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Mental Toughness
Take the time to sharpen your blade this pre-season!
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." -Abraham Lincoln
As the days get longer, so does our contemplation time about the upcoming racing season. This article is a reminder to tally all the lessons you have learned ‘off the bike’ (possibly on your skis, snowboard, skates) or in life during the winter months and bring them to your spring start line. I am always amazed how my clients forget the mental, emotional and spiritual muscles they have developed from having successfully faced adversity during the off season and how this muscle power can have a positive effect on their performance.
We all face adversity in some form and shape, whether we are an elementary school student or the CEO of a big company. Mental toughness is the ability to keep performing at your very best even though you feel tired, angry, frustrated, depressed, disillusioned, full of doubt about your abilities, or just plain 'crappy'. There is much written about mental toughness and I urge you to read on the subject before the start of the season. In the game of sport or life, mental toughness is one personality trait worth developing.
The resilience we build through life’s challenges provides us with an extra edge in racing. The thoughts we entertain in our mind during our waking hours affect our feelings and finally our actions. Negative thinking leads to negative feelings and poor performance. For those of us who race mountain bikes, we know that as our body tires, so does our mind and a tired mind is so much more susceptible to negative self-talk and lapse in focus.
Thinking back at my short affair with competition, I learned quickly that mental toughness is ‘the’ one important key ingredient to performance and excellence in racing. I remember one particular Grundig World Cup where I lost my focus during a killer climb by observing my competition and what I saw was a bunch of very focused female riders. They oozed a quality of confidence and cold determination pedaling to the top without falling prey to external or internal distractions. They were tough! All around tough! WOW! At that moment I realized I was skilled, fit and fast but I was not mentally tough! Reading on the subject made me understand that the confidence they displayed so gracefully on their bikes was the result of years racing and practicing particular thinking habits until they became automatic and natural. I understood then that I was seriously lacking mental discipline and competitive edge.
I learned in the following years to seriously pay attention, through awareness and journal keeping, to the way I processed my thoughts during good, great and bad races. I also learned the importance of retaining and profiting from my good races and releasing or reorganizing the memories and the emotions from my bad races. I realized after a few years that all I was doing was developing a healthy dose of built-in optimism, confidence as well as an ability to 'BELIEVE' that I could achieve pretty much anything I dreamed of if I disciplined my mind to keep all negative self-talk at bay. I also learned that it’s OK to be competitive with myself! For too long I had let my emotions take over my body and learning how to make my mind an ally in the control of my emotions changed my performance forever.
I am so grateful for all the great lessons that training and competing has taught me. Confidence, optimism, mental toughness, focus and competitive edge cannot be purchased at Wal-Mart and thank God for this! It is the years we take to cultivate these wonderful qualities that often give meaning to our life and make us admire the lives of people who make their dreams come true.
Dominique Larocque is a Gestalt therapist and sport psychology consultant residing in Ottawa, Ontario. She also owns LaRoccaXC Mountain Bike School based at Camp Fortune and is presently developing her training center in Val-des-Monts, QC. You can learn more about her work at www.creative-wheel.com
opyright © 2008 Creative Wheel. All Rights Reserved.
