Competitive Practice Environment For Peak Athletic Performance

Let me ask you, do any of the following sound familiar?

“I ran a personal best in practice, but I don’t understand why I can’t run that fast during a meet.”

“I had no double faults in practice and I was even hitting great forehands down the line the other day. But I had 5 double faults and my forehand sucked in my tournament.”

“In practice I can easily make 8 out of 10 free-throws, and then when I’m in a game, I drop to 4 out of 10, I just don’t understand.”

Most likely, a variety of issues can come into play that will affect Athletic Performance and perhaps may be the reason for the difference between practice and competitive Athletic Performances.   Issues like; external climate conditions, opponent(s), the venue, expectations of yourself and others, confidence, tactics, strategies, and anxiety, to name a few can come into play.

With that, let’s look at one critical factor that can greatly affect your Athletic Performance, and when addressed, can help you reach peak performance in competition, that is your training environment.

As a performance athlete, you train to compete and train to win. You daily work on your athletic skills, physical strength and stamina so that you can reach a level of peak performance during your competition.

You train so that you excel during competition.

The important question is…is your training environment consciously structured to assist you performing better during the competition?

For many athletes, this just isn’t the case. Instead, training is classically structured to help athletes perform well DURING training. Nonetheless, athletes are expected to perform in competition the same way they do in practice.

This is like comparing apples to oranges in that the practice environment and the competitive environment are different. This must be changed if competitive performance is to improve.

Take a closer look.

For the typical athletes, the practice environment (which includes the external environment and the internal environment of thoughts, focus, motivation etc.) is characterized as a physical effort where the athlete puts in the miles, runs through drills and/ or does a lot of repetitions to refine a specific skill. In this practice environment, athletes most likely don’t think about their internal dialogue, how they react to mistakes, and their attitude during early morning practices or their confidence, the focus is on the hard work of physical training.

Also, many athletes don’t practice under the potentially adverse conditions that they’ll face in competition, such as having to deal with crowd noise, dealing with a malfunctioning piece of equipment, playing in the heat of the day, among other things.

Contrast the mental strength skills needed in the training environment with those mental strength skills—the thoughts and behaviors— athletes are expected to have in competition.

Athletes want (and need) to be confident, athletes want to keep self-talk positive and focused on what they need to do to perform well, athletes want and expect to manage their emotions so they don’t hurt their  performance.

Athletes need to deal with expectations of self and others, and need to manage their reaction to the crowds or their opponent. The list could go on but I think you get the point.  Most likely that training environment is nothing like the competitive environment.

So, how do athletes make their practice more like their competition?

First, evaluate what you as an athlete are asking yourself to do in competition and train those skills, which have been discussed in several past posts.

Here are a few examples:

• You want to be positive and focused on your performance, so during practice work on managing your self-talk and practice using the internal dialogue and cue words that will facilitate performance.

• You want to manage your reaction to mistakes or frustration in competition, so challenge yourself to do the same in practice. Work on appropriate means of managing your emotions.

• You want to approach competition with confidence so purposefully build your confidence by recognizing daily successes, recalling great practice performances, etc.

• To prepare for external distractions, use imagery in training to simulate the competitive environment.

• Depending on your sport, you can also prepare for the competitive environment by bringing in “fans” to observe practice, piping in noise or creating pressure or challenging situations.

Additionally, embrace challenges when they present themselves in practice. When a shoelace breaks or your racquet string pops mid-point, rather than give up, play through the distraction.

Use all practice mishaps as opportunities to learn how to play through adversity.

The bottom line is, if you can construction your practice environment to look, feel and sound more like your competitive environment, you’ll be in a better position to reach your peak performance competition.