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, this question has been answered by either focusing on the accumulation of fatigue in the muscles themselves (peripheral fatigue) or via the role played by the central nervous system in regulating activity (central governor model). The central governor model, proposed by physiologist Tim Noakes in the late 1990s, proposed that the brain regulates intensity during exercise to maintain homeostasis and prevent the body from reaching catastrophic failure. Yet both of these historical approaches have been criticized for overlooking and failing to explain the influence of psychological variables in shaping an athlete’s performance.
Athletic Performance as an Interplay of Body and Mind
The current understanding of the limits of endurance performance is known as the psychobiological model. As the word root psycho indicates, the model places increased focus on psychological factors such as cognitive perception, motivation, and willingness. This is in addition to, as the word root bio indicates, biological or physiological factors. The interplay of psychology and physiology is what limits performance — or, conversely, allows an athlete to extend those limits.
According to the psychobiological model, an athlete doesn’t necessarily stop when they reach their physiological limits, but only when the activity requires more effort than they are willing to exert. If the athlete perceives that the effort required by the activity exceeds the greatest amount they are willing to put forth, then they will slow down or stop. If the athlete perceives that they have already put forth all the effort they can muster, then continuing will be viewed as impossible and they will slow down or stop. So motivation and perception of effort guide the athlete’s decision-making. As long as the athlete continues to view their goal for the activity as attainable, then they will keep at it with the same intensity.
The greatest limiter to performance, therefore, can often be our beliefs, appraisals, and self-talk.
Belief in Our Capacity to Act
Self-efficacy is our belief in our capacity to act in a way that allows us to reach our goals. Originally developed by psychologist Albert Bandura, self-efficacy influences how we approach challenges and make choices. It’s what we think we can do, what we think we can’t do, and what we think our limits are.
We learn and develop our self-efficacy beliefs through both personal experiences and social interaction. Our own life histories are filled with lessons on how we handled challenges and adversity in the past. On a day-to-day basis, we continue to observe and draw lessons from our training, learning what drives us to push beyond our limits or slow down. Social facilitation also plays a role in how we develop our belief systems. Watching others push the boundaries and post incredible times can provide positive models that influence our beliefs in what we can do. Feedback from others on our own performances also plays a role.
Cognitive Appraisals
Cognitive appraisals are the subjective interpretations we make about what we perceive to be happening around us. In the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat, a threat appraisal involves judging a task as important to us while also perceiving that we lack the ability or resources to meet the demands of the task. Threat appraisals can lead to anxiety and stress. This can occur, for example, when heading into a race where we start to doubt our readiness. Countering threat appraisals involves reframing them as challenge appraisals to shift the perception to one where we have sufficient (or nearly sufficient) ability and resources to meet the demands of the task.
We also make appraisals, or judgments in everyday training as we look at the numbers on our devices to judge pacing, heart rate, and other metrics. If the watch is telling us we’re running at a certain pace but we have the perception that we should be going faster given the effort level, then this could lead to a negative appraisal of the situation. Metrics are useful in training, but they can also lead to negative judgments that impact our self-efficacy beliefs. Recognizing these potential pitfalls is important to avoid falling into them.
Organic Self-Talk
Self-talk refers to our internal dialogue, the verbalizations and statements we address to ourselves. Our minds tend to be quite chatty and filled with spontaneous thoughts and narratives that come and go. This natural flow of dialogue in our mind is organic self-talk. Sometimes we hold onto certain narratives and repeat them on loop. Sometimes random ideas pop into our head and disappear just as quickly.
Becoming more aware of that chatter allows us to better shape our internal dialogue in a way that serves us rather than hinders us. Is your organic self-talk generally positive, negative, self-critical, etc.?
Since we can’t change what we’re not aware of, the first step to harnessing self-talk is to become aware of it. Gaining awareness is a crucial step to developing your mental skills as an athlete.
