Learn how to apply key ideas from sports psychology to optimize your endurance performance!
Mental skills training isn’t just for elite athletes. It’s for anyone interested in optimizing performance. If you’re an endurance athlete looking to perform at your best — regardless of experience or competitive level — mental skills training is just as important as the physical training you do.
In this course, you will gain a better understanding of your motivations and purpose as you set your performance standards and goals. You will learn about the limits of performance and how to develop the mental skills needed to help you get more out of your training and execute more effectively on race day.
The course introduces key ideas from performance psychology alongside a series of hands-on practical applications that guide you through the goal setting process and help you become a better athlete.
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Identify your motivations and your big “why”
- Set your personal performance standards
- Set your outcome and process goals
- Develop mindfulness and attentional control
- Develop mental toughness
- Use mental imagery to enhance performance
- Deal with pre-race anxiety
- Assess your race performance
No prior background in endurance sports or performance psychology is needed, just a curiosity about how you can perform at your best. The focus of the course is on athletic performance, but the key takeaways are equally applicable to other domains of life.
Complete the hands-on practical applications using the downloadable course workbook that contains templates of all the exercises.
Hands-on practical exercises include:
- How to identify your motivation
- How to identify your core values
- How to identify your “why,” or purpose
- How to set your performance standards
- How to set your outcome and process goals
- How to develop mindfulness and attentional control
- How to write a mental imagery script
- How to prepare for race day
- How to assess your race when it’s over
Course length is approximately 2-4 hours, plus any additional time you’d like to spend with the exercises. You can move through the content at your own pace, returning to topics for further study or skipping around based on your interests.
Accompanying this course is the “Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training Plan” on TrainingPeaks, which provides prompts and activities directly in your training calendar to help you implement the ideas and skills.
Disclaimer: This course is for athletes interested in developing their goals and mental skills. The content is not intended to be diagnostic in nature; it is not intended to be used for treatment or therapy. If you are experiencing mental health issues, seek the support of an appropriate health professional.
