Sports Performance – Mindset, Focus, Motivation, Results:
I can remember several years ago being desperate to complete a 10km race in under forty minutes. I would enter race after race in my attempts to reach the glory of the sub-40 minute time. It filled my thoughts at work and it dominated my conversations with other runners. It was a goal I had set myself and I was determined to get there.
Yet try as I might, for a long time it eluded me. I would cross the finish line one or two seconds over forty minutes – literally one or two seconds from getting it nailed. Over 6.2 miles of running, a couple of seconds is nothing, it’s almost meaningless. Yet when the clock stopped, those couple of seconds were pretty much the most frustrating things ever known!
I knew I was physically capable of knocking off those couple of seconds but what I didn’t appreciate at that time was, no matter how physically ready I was from my training, mentally I was getting in my own way. My mind was filled with pressure, stress, doubts both before and during the race. I might lose focus for half a mile and realise I was off the needed pace to reach my goal. Once in a race, as I approached a corner I saw a sign that said it was 200 metres to the finish line, I looked at my watch, realised I couldn’t hit the sub-40 and slowed a little, only to turn the corner, see the finish line was only about 100 metres away and realise in that moment of over thinking and lack of focus, I’d blown what would have been relatively easy to achieve.
Once I learned some effective sports performance hypnotherapy strategies I went out there and nailed it three races in row. I felt like Robert Bannister when he broke the four minute mile (albeit I was a much slower Roger!).
And if you’ve ever seen a golfer miss an easy putt because the pressure got to them, or a striker miss an easy goal because they’d lost confidence, or a driver start to overthink and hesitate because of a previous crash, then you’ll know how important your mind-set is to sports performance at any level.