Developing Mindfulness
To excel in what we do as athletes, we need to be able to exercise attentional control — to be aware of what’s happening both internally in the body/mind and externally in the surrounding environment, and to consciously choose where and how to focus our attention for extended periods of time.
Since the body tends to follow and respond to wherever we place our attention, we typically get more of what we attend to. This cuts both ways. If the mind is filled with negative chatter related to discomfort we’re experiencing during a race, the discomfort can be magnified. If, on the other hand, the mind is focused on getting to that next mile marker, the body can respond accordingly by harnessing the energy needed to get there.
Attentional control consists of three key elements: awareness, focus, and concentration. Awareness refers to a broad, general sense of what’s happening in and around us. Focus places that awareness onto something in particular. Concentration holds the awareness and focus in mind for an extended period of time.
We can shift attentional control across two overlapping dimensions: broad/narrow and internal/external. As these dimensions overlap, they form the four quadrants of the diagram below, as discussed by sports psychologist Robert Nideffer. Attention can be broad external, narrow external, broad internal, or narrow internal.

For example, before a run we might do a (broad internal) body scan to check in with how we’re feeling. After we start running, we might shift attention (narrow internal) to our shoulders to keep them relaxed during an intense interval. Likewise, during a race, we might pay (broad external) attention to the racecourse, the positioning of competitors, and other environmental factors that we need to be aware of to execute our race tactics. That attention might then shift again (narrow external) as we zero in on a runner in front of us that we want to catch.
Mindfulness is another way of talking about awareness, focus, and concentration. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor of medicine and pioneer in the scientific study of mindfulness, defines mindfulness as “paying attention on purpose in the present moment non-judgmentally.” Practicing mindfulness involves adopting the stance of a neutral observer and watching what comes up in your mind. It’s about developing a meta-awareness — that is, an awareness that you’re aware — of what’s unfolding in each present moment.
In the video below, Jon Kabat-Zinn provides a brief overview of mindfulness.
In the next video, Andy Puddicombe — author, meditation teacher, and co-founder of the Headspace meditation app — explains mindfulness in this TED Talk.
Mindfulness is a foundational mental skill on which all other high-performance mental skills build. Developing mindfulness — awareness, presence of mind, and attentional control — requires consistent and frequent practice, but the good news is that even dedicating just 10 minutes a day to mindfulness practice can go a long way. An upcoming practical application provides some specific mindfulness exercises that you can integrate into your daily routine.
✍Practical Application: Mindfulness Practice
“You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.”
— Zen saying
Mindfulness is a foundational mental skill. Consistency and frequency is key when it comes to mindfulness practice. So find a regular time each day to practice for at least 10 minutes, whether after waking up in the morning, before going to bed, before/after a workout, or during another time of the day. The point of the dedicated practice time is to develop awareness with an eye on expanding that awareness into everything you do in training, racing, and life.
Various approaches and techniques for mindfulness practice have developed over the centuries. Choose one that works for you and stick with it. Regardless of the specific approach or technique, you are practicing meta-awareness — the awareness of being aware in the present moment.
Below are guidelines to get started with basic mindfulness meditation, plus a mindfulness exercise that takes you through the four attentional control quadrants discussed in the previous section. These instructions are followed by a 10-minute guided meditation led by Andy Puddicombe of Headspace, plus several short animations from Headspace to help you get started with your practice. If you don’t already know about the Headspace guided meditation app, consider checking out their free trial using this link and you’ll support Alp Fitness in the process.
Mindfulness Meditation Practice
Here are instructions for a basic mindfulness meditation that you can do for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, or however long works for you. The point of the exercise is to simply sit and count your breaths. As your mind wanders, return your focus to the breath. The breath is your anchor.
Prepare:
- Find a quiet space where you won’t be disturbed (no texts, emails, etc.).
- Sit upright in a comfortable position in a chair or on the floor.
- Set a timer on your watch for 10 minutes (or your chosen duration).
Start:
- Take three deep breaths, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.
- On the third breath, close your eyes or lower your gaze.
