FOCUS & FITNESS
HiLevel for Endurance Athletes
HiLevel Coaching Point #1
Learn to think in a "feeling sense," practice feeling your skills. Visualize the mechanics of your skills and feel your body respond. Now do this over and over again. Combine thinking in a feeling sense with proper instruction and technique.
"I'm coming apart!" This is the collective voice of endurance athletes of all ages, including all athletic backgrounds and levels of ability when they are confronted by fatigue. From people who have just starting performing for fun, to the seasoned athlete in competition, endurance training and events have a way of testing your limits.
Endurance training demands a delicate balance of fitness and focus. Fitness provides the energy to push through the feeling that you are "coming apart" and focus can provide the confidence to regain your composure and keep moving.
To perform with confidence in a practice or a race you must be physically and mentally ready. Physical readiness comes with proper training. Completing the right volume of work at the proper intensity, cross training with weights, stretching, warming up and warming down, eating the proper diet and drinking the right amount of fluids.
Mental readiness comes as you learn to trust your ability to perform in all situations and conditions. Trust provides the calmness to settle down, breathe and access the feelings associated with the proper form. The feelings in question are stored in the subconscious portion of your brain. The phrase "pushing through it" speaks to the issue of accessing these specific feelings. To perform with confidence, you need to over-learn the skills and then think in a feeling sense.
Skills that are over-learned do not require thinking, they simply happen as a natural expression of your intention: they are "grooved" in your brain. They represent a form of unconscious competence. You can execute these skills under pressure without second-guessing yourself.
Unconscious competence involves trust; you have a complete and instant access to the feelings needed to produce the results you desire.
Think in a Feeling Sense: Think about a skill and see and feel yourself perform it. To speed up and maintain this learning, feel the mechanics first and then think and visualize the entire skill and feel the response, over and over again. To increase your feel, proper instruction is critical and to strengthen the thought and vision of what you should do, a video of you performing with good form can be critical.
Each time you train; repeat the ritual of thinking about the mechanics and feeling the desired response. Before you practice or race; sit quietly with your eyes closed and visualize the entire workout or course for the demands on your body, including the warm-up, execution and warm down.
Keep it Simple: To perform with confidence combine thinking in a feeling sense with proper technique. Take the time to do your mental preparation. 15 to 30 minutes is sufficient for each session. Note: This exercise is written for running, for swimming or biking or any other endurance event, just substitute the appropriate language.
Sit quietly, breath and be very calm, settle into your thoughts and feelings, and allow you self to be very present. Close your eyes, and observe yourself from an outside view, see yourself running with perfect form, you are running tall, your foot placement is perfect, your arms are moving in a perfect arc, your hands are held with just the right amount of tension, your face is relaxed, you feel the confidence in your rhythm and you are performing strong and free.
See and feel your self running from the beginning of the session to the end. You are running at your best, with just the right attitude, intensity and focus. With practice you can learn to include specific performance goals, reframe distractions and use this valuable skill in every area of your life. That's HiLevel!
