Mental Training Methods
7 Mental Training Tools
When it comes to being an athlete everyone knows how important it is that you are physically at your best whether that means strength wise or endurance wise in order to succeed. However, being mentally strong is the other half of the beast that athletes must accomplish, in order to be great. just like you do in order to become physically your best, you must do for your mental as well, meaning you must train it. Untapped potential can be unlocked, and focus, resilience, and general well-being can be improved with the help of mental training approaches. In this blog I am hoping to teach you more about these mental training techniques by diving into them and explaining how they can help athlete reach their full potential. However, before I do this I wanted to first discuss an overview of the techniques that come with mental training and enhance variables such as mental toughness, resilience, cognitive performance and emotional controls. Using their mental skill techniques from incorporating tactics visualization to mindfulness to restructuring their thought process thoughts can help athletes taking control over thoughts and ultimately help them succeed in whatever they are doing.
Mental training tools:
1.Visualization is a tool that is used in sport psychology that can be very beneficial to athletes. This is the process of creating mental images of desired results, events, or situations related to a player's performance in their sport. This tool can help athletes improve their performance, self-esteem, and focus. Thoughts can be a powerful thing and by using visualization can help trick the brain into believing what is being thought and turning the things being imagined into reality. Athletes can create a mindset of resilience and confidence with this mental training technique. this tool build connections between their minds and improve their muscle memory by clearly imagining themselves accomplishing their goals. This mental training technique, alone, can be very effective.
Why Visualization is Effective:
1. Builds Confidence: Using this tool to imagine success can help the athlete improve their confidence within themselves and lead them to believing what they think and improve their performance.
2. Improves Focus: Visualization can help athletes improve their overall focus and concentration by imaging specific actions and scenarios related to their sport.
3. Reduces Anxiety: This tool can help athletes reduce their anxiety and stress by creating positive scenarios that can help their brain believe what is being thought and overall giving them a feeling of control in challenging situations.
- Measurable: SMART's the letter "M" stands for "measurable," which emphasizes the importance of creating measurable and achievable goals. Measurable goals allow you to be able to analyze your progress and determine whether you’re getting closer to accomplishing your goal or not. When creating a measurable goal, you should think of some specific requirements or milestones that will make it easier for you to keep track and examine your progress without any biases. An example of this would be, If your objective is to improve your endurance, something that you could do would be to keep track of how many miles you run each week as well as the time it takes you to complete the distance each time that you run it. this will allow you to see if you are making any progress by shaving time off of each attempt that you take.
- Achievable: The "A" in SMART stands for "achievable,". This refers to why it is important it is to create realistic and reachable goals. While it's important to set big goals and dream big that will lead you to go outside of your comfort zone, it's also important that when you are creating these goals that you are being realistic about your own capabilities, weakness, and the tools you have to try and accomplish said goal. Setting impossible standards can lead you to feel angry and disappointed and could cause you to lose motivation. Instead make goals that challenge you yet are realistic. Something that could help you when doing this is when creating a large goal try to break in down into smaller goals are milestone so that it seems possible and not overwhelming.
- Relevant: The "R" in SMART stands for Relevance. This refers to why it is important to create goals that are relevant and align with what you stand for and your core values. Relevance makes sure your goals have purpose will also you to not only be successful by develop personally as a whole. When creating this goal it is important that you take into account if this goal will align with what you are wanting to accomplish in the long-run with your priorities, values, and goals. It is crucial to think of this before committing to this goal, however if you do commit it is okay for you to go back and revaluate your choices if you begin to realize that it may not be a good fit for you as a whole.
- Time-bound: The "T" in SMART stands for "time-bound,". this pertains to why it is important that when you set a goal that you also give it a timeline as well. creating a timeline makes you be more intentional with the efforts that you to when attempting to achieve this goal because it gives you a feeling of urgency and helps you to become more accountable. Deciding an exact day of when you want to accomplish this goal is how you can create a time-bound goal. However, it could be overwhelming when first starting to see how far you have to go to accomplish this, so that is why I would recommend when creating this deadline that you also create milestones within the deadline. Doing this can help you know if you are on track and will reach your desired goal in time, and also helps you break it down so it does not seem too overwhelming for you.
3. Building Mindfulness: Athletes can develop sense of allowing themselves to become present within the moment and be more aware, improve mental fog, and reduce their stress by practicing mindfulness techniques. Examples of the techniques are mediation and deep breathing exercises.
- Mediation: Athletes can use meditation before participating in competition to improve their overall mental focus and become more prepared for play. Athletes can learn to become more present in the moment and drown out distractions that are around them. Furthermore, allowing them to become more focused on the task at hand.
- Deep breathing: Deep breathing is an exercise that helps athletes learn how to control their breathing, lower their pulse rate, and overall become more relaxed. If you are someone who struggles with performance anxiety this is a great tool that can be used to calm your anxiety around competition
Practicing mindfulness can be very beneficial for the athlete because it allows them to improve their abilities of focusing and concentrating during workouts and competitions. Learning to train their mind and staying in the present can improve their performance because they are learning to become numb to all distractions that could hinder their performance. Also using this training tool can empower the athlete because it allows them to feel in control when it comes to managing their stress, anxiety, or any other negative thought and feelings. As an athlete one of the greatest advantages, you can have it to learn is how to become more emotionally aware and even-tempered. Doing so will help you be more reliable in situations that are highly stressful and challenging, ultimately allowing you to do something that many can’t do which is to perform under pressure.
4.Developing Mental Toughness: becoming mentally tough essentially means being able to deal with adversity, embrace being uncomfortable, being able to remain composed steps, and you are able to bounce back from failures.
When it comes to embracing discomfort, this could look like and mean a lot of things. However, to me this means going outside of your comfort zone so that you are able achieve challenging goals that you have set. By putting yourself in difficult situations where it's challenging and you might fail the first time you try to do, you are allowing yourself to become mentally strong when you continue to try to accomplish it. An Example of this could be continuing to run and give all your effort when you are physically fatigued. One of the best quotes I was ever told was by my old strength coach and that was "learn to become comfortable with being uncomfortable".
5. Positive Self-Talk: this mental training tool is pretty straight forward and means exactly how it reads. Aka in order to practice positive self-talk you must talk positively to yourself. The brain is a very powerful organ and what you say to yourself can have either a negative or positive effect on you. If you only say negative things to yourself all the time eventually your brain will start to believe it and eventually you will too. However, on the flip side if you only say things in a positive or constructive manner your brain will begin to believe these types of things and so won't you. Speaking positively to yourself can increase your confidence, self-esteem, and overall performance.
6. Embracing Resilience: sports are unpredictable. With all of the highs that come along with it, so don't the lows As an athlete it is important that you are able to adjust with whatever comes your way. This could include obstacles, adversity, hardships, setbacks, etc being able to do this is called being resilient. To help you embrace adversity a mental training method that can help you use your setbacks as an opportunity to grow would be to develop a growth mindset. Having a growth mindset just means that you are afraid of 'failure', and also realizing that failure is not the end of the world but is only a things that shows you an area of weakness that you can work on and overcome.
7. Integrating Mental Training into Practice: As I have mentioned at the begging of the lengthy blog post, in order to be successful and a great athlete you must be both physically and mentally strong. Meaning the amount of time you put in to be at you best physically you must also do for yourself mentally. Although, I realize that some habits die hard and new ones are hard to form gradually using some of these training methods into your everyday life will help with the transition into you athletic life. Doing so can lead you to be successful for both on and off the court or field.
reference link:
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/management/smart-goal/
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