- Relax into a steady breathing pattern, breathing in and out through the nose, without trying to control the breath.
Practice:
- Focus on each in-breath and out-breath by choosing one aspect of your breathing to follow, such as the rising/lowering of your diaphragm or the sensation of air coming into/out of your nose.
- Count each in-breath and out-breath until you reach 10. Then start again at 1. Continue repeating this cycle of counting your breaths from 1-10.
- When your mind wanders or if you lose track of your count, simply return to the breath and start the counting again. The breath is your anchor.
When finished, take a moment to reflect on how the exercise went for you. The busy-ness of the mind varies from day to day. That’s normal and to be expected. As you continue practicing each day, bring awareness to what’s going on without judging or trying to push away the thoughts. Simply observe the thoughts and let them move on without turning your attention to them.
Noting/Labeling. Another mindfulness meditation technique is to note or label what comes up when your mind wanders and distracts you from counting your breaths. When something pops into your mind, give it a label, such as “thinking” or “feeling.” Then let it go on its way. You’ve recognized and acknowledged it, but don’t need to identify with or be distracted by it. Once noted, return to counting your breaths.
Attentional Control Practice
Use this exercise to either supplement the mindfulness meditation or integrate into it. In this exercise, you’re going to shift your attention across each of the four quadrants of attentional control discussed in the previous section: broad external, narrow external, broad internal, and narrow internal.
Prepare:
- Find a quiet space where you won’t be disturbed (no texts, emails, etc.).
- Sit upright in a comfortable position in a chair or on the floor.
- Set a repeat timer on your watch for 1-5 minutes (or however long you’d like to spend on each quadrant).
Start:
- Take three deep breaths, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.
- On the third breath, close your eyes or lower your gaze.
- Relax into a steady breathing pattern, breathing in and out through the nose, without trying to control the breath.
Practice:
- Broad external. Focus broadly on your external surroundings, noticing all of the various sounds, smells, and sensations around you.
- Narrow external. After the timer goes off, shift to a narrow focus on something from those external surroundings you previously surveyed. It could be a particular sound or smell or maybe the feeling of the floor on your feet.
- Broad internal. After the timer goes off again, shift your attention inward with a broad focus on how your body is feeling. You can scan through from head to toe to get a general sense of whether you’re feeling alert, fatigued, tight, etc.
- Narrow internal. After the time goes off again, now shift your internal attention onto one thing in particular, such as a niggle or twinge you may be having in your knee. Focus your attention there and just observe what’s going on.
Guided 10-Minute Meditation with Andy Puddicombe
Why Meditation is Just Like Riding a Bike
Meditation doesn’t just take practice, it is practice. You have to get used to gently letting go of the thoughts and feelings that occur in the mind. But, just like riding a bike, the more you do it, the easier it feels. So jump on your trusty bicycle, and enjoy a taste of freedom.
Noting Technique
Noting is one of eight techniques used within the Headspace app to help you train your mind. Rather than trying to create calm by stamping out thoughts or feelings, this simple strategy helps us to acknowledge them before returning to the object of focus.
Training the Monkey Mind
When you first close your eyes to meditate, you might be surprised by how energetic the mind is. Where is the peace I was promised? It’s not peaceful in here at all! But don’t be discouraged. In this animation we explore how to create the conditions for a calm, quiet mind.
Accepting the Mind
Meditation is the simple act of taking time out to observe the mind. But what happens if we don’t like what we find? In this Headspace animation, co-founder Andy Puddicombe uses a traditional metaphor of a calm pool of water to explain how each meditation session can become an exercise in acceptance.

Choosing Where to Focus Your Attention
Mindfulness isn’t something to do while just meditating, it’s a skill you want to bring into your everyday activities. During training and racing, strive to pay attention in each present moment so you can purposefully direct where to place the focus of your attention. This allows you to intentionally choose when to turn on your narrow internal focus, for example, versus allowing your mind to wander and relax. It also allows you to put your self-talk to strategic use.
