How working on the mental approach can really help every athlete
There is a sense for many athletes that sports psychology is a luxury that only elite athletes should dedicate time towards. I argue the opposite! For elite athletes – it is their focus, their job, their livelihood and their identity. That can make the motivation and the focus on training clearer – whilst athletes who need to juggle work, family and other roles have more need for the mental skills to create the balance that works for them and allows them to achieve their goals.
Have you ever had times when committing to training, focusing on session’s goals and pushing yourself to deliver results is easy? And then times where it just seems to be beyond you?
If the answer is never then you are one in a million, or a billion!
This motivational matrix is complex, individual and can change/evolve. As a coach, I think that it is something that we need to work on together. Especially at times when things change – when we set new/different goals, when we have a serious setback, or when our life context changes.
There are two start points to this area of coaching – one is the emotional/intuitive and the other is a more logical/structured. Both are powerful and can work for the same person at different times.
- The intuitive one reaches beyond the 4% of the mind that we logically access in our lifetimes, and into the powerful 96% of the mind that is sub-conscious and unconscious.
- The logical helps to explore the exact area that a mental approach technique can help with. This is useful – because there are a huge number of brilliant tools – and we need to find the right one for the needs at the time.
Robert Dilt created the Logical Levels model and explains it here:
There is a lot of evidence that we do our best work when we are ‘congruent’ – when everything across the levels lines up. And this changes when things change – hence the need at times to unpack it and remap it. When it does all line up we usually experience a strong sense of satisfaction and motivation. Others often talk about us as authentic or centred.
It does not need to be massively time-consuming, but it is not a luxury.
In technical sessions for running, cycling and swimming we know that we go where our eyes go. Likewise, our energy goes to where our mind goes. And just like picking the perfect race line and delivering it under pressure and fatigue – we can do ‘brain-training’ to get to the same outcomes for our mind and our motivational focus.