PART 4. EXECUTING ON RACE DAY Race Day Readiness Racing is an incredible opportunity to showcase the impact of your training. You’ve put in all the hard work to prepare for the event. Now put the final touches on your preparation to ensure you arrive at the starting line ready…
PART 3. MENTAL SKILLS TRAINING What Limits Performance? “Whether you believe you can or not, you’re right.”— Henry Ford “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” — William Shakespeare What causes an endurance athlete to slow down or stop during a race or training session? Historically,…
PART 2. GOAL SETTING Outcome, Performance, and Process Goals Before setting your goals, let’s start with some background on different types of goals. You will then use these ideas to formulate your own goals in the practical applications in this section. Outcome Goals (race places) Outcome goals are the outcomes…
PART 1. MOTIVATION Knowing Yourself “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” — Aristotle Before you can effectively set your goals, you need to first understand what motivates you. After all, these are your goals — not someone else’s goals. Your goals need to be meaningful to you. They need…
Z1 – “Easy” Zone Easy nose-breathing effort. You should be able to comfortably breathe through your nose and tell a long story to someone next to you without needing to slow down to catch your breath. Breathing is barely above walking breathing rate. Z2 – “Conversational” Zone Conversational nose-breathing effort….
Learn how to use training zones to add precision to your training! Using training zones allows you to add precision to your workouts. If you’re targeting an upcoming event or performance objective, you need a systematic plan to structure your training around those goals. A key element of any training…
Learn how to create a training plan and schedule key workouts to reach your goals! To excel in your athletic goals, you need to train with a purpose. Training with a purpose means knowing why you are doing a particular workout and how that workout fits into your overall progression…
Leaving post-workout comments in your training log may feel unnecessary when your training device auto-uploads your workout directly into TrainingPeaks. Isn’t the data from your training device enough for you and your coach to work with? Although your training device data is crucial, it only tells part of your training…
Self-talk — the “verbalizations or statements addressed to the self” (Hardy 2006, p. 84) — has been widely examined in sport psychology. Self-talk can be positive or negative, spoken aloud/externally or silently/internally, and be instructional or motivational. The research literature has shown that “self-talk is beneficial for athletic performance” (Tod,…
Athletes can be hard on themselves. Have you ever finished a race or training session with words of self-criticism flowing through your inner dialogue? If so, you’re not alone. The culture of sport often revolves around the assumption that harsh criticism is necessary to motivate athletes in the face of…