Moving Between Attentional Strategies
Endurance athletes move between what has been termed associative and dissociative attentional strategies during training and racing. Associative thoughts involve a narrow task-relevant focus on matters related to performance, such as your breathing rate or muscle contractions. Dissociative thoughts involve a broad task-irrelevant focus on things unrelated to the immediate task at hand, such as the scenery around you or what you’ll do on your next vacation.
Early research on the topic found that elite marathoners tend to do more associative thinking while non-elite marathoners tend to do more dissociative thinking. After several more decades of research, the general perspective is that both strategies are relevant at different times for different purposes. Associative thinking helps athletes focus on the task at hand and is particularly beneficial at higher intensity levels where a task-relevant attentional strategy is helpful. The faster you’re going, the more beneficial it will be to focus on task-relevant aspects of your performance. Dissociative thinking, on the other hand, helps reduce perceived exertion and is particularly beneficial at longer distances with lower intensity levels where mind-wandering can be a helpful distraction.
A valuable mental skill is the ability to move between these attentional strategies as needed during your training and racing. Doing this builds on your foundational mindfulness training, which allows you to be aware of which strategy you’re currently using so you can switch between them at will.
Use associative thinking when you need a task-relevant attentional focus. This includes moments where you need to monitor your exertion level to keep it in check, such as at the beginning of a race or during a long climb. This also includes technical sections of a course where you need to place attentional focus on the task at hand to avoid falling or missing a turn. Associative thinking is necessary to monitor your fueling and hydration during prolonged activity, or to ensure you’re in the right zone during interval training. You can also use it to do a body scan to identify tense areas that need to be relaxed, and then to modulate your muscle tension or breathing to help you relax.
Use dissociative thinking when you need to redirect attention away from sensations of pain and discomfort. Simply letting your mind wander freely can also provide a needed mental break during longer events — and, of course, mind-wandering during lower-intensity training sessions is often what makes those workouts so fulfilling, promoting creativity and positively impacting mood.
Mind-wandering, or dissociative thinking where spontaneous thoughts come and go freely is a form of organic self-talk. As defined earlier, self-talk refers to our internal dialogue, the verbalizations and statements we address to ourselves. Organic self-talk refers to the natural flow of that dialogue. Creative ideas and problem-solving come from the type of organic self-talk we call mind-wandering, which provides room for reflection and introspection. This differs from the negative form of organic self-talk that we call rumination. Rumination involves a narrow focus on similar thoughts that get repeated over and over, causing worry and stress. When shifting into dissociative thinking, it’s the mind-wandering we want to embrace, not the rumination.
Using Self-Talk Strategically
Self-talk can also be strategic, motivational, and instructional.
Strategic self-talk is when we intentionally deploy words or narratives for a specific reason to help us. These are strategic forms of self-talk that we’ve trained ourselves to use.
Motivational self-talk is what we often associate with self-talk in athletic settings. It’s your internal coach or cheerleader that uses self-talk to boost confidence or motivate performance. Motivational self-talk can be used to stimulate arousal (“Let’s do this!”), maintain emotional control (“Stay present”), reinforce mastery (“You did that well”), or facilitate drive (“Keep going, you can do this”).
Research on motivational self-talk has shown that it reduces perceived effort and increases time to exhaustion. For example, you might use motivational self-talk in the later stages of a marathon to keep focused on getting to that next mile marker without letting up on your pace. Research has also demonstrated that addressing yourself in the second person (“you”) when using motivational self-talk is more effective than using the first-person pronoun (“I”).
Instructional self-talk is the verbal guidance we provide to ourselves on how to do something, talking us through the mechanics of a skill. Instructional self-talk is especially useful when we’re learning a new skill or for skills that require fine motor control and specific movements.
For example, you might use instructional self-talk to guide yourself through a transition in a triathlon or skimo race (“First do this, then that, and then…”) or to guide yourself through the technical segment of a course to stay focused on the movements you need to make. Devising instructional checklists that you intentionally deploy in such situations can facilitate performance.
