How to prepare a race psychologically?
When you go to the next level of sports training, especially when we talk about Trail, you may have a question: How to prepare for a race? psychologically?
Currently, all runners who want to have optimal performance prepare themselves physically in order to reach their objective test with full guarantee. In addition, many of them have a coach who guides them towards it.
They also take special care of nutrition both inside and outside of competition, in order to perform at their best and take care of their body. I remind you that the three legs to improve sports performance are: Training, feeding Y break (time when you can use sports presotherapy).
But not so many are those who have adequate mental preparation. In the end, being mentally prepared can mean the difference between achieving our goal or giving up.
It is important, at any level, to have a strong psychological base that helps us to be able to see and be our best version. We must understand that our mind must help us in every training and competition. But it can also be our worst enemy and lead us towards failure. Now let's move on to the important thing... How to prepare a race psychologically?
For this there are different techniques that we can use, a different one will work for each person but above all we must start from a base:
Objectives to prepare a race psychologically
We must set ourselves a class of objectives both in the medium and long term to know where we are headed. These goals must be challenging for us but clearly achievable (we cannot aim to set a world record for vertical kilometer if it is our first test of this type for example).
Plan mental
We will need to set a plan on which to act. And that is the most important thing, the action. We will have to think about where we failed and what we have to do to remedy it and avoid falling into abandonment.
Mind Management
There are several keys to mental management that can help achieve our goal, they could be:
- Set before each competition or training, a goal that only depends on you. Be your best version.
- If you get very stressed before a competition, try to relax either with music, listening to your breathing, talking with your family about any other topic. We are each different and we must look for our methods.
- Always keep your concentration. Fix your attention on that descent that is your turn now, on those series of hills that you like so little but how good it feels to do them.
- It is important that you live in the moment. Whether in training or in a competition, don't disconnect. Enjoy it!
- Leave behind those negative thoughts that come to your mind. DO NOT pay attention to the demon that we all carry inside!
Better listen to the little angel who tells you that he loves to run, that you have been preparing for it for months and that he is having a great time.
More and more athletes have a sports psychologist on their team to be able to better deal with all kinds of situations that arise both in training and in competitions. In this way they can face the challenges in the best possible way and that the mental attitude does not end up being a ballast in the sports performance.
With this better management of situations and feelings, it will therefore be possible to continue enjoying to the fullest what we like the most, which is devoting our time to run in the mountains.
Disconnect!
Once the training sessions or the competition are over, it is always desirable that we unplug from the state of tension they produce. I eat? Well, for example, recovering with a good session of presotherapyAlso while we do it we can do something we like. For example: read, watch a TV series, watch a movie, listen music for presotherapy. The possibilities are endless. Now you have some keys to mentally overcome the problem we raised: How to psychologically prepare for a race?
In case you are interested, we leave you the article for to know the operation of pressotherapy.
Virginia Perez Mesonero is ambassador of Sizen and champion of the '19 RFEA mountain racing championship.
