ZAP’s Tried and True Adopted Mental Strategies for Racing & Training
With insights from Drs Robert Swoap, Jake Cooper, Stan Beecham & the late Keith Henschen
It’s long been said that athletics is “90% mental and 10% physical” or similar cliches put forth by sport’s prognosticators. To be clear, no individual sport is absent of the need for natural physical capabilities, aka talent, they wholeheartedly matter. Training and its effects of course matter as well. For without training talent is rarely realized.
Having said the aforementioned, our ZAP club was founded 23 years ago this week by the late Sport Psychologist Dr. Andy Palmer with a quote from the author Bryce Courtenay (author of “The Power of One”) as the basis for much of what we do “The Mind is the Athlete.” The impetus behind Courtenay’s words were rooted in the belief that with the proper mindset the body can achieve it’s goals, and on occasion even beyond.
What follows are some nuggets of performance based cognitive wisdom, a few tricks of the trade from above the shoulders we have long used here in Blowing Rock to help maximize both training and competition. With help from some of the world’s finest sport psychology minds here are a few of ZAP’s tricks of the “above the shoulders” trade.
Acceptance vs. Avoidance
with insight from the USOC’s Dr. Keith Henschen
With acceptance, the agreement an athlete makes with themself is as follows: I am about to put myself through hell. I am aware of this, and I will suffer through it and conquer it. In other words, the athlete makes no attempt to psychologically cloud the pain and discomfort on the horizon and through which they are suffering, but rather accepts the reality that in racing comes incredible amounts of discomfort.
This is the “I can handle anything” mentality embraced by (according to research by the late Dr. Keith Henschen of the USOC) roughly 40% of elite endurance athletes, largely in the middle distances and track based distance events.
The opposite of acceptance is a technique known as avoidance. In the avoidance-based strategy, athletes convince themselves they are feeling great, even during periods of distress. Self talk (mantras like “I feel awesome . . . I feel light and smooth”) are often in play with “avoidance” techniques and tends to be utilized by runners in the longer Olympic events such as the 10,000 meters and the marathon as well as endurance swimmers and long distance cyclists. According to Dr. Henschen “by and large the research shows the longer the event the greater the percentage of athletes who use avoidance as their coping strategy. In the end either can be immensely effective based on an athlete’s individual personality.”
Segmenting A.K.A. Chunking
with insight from Dr Stan Beecham (author of the best selling “Elite Minds”)
The idea with a piecemeal strategy such as segmenting is to break a race or training session into more manageable pieces. For example, rather than view a 20-mile run in its entirety, view it as an eight-mile intro followed by four separate three-mile “chunks.”
This way, once a segment has been completed, having been executed perfectly or poorly the athlete can mentally move on to the next piece. In racing, time based chunking strategies are used by post collegiate programs across the country. Breaking a 15:00 5k attempt into perhaps (“9:00 controlled relaxed, 4:00 moving forward and committing, 2:00 drive to the finish” or similar is a great way to get away from the typical (“2 miles down, 1 to go” trap).
Point of Execution
with insight from Dr. Jake Cooper
P.O.E. is a technique which has long been successfully implemented, particularly during road races or cross-country efforts, by many of the world’s best. The concept of point of execution is to choose a geographical point or two in your race course – preferably mid-race – where you can re-engage into a more intense push both physically, as well as psychologically, toward the finish.
This point need not be necessarily at a set mile mark, but perhaps at a random spot such as a tree, mailbox, or street sign. When we send athletes to the Manchester Road Race in CT, we often find, during the course tour, a random spot on the flat stretch after 3 miles in which we make that our “fully committed” or “point of execution” mark.
Mind-off / Mind-on
with insight from the late Dr. Andy Palmer
The idea with mind off / mind on is a fairly simple cognitive strategy: to shut the mind off and essentially disengage for a predetermined amount of time at the beginning of a race or tough training session. Former world marathon record holder Derek Clayton used this technique with great success during his 2:08:33 world record marathon in May of 1969 in Antwerp, Belgium as did Don Kardong in the Montreal Olympics.
“I never could fully concentrate for over two hours,” Clayton told the British sports publication Athletics Weekly, “so I tried playing games and viewing the first 25 kilometers as a steady fun run. I waved to the crowd, slapped hands, and even spoke to my fellow lead packers. I convinced myself I wasn’t racing (aka avoidance of a different sort). It wasn’t until close to 30 kilometers that I mentally turned the light on and allowed myself to truly let go as a 17k race was far more palatable for me.”
Process Goals Above Outcome Goals
with insight from Dr. Robert Swoap
Dr. Bob Swoap (Warren Wilson College) has been working with the N.C. State women’s cross country team for almost 3 decades. One of the most successful aspects of his work there has been his ability to get the NCAA Champions Wolfpack women to each focus on what he calls “daily process goals” rather than just the traditional outcome goals of times, places and qualifying marks. “Process goals are ones we largely have control over,” said Dr. Swoap “be it a daily nap, an important nutritional supplement such as iron or vitamin D or even a specific number of night time sleep hours. These are controllable items that, when achieved, allow the probability of the outcome goals to go up.”
Even if only subconsciously, each of us has strategies to get us through the toughest of times, particularly races. Dr. Andy Palmer (Sport Psych PhD) used to say that usually “the very best athletes have and employ cognitive strategies that even they are unaware of.” These are but a handful of those strategies we hope you all can use in your next block of training and racing.