Knowing these different attentional strategies allows you to deliberately deploy them at different times for different purposes. This is something you can practice on a regular basis during training, so you’re adept at implementing your attentional flexibility when racing.
Developing Mental Toughness
“We often think of races as ‘painful,’ but physical pain is completely distinct from the sense of effort — the struggle to keep going against a mounting desire to stop — that usually limits race speed.”
— Alex Hutchinson
Consider for a moment what mental toughness means to you within the context of your sport. What does it look like in practice? What are some examples of situations where you found yourself implementing it?
What Is Mental Toughness?
Sport — and life — is filled with challenges, obstacles, and setbacks. At some point in a race where we’re pushing our limits, it’s not a matter of if we’ll feel uncomfortable but when. Knowing how to deal with discomfort and pain, and how to navigate around obstacles and setbacks is an invaluable mental skill for athletes to develop.
Mental toughness generally refers to the application of grit, resilience, and perseverance in the face of mounting challenges and difficulties. It involves a willingness to stay in moments of difficulty because of a deep connection to our goals and purpose. It involves a psychological flexibility to accept what comes up, a curiosity to explore what we can do to bridge difficult moments, and an optimism that we will get through them if we keep at it.
Mental toughness is central to the psychobiological model of endurance performance — how perception of effort and a willingness to endure can be limiters (or enablers) of performance. If we are willing to put forth the level of effort required by the activity, believe we have more to give, and continue to view our goal as attainable, then we will persevere. But we must be in pursuit of something meaningful, underscoring how important our big “why” — or purpose — becomes to deploying mental toughness.
Our Relationship to Discomfort and Pain
As running coach Joe Vigil has remarked, the key to faster times as a runner is to learn “to be comfortable being uncomfortable.” Being comfortable in uncomfortable situations is a skill that can be trained and developed through experience and practice.
To understand our relationship to discomfort and pain, consider the distinction between pain threshold and pain tolerance. Pain threshold is the point at which the perception of a stimulus is recognized as being painful. For example, if you place your hand in a glass of ice water and time how long you keep it there, there will be a point when the experience turns painful. If you and a group of friends do this at a dinner table together, there’s likely to be fairly similar judgments about when that pain threshold is reached — as measured by time spent in water at a given temperature.
Pain tolerance, however, may vary quite a bit among your group of friends engaged in this experiment. Pain tolerance refers to the maximum level of pain you are willing to endure. This may go beyond the pain threshold. In the ice water experiment, different individuals may exhibit vastly different levels of pain tolerance — how long they keep their hand in the ice water — even if everyone generally agrees on the pain threshold for the activity.
If you turn the ice water experiment into a contest, the willingness of you and your friends to keep your hands in the ice water for a longer period of time would likely increase. Now there’s a point to the exercise — it’s become a contest (maybe for bragging rights or a free dinner) rather than simply being an experiment. It’s gained some sort of greater meaning for the group of participants. Some may still see it as pointless, in which case they may spend little time in the glass of ice water. Others may be highly motivated to win the free dinner, in which case they would try to match their willingness to endure the pain and the effort they put forth with the requirements of the activity (needing to keep their hand in the ice water a second longer than everyone else at the table).
Enduring in the ice water game depends on several factors, as discussed earlier when defining mental toughness, including the meaningfulness of the game to each participant, a willingness to keep a hand in the ice water beyond one’s pain threshold, a curiosity to explore what comes up, and an optimism one can last as long as needed. But how well any of the contestants navigate and deploy mental toughness in this endurance test can be improved through training.
Training to Be Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
There are plenty of opportunities during training to gain experience learning to be comfortable while uncomfortable — every VO2max workout you do demands just that. But to train this skill further, look for opportunities to integrate situations of discomfort and controlled adversity into your everyday training sessions. Choose practice situations that are relevant to you and your goals.
