you have the right gear. “Never Quit” is another good one.
A nice long extended climb is good is good as well - like 18 miles at 4% or so where it is not that steep but just keeps going and going and you have to focus on the task at hand vs. “when this f …ing climb end?”
Having the mental game really helps push to the next level and having the affirmations/visualizations to draw on to keep you in the zone when you start doubting yourself is key.
I am a huge advocate of the mental game. I wrote this editorial on our website quite some time ago. I hope you find it interesting:
“Your mind and your body are not two things; they are one. They are interconnected and interdependent. When the integration between the two is complete there is no opportunity for opposition.”
What are your thoughts on this having read Deep Survival? One of the common traits of survivors of truly horrible ordeals was a separation of mind/body - i.e. the body became just a thing? Personally, I wondered how this type of awareness would help someone like, say, Lance Armstrong, who I’d speculate experienced a fairly serious survival fight. Could it be that the ability to separate the body from the mind can result in greatly improved performance? Imagine what the body could do if the mind weren’t always in the way?
For example, in the early 1950s there were like 50+ medical publications saying that running a sub 4:00 mile was physiologically impossible. But after the first chap did it, within the following 18 months more than 45 other runners completed a sub 4:00 mile. I’d bet that the primary thing that changed in all of these runners was not physical, but mental. Someone redefined what was possible, and with that information alone the entire running establishment moved forward. The significance of that is difficult to grasp.
I’m thinking deeper than visualization and affirmation. This is an aspect to training that almost nobody is bothering to take seriously. I wonder how much better we’d be if we cut back our physical training by 25% and started doing real, structured, meaningful mental training in that extra time.
Do it all the time. There are some really good books out there, one that I always recommend is In Search of Excellence by Terry Orlick, its written in such a way that even I get the point. I think you can break it down to a number of different categories, for example:
a) Dress Rehersals - race start, transitions, the last 13miles of the run etc. I have also found you can dress reherse emotions in given any situations as to have a pre set emotional response to an adverse situation.
b) Affirmative statements, words, pictures, or colours - for instance seeing red when attacking in a road race. Green to stay calm during the swim start. Blue when you are trying to relax after max effort to bridge a gap. I always try to visualise myself running "free and easy"like the Africans, admittely does not always work as i think the reality is too far removed from the imagery!
c) Mental imagery for motivation. Again imagining finish an IM in PB time and the emotion you will have when you do so, can be a motivator. something you can draw on in mile 18 when the pace starts to drop.
One could add to the list but essentially some form of mental imagery is important and worth while practicing regularly. My bike coach had us call out words before we sprinted, what every words worked for us. Seems to work as the data shows we actually so seem to sprint faster than if we did not verbalise it. Same with relaxation, you see the hrt drop faster as we practised it in training.
mental training—yes. One reason why I dislike my ‘pick up USA gym’ is the constant interuptions even WITH headphones on. I find the best place for the mental training is when I have sensory deprivation…lights/people/activity-- nothing around me. Middle of the night on my treadmill with just a candle lit, the mind has nothing to do but focus. I used to hate running on the treadmill until I discovered mental focusing and turing off all distractions — it becomes JUST YOU.
Amazes me how much races boil down to the mental abuse and how much it can effect you for weeks/months post-event. During the thick of competition, the mind will hold you together, it is post-race that the mind falls apart after holding it together for a sustained time frame. So much goes into stressing physically taking care of your body post-event (nutrition/rest/hydration/ice ect ect), and hardly anything is mentioned about the mind.
Mental Edge and Sports Psychology A-Z (think the first is from a PHd out of California and the other from England?) are two books I really like. Have lent out the first one, and the second one still reading. Mental Edge made a comment about how the mind has no idea if the body physically accomplished something or not–they cited examples of Olympic athletes visualizing their events down to the second over and over again…pretty wild concept. The few hard races I have decided to finish–the main difference for me was getting my mind in the mindset to make it happen. Mind is a powerful tool and an aspect I hope my competitors are NOT utilizing 
Very happy to see someone else say what I have been saying for years–you can only train your body so much it is up to the mind to get you there.
“Flow in Sports” is another good book on constructing the mental states that comprise being in the zone.
I also think doing stupidly extensive and intensive training days where you just wish you would fall over and die so you could stop is good once in a while. If you get on the bike and ride 100 miles out you are pretty much stuck doing 100 more to get home.
i’m in the process of taking an intro sport psyc class this year…it’s incredibly fascinating.
going to take the upper level sport psyc for athletes next year…
but from this class, i’ve learned a few things. i think the biggest for my IM this year is going to be contingency planning. a LOT went wrong last year, and it stopped being fun. I think i need to visualize and strategize different things that can go right and wrong, and be more mentally prepared from there.
also, remembering that it’s supposed to be fun…that’s another key one that i lost last summer (read: burnout!)
as for authors…www.athleticinsight.com (i think that’s it), had some great articles, one actually on Ironman Triathletes and Dysphoria. Orlick did a TON of research with athletes, and he’s written some good stuff. We just got a book list today…going to take a gander this summer and see what i can dig up and learn.