Using Your Eyes and Ears For Improved Athletic Performance
Stop!
Now think about what you were just thinking about.
Strange question, right?
Go ahead, you’ll see where this leads, stop and think about what you were just thinking about.
For a majority of people, their thoughts are all over the place.
Maybe you were thinking about the game last night or what to have for dinner tonight, or wondering “what’s the point of this post?” or even something as mundane as reminding yourself to get gas in your car.
Our unchecked internal dialogue is a constant stream of monkey chatter, as you just demonstrated to yourself.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on what you say, this babbling does not take a hiatus during your athletic training. Let me ask you, do you know what this “chatter” is telling you when you are training?
Do you even know? Are you even aware that it’s going on?
I want to assist you in opening your eyes and ears to your internal chatter so you can use it to help your improve your athletic performance.
There was a research paper I read sometime again that looked at athlete’s internal dialogue. Specifically, the research wanted to answer the questions; “How do athletes tend to talk to themselves in training?” and “Can altering self-talk enhance performance?”
Unfortunately for many athletes, the answers to these questions are, “Abysmally” and “yes.”
Let me explain the study in a bit more detail. The athletes completed a test set of six descending intervals. After completing the set, they were asked to try to recall and write down what they were saying to themselves during each of the intervals. There were a lot of snickers and embarrassed laughter as the athletes recounted their self talk. “I can’t go much faster,” “It is too early to feel this bad” and “I hate this set” were typical responses.
In general, the self-talk tended to be negative, not purposeful and/or undirected. It became obvious that these athletes were not really aware of their self-talk, it just happened and therefore, they were not aware of the need to manage their self-talk.
After all, how can a person change a behavior if he or she is not even aware of?
In this research, with awareness and education, these same athletes were able to positively modify their self-talk and enhance their training and athletic performance as demonstrated in a post-test several weeks later.
Surprisingly, even though the focus of their efforts in this second test set was to better manage their self-talk, their athletic performance also improved. The athletes were surprised at how much the mind impacted the functioning of body.
So, what about you?
Are you like these athletes, unaware of your internal chatter during training or practice?
Do you let your thoughts run where they may?
Self-talk is equally, if not more important in the competitive environment. It seems that many athletes tend to be aware of self-talk before and during competition and attempt to manage it but struggle if they have not included and practice self-talk monitoring and modification during their training.
So, the place to begin to change your self-talks is during training. To determine your self-talk tendencies, open your eyes and ears to what you tend to say to yourself in various training situations.
The reason I mention open your eyes, is that many time a visual stimulus will trigger self-talk. You can only become aware of this by using both your eyes and your “internal” ears.
So, at first put aside judgment about your self-talk and simply monitor and record your natural and automatic internal conversation. After doing this for a week or so, reflect back to determine how your self-talk is affecting your athletic performance.
Figure out if you are hampering your training by constantly internally feeding yourself internal junk-food. Maybe you’re not being “destructive” with your thinking, but maybe you’re not helping things either by focusing on irrelevant things not related to enhancing your athletic performance.
Can thinking about your weekend plans or the e-mail you forgot to send before leaving work really be helping your training and practice? I don’t think so.
Once you’re aware of the self-talk that hinders your athletic performance like, “This sucks,” I’m tired” or “When is this going to be over.” Or in situations that tend to bring out unsupportive thinking, like during hard sets or at the end of training sessions when you are fatigued, you can then take the necessary action to manage it.
Identify the self-talk that would be more productive and supportive in the given situation. Before training, remind yourself how you are going to choose to talk to yourself, then, do it. Write out cue cards with positive, reinforcing phrases or words that you can refer to during those times in your training when you find yourself struggling mentally.
In managing internal dialogue, some athletes have commented that they feel like they are lying to themselves by saying “you can do it” when they really do not think they can.
This is a valid point.
Managing your self-talk doesn’t mean you create an internal environment where everything is a perfect utopia. Instead, think of it as working to create an internal environment that is productive, supportive, and purposeful. On the flip side, how often are you really as bad as your self-talk says you are?
You have the choice to be positive or negative, to focus on the strengths or the weaknesses. The best in the world choose to be positive and direct their energies towards supporting their peak performance. It takes conscious effort to do this, but with time you will see the results.
It’s essential the self-talk be related to realistic, achievable outcomes and goals.
Let us look at the case of Tim, a cross-country runner. In preparation for a tough workout of mile repeats, he’s been trying to manage his self-talk by saying “you can hold 5:45 pace on this set.” Given his best workout averaged 6:05 miles, it probably is not going to happen and deep down he knows it.
In fact, by setting such an aggressive goal he’s setting himself up for disappointment. During the workout, by the 3rd mile, he is telling himself how pathetic he is since he’s not been able to hit his target pace on one of the repeats. This causes him to slip back into the defeating self-talk that he was trying to manage.
There is a far more productive way to manage his self talk and expectations.
That is to set more realistic practice goals.
Holding a 6:00 per mile pace may be better goal given his past performances. At this point it becomes possible to focus his self-talk on the process, the things he needs to do to achieve this goal (i.e., go out easy, relax his upper body) and not being distracted with being unable to reach an unattainable, unrealistic outcome.
Then, when he is able to hold the target pace for several repeats, he can build his intensity and maybe, hit 5:45 on the final interval. What a positive experience, especially when compared to the alternative scenario discussed above.
OK, so now it’s your turn. Open your eyes and “internal” ears to your monkey chatter during your practice and training. Identify limiting self-talk that hurts your performance. Then, create and implement a positive and empowering self-talk program that will enhance your athletic performance.
