Ten Steps To Increase Your Competitive Performance
Is it time to kick up your competitive performance?
If it is, continue reading, the following are ten steps that will aid you in your quest to become a stronger competitor. When you add these steps to your training sessions, you will realize immediate results.
How to increase your competitive performance
- Analyze Present Competitive Performance
You need first to analyze your present performance level before you can begin to improve it. Evaluate your abilities in the below four areas to turn into a better competitor:
Physical – You must analyze the physical aspects of your sport, including strength, speed, balance, flexibility, posture, diet, sleep and more. Ask for constructive feedback from your coaches, trainers, and specialists.
Skills – Analyze, which skill sets are important to support you in your sport. Ask experts for advice.
Tactical – Analyze how much brainpower and time it takes to prepare you for the sport including watching videos over other competitors. Elite athletes spend an extreme amount of time and brainpower perfecting their performance.
Mental – Whether or not you utilize the abilities of the mental strength coach, you need to perform a self-evaluation on the crucial emotional and mental components to be completive in CrossFit. Analyze your work rate, attitude, mental strength, mental preparation, imagery ability, leadership, persistence, focus, coachability, how well you handle the pressure and deal with your emotions, along with any other mental abilities.
The data you accumulate will help you increase your strength as a competitor, but always ask other trustworthy people to assess along with your self-assessment. Consult with your close friends and coaches to receive their opinions on your performance quality.
- Understand Your Motivation
You should next analyze what your motivation is to help you through difficult moments in your CrossFit and especially “the open.” Figure out why you’re participating in the first place. Is it the thrill of the action? Maybe instead of this, you want to be part of the team/box, excel at this sport, or prove to the non-believers that you can perform in this sport.
Typically, the level of motivation peaks and declines alternately throughout the CrossFit season. When each season is over, re-evaluate your basic motivation, this comes from your inner being. Even though it is enjoyable to receive external rewards, these are not sufficient to keep you working diligently to achieve the status of a top competitor.
- Define Goals
Goals need to provide the inspiration and motivation for you to increase your performance ability each day. Set specific goals and constantly evaluate and track them. Write down your goals and post them in any place that you will see them on a daily basis, such as mirrors in the house, your gym locker or even the fridge.
Many times, athletes exert time and energy setting goals one day, only to forget them the next day. They do not analyze their progress in attaining their goals. Goals encourage you to maintain your motivation and accountability. In addition, they will allow you to stay on track with your efforts to increase your performance ability. Take the time to analyze your goals on a regular basis when you spend time and effort to set them.
Set realistic goals. Consult with your mentors or coaches to be sure these goals are attainable. Take all feedback into consideration in case you need to adjust your goals. Develop an effective plan to accomplish your goals. By all means, do not let anyone deter you from attaining your dream! Set your goals and charge ahead jumping over every hurdle as you proceed!
- Develop of Plan of Action
Goals and dreams are crucial to your success, but you also need an efficient action plan to turn the goals and dreams into true accomplishments. Many times, an ineffective action plan prevents athletes from attaining their goals. You greatly increase your chances of attaining a goal when you develop an efficient plan of action.
What will you accomplish today, in a week, in a month or within the next eight months? Once you set this plan, you may need to adjust it periodically, but the plan will offer a clear path to you in reaching your goals.
Set a plan of action that includes all the evaluation items mentioned earlier, namely mental, tactical, skills, and physical aspects of your performance. Once you discover your present performance in each aspect, set effective goals to increase your performance, and develop a detailed, well-written action plan to propel you forward on the right path to achieving your goals.
Track and analyze the progress you make by writing all the data down in a journal. Read over and re-evaluate your plan for action each week, as it is your roadmap to realizing your goals. Consider a plan of action as a mental GPS unit.
[color-box]Learn more about the Mental Strength Coaching Program HERE[/color-box]
- Gradual, Consistent Improvement is Best
Improving your competitive performance can take quite a bit of time. Contemplate on your improvement over the past years. You probably perform on the much higher level than you did three years ago. However, even with this improvement, you still have room to increase your level of performance.
If you just want immediate gratification, look elsewhere, as you will not find it in sports. While you can have success in the beginning, you may have periods where improvement seems to be a fleeting idea until you receive positive results for your efforts.
