In racing, as in life, there are things we do that we are not fully aware that we are doing. These things can include different habits, situations, actions, and reactions. We focus on the ones we can’t control and try to fix them, and forget about the ones we can control. We also keep our focus on what we think is going to happen or what already has happened, and we forget to focus on what is happening now. And at the end of the day, we take the events of the day for granted without putting any thought into what we learned from that day.
In order to improve performance, we have to start becoming more aware. Being aware can help drivers work on things that will increase their performance by one percent; in a sport where a tenth of a second can be crucial, this one percent has great impact.
You will start to see great improvement in your performances by becoming aware of the aspects that you can control, knowing when you are grounded or in the moment, and by having efficient feedback.
Know What You Can Control
To start, it is important to know your locus of control. One way to do this is through preparation. Being prepared includes having your equipment ready to go, getting a good night’s sleep, and having a nutritious breakfast. It also includes all the time you’ve spent learning a track, talking to your engineer, and taking care of your body via exercise.
A pre-performance routine will also help you to prepare mentally and physically for your next event. This routine can be any length of time, but it is something that you do intentionally before getting in the car. My favorite pre-performance routine lasts for just three minutes: I take deep calm breaths for one minute while moving my body in ways that will prepare me to respond (shoulder rolls, shadow boxing, high knees, etc.). For the second minute, I talk to myself to get focused and energized, as if I am my own coach or “hype man.” Then for the last minute, I mix the movements with the breath and the energizing self-talk. If you saw me during this last minute, you would see a semblance of a warrior ready to battle.
Be in the Moment
A very efficient way to keep yourself in the moment is by using the mental skill of self-talk. We are not always aware of the conversations that we have with ourselves, but once we start to notice them and see what effect they have on us, we can start to use them to our advantage.
One formula that I use for self-talk is WIN: What’s Important Now? Whether you just had a great lap, messed up your last turn, or got distracted, ask yourself what is important, now. This will help keep your focus on what you need to do next and ultimately keep yourself in the moment.
You can also help yourself be in the moment by establishing certain body cues to help remind your brain that you are here now and to practice awareness of any stress you might be experiencing. Some examples of this include shrugging your shoulders, wiggling your fingers, or rolling your neck.
You can even put these two together and come up with a body cue and a phrase that will help you stay in the moment and maintain focus. For example, wiggle your fingers while you tell yourself something like “soft and smooth” to remind yourself to keep the grip soft and make smooth movements.
Seek Continuous Feedback
One last tip on how to become more aware, and therefore become a better driver, is having effective feedback. Feedback can come in many forms, from your coach, from your engineer, the computer in your car, but the most important feedback always comes from you. This feedback is important because it provides you with information that no one else can see or measure. Self-feedback is a good way to be aware of what you have improved on, what you have problems with and what you constantly need to improve.
A good exercise is to ask yourself these three questions as often as possible: What did I do well? What could I have done better? What do I need to do to be my best? This can be after a lap, a track session, a race weekend, or even a whole championship. It is important to keep this feedback in a journal or a log so you can come back to it in the future.
By asking yourself what you did well, you will be able to take note of the things that worked, how they affected your driving, and how to apply them again. This question also helps you with your motivation, as you have a list of things that you’ve done well that you can refer to when you start feeling down on your performance.
The next question, “What could I have done better?” is aimed at helping you be critical with yourself and point out the mistakes, or weaknesses in your game. This question helps you establish goals or focus points for your next training session.
And finally, the question of what you need to do to be your best. This question gets to the heart of how can you consistently be the best driver you can be, without losing focus on the bigger picture.
As I mentioned, awareness comes in many forms. Three of these forms include: knowing what you can control, knowing that you are in the moment, and having effective feedback. By constantly working on these types of awareness, you will start to become aware (pun intended) of how important this skill is and how many benefits you can gain from it. I challenge you to start noticing and becoming aware of the things in your life that you are in control of, be aware of the times you are “in the moment/zone,” and be aware of the type of feedback you are giving yourself, and how you are using it all to become one percent better.
Yours in mental and physical health,
Santiago
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There I was: in the middle of a soccer game, right by the goal, waiting for the cross. And just like I had imagined, the perfect cross came through. I imagined myself channeling my inner Zlatan and performing a graceful volley and scoring. My body did not see it the same way, though; much to my dismay, I ended up with a pulled hamstring instead of that perfect goal.
I know that I am not the only athlete to whom this or something similar has happened. Now, as a mental strength coach, I have a much clearer idea of what exactly happened and what to do about it. As mentioned in my last article, one of the first steps to becoming more mentally strong is to become more fully aware. There are many forms of awareness: awareness of your mind, thoughts, feelings and emotions, actions and reactions. Awareness of your sport means knowing your skill level, the terms of your sport, and even the rules of the game. But one of the easiest and most important things to be aware of is your body.
What is body awareness?
Body awareness involves having a keen sense of your body’s strengths and weaknesses. Being aware of your body includes knowing your limits and how far you can push them. Do you have enough flexibility to kick that ball in the air? Can you run the extra mile (literally)? Can you lift the bar with the added 30 lbs? Can your body handle being in a racecar for 6 hours? Having this type of awareness is key to enhancing performance, especially for elite-level athletes.
How does it help performance?
Increasing body awareness can benefit your performance in several ways:
Awareness, like any other mental skill, is just that: a skill. This means that you can train, develop, and improve it.
Ways to build your body awareness:
Resources: Doyogawithme.com, Yoga with Adrianne, 21 Stretching exercises for better flexibility
Resources: StretchLab
Resources – Online Crossfit, Kickboxing, Mace flow
Resources – Free guide to teach you about visualization and awareness. Bonus gift included.
