To be an athlete is to face adversary and overcome it. No matter what sport you are competing in, you will have an enemy, an opposing team, someone you have to face and beat. You are a warrior, and as a warrior you have to prepare for battle with ALL the tools you will need to succeed. Preparing your physical body is very important. You want your body to be strong, healthy, and technically sound, but if you do not have the proper mindset going into battle, you have already lost. Think of mindset as your battle plan. You can train your body as much as you want and be in the best physical shape, but if you don’t have a strategy, if you don’t have the belief in yourself, if you lack the proper mindset, you have lost. Write this down. Your mindset is the single most important factor when it comes to how well you will do in competition. Learning how to channel that mindset is hard, but this article will seek to offer practical ways that you can start implementing mindset training into your routine as you train for competition.
Confidence is Key
As an athlete, belief in your own ability is essential to your success. You must work to brainwash yourself into believing that you are unstoppable every single time you compete. Doubt is one of the most powerful emotions in sports, and one of the most damaging. If you watch a wrestling match of someone who is down by a significant amount of points, you can typically see this mental breakdown occur. You can see the doubt creeping into their mind. Once this happens, their opponent has won. His victory is in the fact that he made them believe that they couldn’t win. You cannot let this negative mindset cross your mind EVER. You must train your mind to stay grounded and confident no matter the circumstances.
Discipline
Confidence is built through many different avenues. Discipline and work ethic will play a huge role in how confident you feel when competing. If you slack in any area in preparation for competition, it will play a role in how you feel. Remember, while you are training, there is someone else out there training to BEAT YOU. Do you really want to go into a competition without having given your all in preparing? The first step in becoming a mental athlete is to go above and beyond what is required of you to prepare for competition. If practice is two hours, stay for an extra hour to drill on your own. If you have weekends off, make time to train for a bit, or even just to go over your game plan for competition. This will not only build skill for your sport, but build mental confidence as you learn to lock you mind into the task at hand.
Visualization
The next step in preparing your mind for competition is visualization. You’ve gotten to a point where you have become disciplined and are working overtime preparing for competition. The next step is to begin visualizing the competition. You need to go into it knowing EXACTLY how you want things to go. You should be writing down your game plan every single morning, reenforcing your plan of attack. When you wake up, go look in a mirror and out loud tell yourself step by step exactly what you are going to do in your competition. This kind of laser focus will allow you to keep your mind fixed on the task at hand eliminating outside distractions and doubt. Obviously work on coming up with a plan to work from bad places too, as competition is unpredictable, but don’t that backup plan stop you from truly BELIEVING that you WILL win.
The Will to Fight
You must learn to develop the will to fight when the going gets rough. For example, if you are caught in a place where you or your team are down by a lot of points and loss seems inevitable, you MUST not accept defeat until the clock runs out. Learning how to fight like you are winning and not allowing that mental breakdown to happen is one of the most essential parts of being a mental athlete. If you’re in a grappling match and your opponent has your back and is looking for a choke, you CAN NOT give in. Fight. Don’t let doubt destroy your mind. Instead use your disadvantage to your advantage. If you are wrestling and down by 6 points with 10 seconds left, you better be shooting for take downs looking to score as many points as you can. Even if you can’t win, you need to compete like can. Why lose down by 6 points when you can lose down by 4? You need your mind to be so focused that even losing is winning based on the effort and fortitude demonstrated. Going into a match like that will instantly give you the advantage over your opponent.
Closing
In closing, I can’t cover all the aspects of mental toughness for athletes here, but hopefully through this article you were able to understand the importance of confidence, and how to increase it through these few steps. The process of becoming a mentally dominant athlete isn’t an easy one, but it can be done. The first step is confidence in yourself. If you don’t have that, every other aspect of your game will fall apart. Focus on implementing these steps in your training and make them a priority. This is fundamental to your success. Good luck!
If you are looking for a way to build a bulletproof mind so that you are always sharp and ready, check out this program from Mike Gillette, who is a mental toughness expert. I have personally used this program with great success. Highly recommended! Click here for details!