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. But how do you get started?
Begin with the newly released “Guide to Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training,” now available on the Alp Fitness website. This practical guide introduces key ideas from performance psychology along with hands-on practical applications that allow you to apply the ideas to your own life and athletic interests.
The guide is structured into four main sections:
- The first section, Motivation, takes you through a series of exercises to help you identify your prime motivators and discover your personal “why,” or purpose.
- The second section, Goal Setting, introduces key ideas about goal setting and guides you through practical applications to help you set your outcome, performance, and process goals.
- The third section, Mental Skills Training, discusses what limits endurance performance and helps you develop the foundational skills of mindfulness and attentional control, put your self-talk to strategic use, train your mental toughness, and use mental imagery.
- The final section, Executing on Race Day, helps you optimize your arousal level going into the race, deal with pre-race anxiety, and then bring the goal-achievement cycle full circle by drawing lessons from your race once it’s over.
Explore the content at your own pace while taking time to work through the practical application exercises — a downloadable workbook with templates for each of the written activities is provided.