A note on injuries
Injuries, though painful and inconvenient, can teach us a lot of valuable lessons. Having an injury essentially pushes you to become aware of how your body acts and reacts. This could be by having to sleep on one side because of your injured hip, or having to use your non- dominant hand to do simple actions like brushing your teeth. Along with everyday movements, the recovery from injury and physical therapy involved will also give you a greater knowledge of your body’s strengths and weaknesses. So, in the unfortunate event that you do experience an injury, use it as a way to improve your mental strength through awareness.
If you are looking to increase your performance, improve focus, or prevent future injuries, developing your body awareness can be a great tool to take your game to the next level. If you want more information or advice, follow this link and reach out to us to schedule a FREE 30 minute consultation. Until then, stay aware!
Yours in mental and physical health
Santiago
In my last article, I talked about the characteristics of mental strength and how it is something that can actually be trained. By developing different mental skills, one can train to become more mentally strong. My last post also mentioned that every mental skill is important in its own way, and no single mental skill is independent from the others. They are all related, they all help increase mental strength and, with that, improve performance. Together they make up what I like to call the Mental Skills Tool Belt.
The mental skill that I have found to be the cornerstone of the Mental Skills Tool Belt is awareness.
According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, awareness is the knowledge, consciousness or perception of a certain thing or event.
My definition of awareness is more nuanced; it centers on cultivating knowledge of yourself, your abilities, your thoughts, as well as where you are physically, mentally and emotionally. There is a saying by Aristotle that I find to be truer every day: “The more you know, the more you realize how little you know.” I like this quote, especially when talking about awareness, because once you start to go down the path of awareness (self-awareness to be precise), you start to notice your strengths, your weaknesses and your limits. By noticing these traits, you will start to realize that there is always something that you can improve upon, as well as new challenges to try and learn from, whether that may be improving upon or learning a new skill or strategy, or reaching a level you didn’t think you could. Once you start to become more aware, there is no escaping the change that this will spark.
As a performance coach and personal trainer, my first step when meeting with a new client is to review a series of in-depth questions to gain a better understanding of the person. This step aligns with the training progression I use. The knowledge that I gather from these questions helps me to be more aware of what this individual is like, what their needs are and how they will respond to the training. These questions can also stimulate self-awareness within the individual by helping them think and talk about their strengths, weaknesses, sources of stress, sources of motivation, and so forth. They may also gain insight into the possibilities for our training sessions and how we can direct our work together.
In my experience, I have witnessed that as an athlete builds self-awareness, they begin to change. The development and practice of the other mental skills will follow soon after. By knowing what the other mental skills are, how to train them, and how to apply them, the mental skills training program will become clearer and easier to grasp. Keep in mind though, just because it’s easier to grasp, it doesn’t mean it will be easy. Like any skill development, it is important to practice, keep track of improvements and, most importantly, know how to fail.
If you would like to increase your mental strength, I suggest starting with these basic actions:
Yours in mental and physical health,
Santiago
Mental strength, or mental toughness, is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in the world of sports. In fact, these words tend to be used in most performance fields. People who are mentally strong tend to possess many of the same qualities.
For example, a person who is mentally strong always seems to be in the moment, especially in times of high stress or pressure. Some call this situation being in “flow state“. Mentally strong people are also known to not be discouraged by failure; on the contrary, they tend to revel in failure, because with failure, lessons come.
The G.O.A.T. of basketball, Michael Jordan, has a famous quote which I really like:
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
The quote highlights the point that in spite of all these failures, he overcame and went on to become a legend. There are plenty of other examples of elite athletes or performers who have failed time and time again, only to come back from these failures and achieve great success (see: Serena Williams, Drew Brees, Tiger Woods, Steph Curry, etc).
Some think that mental strength is something that you naturally have, or have been born with, but I’m here to tell you that this is not entirely correct. Mental strength, like physical strength, is a skill. Like any skill, mental strength can be developed and improved over time.
How can a person develop this skill?
Well, coaches like me have dedicated their schooling and careers to helping you answer this question. Throughout my experience as an athlete and a mental skills coach, I have witnessed the tremendous growth of many individuals, especially with their mental strength, as they have discovered and developed different mental skills. Mental skills are tools and abilities that anyone can tap into and utilize on a daily basis. They are actions that everyone does in everyday life one way or another. The problem is that not many people are aware that these are skills that can be trained.
What do I mean by this? Think of a time that you have wanted to accomplish something; you knew what you wanted to do, how you were going to do it, and when you wanted to do it by. You came up with steps for you to follow and actions to do in order to get where you wanted to go. The skill you used is one of the most important mental skills: goal setting.
Now, think back to a time when you accomplished a goal that you set for yourself. Remember how you felt when you reached that goal. Did you get a sense of relief, or relaxation? Think of what you looked like, was there a smile on your face? did you jump with joy? The feelings that you are remembering, and possibly reliving, as well as the images that you have in your head, are created by another mental skill: visualization.
Lastly, thinking back to this goal you accomplished, during the most difficult part of this goal, do you remember talking to yourself, out loud or in your head? Did you talk to yourself in an optimistic way, telling yourself to keep going? Or was it a pessimistic way, telling yourself to just give up? This skill is called self-talk.
Goal setting, visualization, and self-talk are very important skills that if trained and applied correctly, like setting effective goals, using positive visualization, and maintaining positive self-talk can have a great impact on mental strength; consequently, if these skills are applied incorrectly, they can lead to demotivation, frustration, and negative thoughts.
As a mental skills coach, I help individuals discover, train, develop, and apply these skills. Every mental skill is important in its own way, and no single mental skill is independent from the others. They are all related and they all help increase mental strength.
If you would like a glimpse into ways you can begin to develop mental strength, here are a few suggestions:
Yours in mental and physical health,
Santiago