Below are a few ways to do this. During these situations, focus on being mentally flexible to cope with the adversity. Accept the situation without being rigid or trying to avoid it. Deploy relaxation techniques or strategic self-talk to guide yourself through the moments.
Training in adverse weather conditions. As we all know, not all races take place in perfect conditions, so training in adverse conditions can help you learn coping mechanisms that you can apply when race conditions are less than ideal. For example, instead of shelving a run due to adverse weather or running inside on the treadmill, head out into the pelting rain, blowing snow, or fierce wind. You may not be able to achieve the originally planned workout in those weather conditions, but you can turn it into a mental toughness workout instead.
Training with an intentional irritant. Introducing some sort of irritant, such as cold exposure, during a training session forces you to adjust and cope. For example, when you’re on a run on a cold day, take off one of your gloves and put it in your pocket for some amount of time. Run like that beyond your point of discomfort. Use strategic self-talk to positively frame the experience and motivate yourself. Apply what you learn when future training and racing situations don’t always go as planned.
When It Stops Being Mental Toughness
The point of training “to be comfortable being uncomfortable” is obviously not to cause harm or injury. The point is to develop resilience and grit. The line between what is and what isn’t mental toughness can be fluid and therefore sometimes hard to recognize, but making that distinction is part of what it means to be a resilient, self-aware athlete. Sometimes pushing through pain in a race is a form of mental toughness, sometimes pushing through pain can lead to serious injury. Knowing the difference is a skill just as important as developing mental toughness itself.
When something fails to serve your goals, it’s no longer mental toughness. Running barefoot on hot pavement might test your pain tolerance, but it doesn’t serve your goals or develop mental toughness when it leaves you with burned feet and unable to train or start the race you’re targeting. When training in adverse weather conditions or using cold exposure, overexposure doesn’t serve your interests. Running without a glove on a cold day doesn’t make sense if you have Raynaud syndrome and doing so to the point of frostbite on your fingers is counterproductive.
Part of developing resilience is learning how to take care of yourself when you face adversity — before, during, and after the difficult moments. After running outside in a blizzard, for example, implement the steps needed when you finish to avoid hypothermia — taking a hot shower, putting on warm clothes, and so forth. Take a holistic approach to developing your awareness and mental toughness. Keep your purpose and goals visible as a guide. Be wise. Train smart.
Using Mental Imagery
Many elite athletes use visualization techniques to enhance concentration, motivation, and self-efficacy, as well as to modulate arousal levels or to work through a plan for an anticipated experience. If you’re interested in tapping into these techniques, here’s what you need to know to do it effectively.
Mental imagery is the term of choice within sports psychology, rather than visualization, because imagery emphasizes the multisensory nature of the experience. Imagery draws from all of the senses as you move through a particular athletic experience in vivid detail.
When using mental imagery, you can use either a first-person perspective (1PP) or third-person perspective (3PP). In first-person imagery, you visualize the scene or action from your own viewpoint, as if you are experiencing it firsthand. For example, you might imagine standing on the starting line of a race when the gun goes off with your eyes focused ahead listening to the sound of the starter pistol. In third-person imagery, you visualize a scene or action from an external viewpoint, as if observing yourself from the outside. For example, you might see yourself standing on the starting line of a race as a spectator watching the performance.
Mental imagery provides a growth-oriented framework for rehearsing skills that you need to learn or master, such as navigating a technical section of a course or moving through a triathlon or skimo transition. It can also help you work out a plan for situations you anticipate coming up during a race, such as how to deal with “hitting the wall” in a marathon or how you’ll react when you feel like your lungs are going to explode at the end of a fast 5K.
The key to using mental imagery effectively is to make the experience as specific as possible. The PETTLEP acronym represents different details that can be integrated into mental imagery sessions:
- Physical sensations involved in the performance, such as the feel of muscles contracting and the sense of balance.
- Environment, or environmental conditions where the performance takes place, including sights, sounds, and other relevant elements.
- Task, or the specific skills associated with the performance, breaking down actions into detailed steps.