Successful coaches and athletes know this and, for this reason, they work each day to improve their performance. They constantly strive to attain not just their short-term goals, but also their long-term ones. You just need to work each day on increasing your level of performance, and soon you will realize a drastic improvement in your competitive performance.
- Participate in Mental Training on a Daily Basis
Athletes often neglect to participate in mental training on a daily basis. This type of training is just as important as the other types of training are to improve your competitive performance. Both coaches and athletes do not always understand the right way to perform mental training.
They only understand how to increase their fitness levels and athletic skills, but no one ever showed them the right way to train their minds. The mind is your mental muscle, and it works with higher efficiency the more you exercise it.
One effective way of training your mind is to keep a journal. Take some time each day to analyze, monitor, and increase your mental abilities and athletic skills. However, do not haphazardly write in your journal, but do write in it daily. Be sure to spend time and effort on your mental processes and other important areas of your performance at present.
When you need to increase your concentration, write in the journal prior to practice stating that you will try to improve upon it during practice. Then, write a self-analysis of how you did after the practice is over.
- Increase Your Physical Prowess
You already understand it is necessary to improve your athletic abilities to become a successful competitor, regardless of your present fitness and skill level. This is the reason you need to drill and practice on a regular basis. Your mental skills may be all they need to be, but these skills do not take the place of the specific physical skills you need to perform your sport. Mental skills only enhance physical skills.
You dedicate the majority of your energy to training physically, and with good reason. However, you need to be sure that you realize an improvement in the most important and necessary areas to increase your competitive performance effectively. Receive feedback from teammates, coaches and others about your weaknesses and strengths on top of your opinion on each of these topics.
Concentrate on your strongest skills and turn them into competitive weapons. Work on your weak areas to add them to your arsenal of weapons. However, do not forget to improve your strong skills at the same time.
Don’t overly concentrate on strengthening your weaknesses, as this will take time away from improving your existing strengths or strong skills. In addition, the progress you make improving your strong skills will strengthen your natural motivation far more than when you are improving your weak skills.
- Adjust Your Methods When Necessary
You need to analyze and adjust the methods you utilize as you work to improve your competitive performance. You need to stay out in front of the pack when you are a true competitor, and to accomplish this you need to take every opportunity possible to improve your performance.
You will keep out in front of your opponents by turning to experienced coaches, mental strength coaches and mentors on top of learning additional skills. Alter your plan of action periodically to jump over any hurdles or adjust to lifestyle changes that can happen throughout the year.
The leaders, coaches and athletes who realize the highest level of success are the ones who constantly strive to learn, improve and grow.
- Develop Your Fitness Level
Your fitness includes such things as how fast, strong, flexible, and powerful you are, along with your endurance level. These characteristics influence your competitive performance in the following ways:
The better the fitness level the higher the performance level is during a sports competition. You should maintain your fitness level year-round and not just during the season.
The higher your fitness level is that stronger your self-confidence will be during competition on top of the rest of your life. Self-confident athletes perform more forcefully and proficiently. You have more self-confidence when you know your body is fit enough to outperform your opponents. The reverse is true if your self-confidence is low.
Keep your body fit if you desire to increase your competitive performance.
- Practice Performing under Pressure
An important part of being a strong competitor can perform when under pressure. Numerous athletes consult with me to perfect their performance under pressure even when they have a high skill level, as they seem to struggle with coming through when the competition becomes heated. I show them the way to train their minds along with how to develop their mental strength skills so they can handle pressure in an effective manner.
The strategies I recommend include keeping a journal to analyze and track your progress, along with how you perform under pressure. In addition, I advise them to practice muscle relaxation, breathing techniques and the use of mental imagery.
Seek out pressure situations whenever possible to learn how to handle it effectively. You need to expose yourself to situations where you have something at stake, where your performance can make or break the situation, and if you do not come through, you will need to face certain consequences. When you practice with this type of pressure, you will increase your ability to perform under pressure. Create a pressure situation by competing against the top performers at your box in basic drill and other activities.
The more you practice in pressure situations, even ones that do not pertain to your CrossFit, the more effectively you will perform under pressure.
This is how to become a stronger competitor.
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