Mental Strength Strategies For Endurance Athletes

Endurance racing is a very unique segment of sport and requires an entire different set of physical, mental and emotional training just to finish…no less win.

This post will be talking about some tips to use and apply to any type of endurance sport, i.e. marathon, mountaineering, swimming and even hiking.

As an endurance athlete, you are all too familiar with the dedication and commitment necessary to achieve your goals, whether it is completing a century ride, finishing an Ironman-length triathlon or placing in the local centurion race.

Endurance sports, like many other sports, require a great time commitment; you must put in the necessary mileage and time to improve performance, often spending hour upon hour on the bike if you’re a cyclist.

As a runner you spend hours and hours on the trail or treadmill.

As a swimmer you perform countless laps of the pool.

These situations present you with a lot of time to be “in your head.” Even if you train with a training group and can interact with other athletes, much of time you are still left “alone” with your own thoughts.

Let me ask you, how do you make use of this time and does it help with your peak performance?

Or do you simply “gut it” out, anticipating how good it’s going to feel once the event is over?

There are several mental strength strategies to occupy this alone time and enhance your athletic performance.

Endurance athletes have been found to use two types of mental strength strategies to deal with this “time in their head,” each being equally effective depending on your athletic goals, the situation, and individual characteristics.

These strategies are:

• Associative
• Dissociative

Associative strategies are mental strength processes where you focus on your internal state and sensations such as breathing, muscular fatigue, heart rate, or perceived exertion.  You are essentially monitoring your body’s feedback to ensure peak performance.

For example, you are using an associative strategy when you monitor your pace or cadence to keep your heart rate within a specific range.

Dissociative strategies, conversely, are mental strength processes that distract you from sensations of physical discomfort and fatigue. If you’ve ever found yourself putting together a grocery list, planning the rest of weekend, or singing a song to yourself while on a training ride, these are examples of dissociation—you are mentally dissociating from what you are doing.

Both elite and recreational athletes use these strategies.  Because of the effect they have on athletic performance, each should be use decisively and with intention.

The level of intensity is an important aspect in deciding which strategy is most appropriate or a combination of them. It’s recommended that as intensity increases, adopting more associative strategies and decreasing dissociative strategies seems to enhance endurance performance.

Also, to further support this suggestion, some research has found that marathoner’s who used dissociative strategies during races were more likely to “hit the wall.”

It seemed they were not regulating their pace adequately and hydration levels deteriorated during the race, they basically weren’t monitoring their body’s feedback. So, in competitions or “critical,” intense training situations, it may be beneficial to attend to bodily sensations to better manage peak performance.

Additionally, because of the low skill complexity of cycling, and other endurance sports, there are times when it may be effective to use dissociative strategies. When the task is not excessively physically demanding, it is probably not necessary to attend to internal sensations and feedback.

Instead, you can turn your thoughts towards things that serve to distract you from the present situation. Two hours into a steady-state training ride, where your body is performing on automatic pilot and is not overly taxed, occupying one’s mind with random thoughts unrelated to cycling is probably an effective cognitive strategy.

The bottom line is this, it all comes down to what works for you.  It’s important to be able to use both associative and dissociative strategies in order to manage pain and discomfort as well as to support peak performance.

So during your training test techniques with each strategy and track your result.  Each method has value. As an endurance athlete, it is important to practice using both associative and dissociative mental strength strategies so you’ll know what they “feel” like and the results they produce.

It’s essential for peak performance to identify the situations where each is most effective and to use these tactics that produce the best results.

I’d like hear some of your favorite techniques in the comments below