- Timing and rhythm of the performance, aligning mental rehearsal with the actual tempo of the activity.
- Learning and skill acquisition, such as visualizing the process of improvement and skill refinement.
- Emotion associated with the performance, such as feelings of confidence or motivation.
- Perspective, or adopting a particular viewpoint from which to visualize the performance.
Including all of these elements is neither required nor essential for effective mental imagery; they are simply meant as suggestions. The specific details you include will depend on your own preferences, needs, and purpose.
Mental imagery can be done with a guide who takes you through the process or on your own. It’s helpful to write out a script specific to your needs and refine it before putting it into action. You could record an audio or video of you reading the script (you as the guide) that you could listen to during your mental imagery sessions. You could have a friend or coach read the script to guide you through the experience, or you could read the script to yourself. You could also memorize short scripts to use during training. Sarah Williams and colleagues recommend starting with the five Ws when creating a script.
Who? Consider your background, characteristics, and preferences when creating a script. What is your sport and competitive level? Experts may benefit from greater complexity in the movements and scenarios, whereas less experienced athletes may benefit from less complex scenarios. What prior imagery experience do you have? How good is your imagery ability? Shorter scripts/sessions tend to work better for those with less imagery experience and a smaller number of sensory modalities work better for those with poorer imagery ability. Do metaphors resonate with you or do you prefer explicit descriptions? Do you prefer a first-person perspective (1PP) or third-person perspective (3PP)?
Where and when? Consider where and when you will do the imagery sessions. Will you do imagery before, during, or after training sessions? Or maybe during another time of the day, such as before bed or after waking up? How frequently — for example, once a week, every day? Or maybe you want to do an imagery session before key workouts, such as a weekly interval session on the track. Will you use it before a race — for example, to calm pre-race nerves? Where will you do the imagery sessions? For example, is there a quiet place at home you’d like to use? Or would it work better to do the sessions at the site of your training sessions, such as at the track before an interval workout? At the race site?
Why? Consider the reasons for using mental imagery and what you want to achieve with it. Do you want to rehearse specific skills or run through a technical course section? Do you want to play out a race strategy or implement tactics for how to run a race, such as how it will feel to run negative splits? Do you want to use imagery to motivate you? Do you want to use imagery to lower your arousal level and calm pre-race nerves? You may have more than one purpose for using imagery. Knowing what you want to get out of the sessions will help you tailor the script with those purposes in mind.
What? Consider what content you will include in the script. What images will you use? What details will you include? Refer to the PETTLEP model for ideas. What sensory elements will you use — sight, sound, touch, taste, smell? Will you include any movement? Or will you be sitting or lying down without movement during your session? Will you wear your race kit or running shoes to simulate that aspect of the experience?
Once you’ve written a script, read it out loud and revise it until you feel you have what you need for your imagery sessions. Put it to use and be sure to revisit the five Ws periodically to update the script as your needs change.
The practical application that follows provides a template to help you identify the five Ws before writing your script.
✍Practical Application: Develop a Mental Imagery Script
To develop a mental imagery script, follow the instructions. Write down your notes and script on paper or use the workbook.
Detailed Instructions
- Write down notes for each of the five Ws:
- Who
- Where and When
- Why
- What
- As part of the “what,” note:
- The perspective you will use (1PP or 3PP)
- Multisensory detail you will include (PETTLEP)
- Based on your notes, write your script.
- Read it aloud and revise as needed.
- Implement it by one of these methods:
- Record audio of you as the guide to be played in your headphones.
- Ask another person to read the script as your guide.
- Read and/or memorize the script to guide yourself.
- Periodically evaluate the script and update it and/or create new ones as your needs change.
Workbook
The workbook provides templates for all of the practical applications in the guide. Download here if you haven’t already:
- Practical Application Workbook (Google Doc)
Example
Below is a screenshot of a sample script from the paper by Sarah Williams and colleagues. This is a script used by a young slalom canoeist before competition to deal with pre-race nerves and enhance self-confidence.
