Posted: April 1, 2006

Sports Psychology: Where to Begin with your Mental Training Plan this season!

By Michelle Cleere, Sports Psychology Consultant

You’ve probably already began training for this season and since you’ve already started training how are you feeling? Not just physically but mentally. Do you keep a journal of your training? If not, I am let me make a suggestion that now might be a good time to start. In that journal write down as many thoughts as you can with regards to nutrition, sleep, work, relationships, and training (mental & physical). It doesn’t have to be pages and pages of information. In fact you might use single words or short phrases that make sense to you. The reason I am suggesting you keep a journal is because in a journal you can look back at what you’ve written which often times can be very effective for figuring out why something might be going really well or why it might be going really not so well; in all regards.

The main motivation behind my suggesting you keep a journal is so you will begin thinking about what mental challenges get in the way of your performance. Journals help you become aware of and clarify what mental challenges are occurring and will help you to see the effects of those mental challenges on your training. And then, you can choose to do something about whatever the challeging situation is.

Take for example my friend Viola. Viola found that every time she went out for a run it seemed difficult and wasn’t at all fun for her. She has been a runner for over 20 and has trained a lot so it didn’t seem like it could be her physical training. She slept at least 8 hours every night. Her eating was not great all the time but she ate pretty healthy and was of average weight with no health risks. After about the 5th time of her bringing this situation up in conversation I asked her about her thought process around her running. Viola said she didn’t love running but didn’t think she was feeling or thinking too negatively about it. I suggested she keep a journal of her thoughts around her running. I told her there might be something occurring in her thoughts that was making her running so challenging for her. She said she’d give it a try.

I saw Viola a few weeks later. She grabbed me and hugged me. She told me she wasn’t aware of how negative she was about her running until she kept the journal. She realized that on her running days she got out of bed thinking about how much she was dreading her run later in the afternoon. Those thoughts only grew more in depth as the day went on. By the time she got to her run she was so tense and so stressed out about her run that every time she ran she grew to hate it more and more.

Viola now has a choice to make now that she is aware of her behavior. Does she continue to hate running or does she learn how to deal with her negativity so that her running once again becomes more enjoyable?

I’ve given you the information about why it’s important to keep a journal so now it’s up to you whether or not you take my advice and try it but I hope you will. What do you have to lose? You actually have EVERYTHING to gain! Try it with honesty and sincerity for one month and if it doesn’t work for you…stop doing it. ?

To begin working with any mental challenges you must become aware of them and then you can make a decision what to do about it/them. Whatever you might find in your journaling, whether it’s motivation, focus, time management, negative self talk, anxiety or something else, my next suggestion would be to choose one to work on this season; just one.

Be looking for my May & Junes articles. I am going to talk about the top 2 mental challenges (which many of you will find in your journals) faces by endurance athletes and what to do about them.

Michelle is owner of Sports Minded, a Sports Psychology Consulting practice. She works with individuals and groups on performance enhancement. Michelle is an NASM-certified personal trainer and a USAT-certified triathlon coach. E-mail questions and comments to her at SportsMindedMC@aol.com or check out her web site at MentalStrength.com.

The top 2 biggest mental challenges for endurance athletes are: negative self talk and anxiety.

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