How To Have A Successful Practice Session

We’ve all heard it, “there are guarantees in life.”

Maybe you’ve heard this as you were looking for some assurance that the car you just purchased won’t break down, or the investment you’re about to make will pay off,  or the flight your about to board will arrive on time so that you can make your meeting.

While we plan for the best, it is true that there are no guarantees.  The same hold true in sport.  Athletic success is far too involved and comprehensive for someone to be able to guarantee success by following a simple set of guidelines.

There is always a chance that things will not work out the way you’d like them to.

Fortunately, there are things you can do to set yourself up for athletic success both on and off the field of battle. In this post we’re going to discuss how to set yourself up to have a successful practice time and time again.

While this post will focus on the mental aspects of training, keep in mind that setting yourself up for athletic success also involves controlling the other aspects of your performance such as physical training, technical training, and nutrition, etc.

Success in Practice

In competition, success is about achieving your goal.  Success may be winning the race, wining the game or breaking an Olympic record. There are definite goals to demonstrate in competition that provide feedback as to a successful competition.

If you’re like most athletes, you know exactly what you want to accomplish in competition, and you see success as achieving that goal.

Practice should be no different.  Success in your practice is about achieving practice goals.  If you don’t set goals for each practice, you are not alone, and now’s the time to change that.  The need to recognize that daily practice goal setting is the necessary first step toward setting yourself up for success in practice, and then in competition.

You should have a goal for every practice, something you want to accomplish.  Even on those days when you wish you were anywhere but in practice, it is important to be able to take something, however little it may be, away from your training.

As a first step, before every practice session, ask yourself “What do I want to accomplish today?”  or “What am I going to work on today to make myself better?”  Oh yea…make sure you answer the questions 🙂

The answer to these questions, whether it is doing 30 minutes of cardio, lifting 3 more reps, working on specific elements of technique, or maintaining a positive attitude, is your goal.  Achievement of this goal helps you set the stage for practice success.

Look For Patterns of Success

Whether you realize it or not, you know better than anyone what does and what doesn’t work in regards to having a quality practice success.  Take few moments to think about and identify strategies and tactics that have produced successful practices in the past.

Identify these aspects, perhaps two or three things, you have found through your experience that you need to do to get the absolute best out of a given practice session.

In doing so, reflect on your habits, patterns and tendencies.  Most athletes have a pattern that emerges that will have the greatest influence on practice success.  For some it may be having the right energy level, whereas for others going in with a positive attitude has a critical influence on practice.

Two great questions to consider are:

• What tends to get in your way and you have a poor practice?
• What tends to help you in a great practice session?

If you can’t identify any patterns or trends, start now!  Keep a practice journal and begin to log information about your practices session.  Keep notes on what influences your performance, both good and bad.  This will help you focus on what helps and leave the other behind.

Something’s to consider journaling about are:

• How were you feeling during practice?

• What were you thinking about?

• What did you eat and drink before and during the practice?

• Did you have an argument with someone?

• How was your sleep?

• What was your mood before and during practice?

Start logging this stuff now and when you look back over your records in the month you’ll begin to see patterns and trends emerging.

Leave Your Baggage At Home

It’s important to realize that you are more than just an athlete.  You may be a student, a husband or wife, a brother or sister, a friend, or simply a person going through the ups and downs of life.

This means that you have things going on in your life outside of your sport.  You’re undoubtedly well aware of this as you struggle to balance the numerous stresses and responsibilities in your life and still able to get something out of your training.

And how many times have negative thoughts outside of your sport crept into your mind before practice?  You can set yourself up for practice success by consciously leaving these thoughts outside the practice environment.

As you get ready for practice imagine as you’re getting changed that as you take off your street clothes all the worries of the day come off at the same time.  Visualize these worries actually being removed from your mind as you change out of your clothes.

Then, as you put on your workout gear image the great practice session you’re going have, run over your goals again, say a few affirmations, listen to some music that will get you pumped.

The key here is to consciously change your thoughts and state by associating the worries of the day with the removal of your street clothes and the pump yourself up by associating a great practice session with your workout gear.

During practice, commit to physically and mentally being an athlete and only an athlete.

Control Your Self-Talk

“You suck! I can’t believe you missed that list”

“That’s OK…let it go.  Focus on the next one.”

In reading the above statements I’m sure you know which one will support a better practice and which one will not. Being overly negative, critical or unrealistically demanding can have a huge impact on your practice performance.

Setting yourself up for success in practice involves monitoring and controlling your self-talk.  To begin, you first need to aware of how you talk to yourself.  Then, commit to being your own best friend.  That is, talk to yourself about what you can do and will do instead of what you can’t do or did incorrectly.

It’s all about practice, practice, and more practice.  Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.  This holds so true in sports and athletic performance, practice perfect, play perfect – play perfect, compete perfect – compete perfect…win.

As an elite athlete, you spend an enormous amount of time in training, so make sure your perfect practice extends to your mental preparation and goal setting.  Make the most of this time by taking the steps is to set yourself up for success in practice.

Get down to the brass tacks of mental preparation, mental training and mental strength for athletic performance, come on out for a private 3-day mental training intensive.  Contact Me for more information.