My event is getting closer, I’m having trouble staying motivated?
My training isn’t giving me as much change as I thought it would. What should I do?
You won’t find professional athletes making self-sabotaging statements about their performance in their media interviews. Why? Because we widely accept the idea that if our sporting heroes were to give negative performance a voice, they would pre-pave the way for negative performance to occur.
So what happens for you as you get closer to your event?
Do you find motivation goes down and your anxiety levels come up?
If you go to bed at night berating yourself, thinking “I can’t get enough training done in the time I have left!” Or you wake up and your first thought is “I should have started preparing for this earlier!” Do you ever wonder how much this negative language (I can’t, I should have) matters?
Here’s an example of how thoughts can directly relate to how you feel and behave…
If you think you’re under-prepared for your race you will feel under-prepared for your race, then you will act under-prepared for your race. Then you will look for and gather evidence of this to re-enforce your thoughts which re-enforces your belief that you MUST be under-prepared for your race.
It’s easy to see how this self-perpetuating thought cycle can erode your motivation big time, particularly as the date of your event comes nearer. Research shows there are direct links between thoughts, feeling and behaviour. One study found positive self-talk not only increased motivation but also physical feelings of strength and self-efficacy as well (Slimani and Cheour in 2016). This means negative self-talk does harm both your motivation and your performance on the day.
You might think top athletes are preoccupied with winning all the time. I have found highly capable athletes have a very different conversation going on in their heads. Champions have their full focus on the effects of their training. They hold an unsatiable curiosity for all things preparation. They get excited when they identify one component to lift their physical capability. No matter how subtle this component is; if it going to help, they will want to implement this into their process as quickly as possible.
Curiosity moves you away from fears you haven’t done enough. How? Curiosity makes subsequent learning more rewarding. When curiosity is sparked there is more activity in the hippocampus in the brain, which is the area of the brain that makes memories but also relates to reward and pleasure.
By moving from fear to curiosity, you open your mind for learning; you set the stage for great insights to occur. The period of time coming up to your race is an ideal opportunity to capture insights about your body. Reframing your focus to “gathering components which help your body” builds you traction for your race. By moving from a negative focus, which doesn’t feel good, to the positive intention of building on “what you can do” you will build both good feeling as well as multiple training rewards.
Have you found new insights in the lead up to your event?
We’d love you to hear about how you maintain your pre-race motivation.
Email us : barbara@eventreadybodies.co.nz