Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you are at an important competition that you’ve been preparing for for a long time, and suddenly, for some reason, everything just starts going in the wrong direction and you begin to lose? You see that you’re not quite yourself. You notice your focus wandering everywhere, shifting more toward negative situations rather than positive ones. Your self-talk (what you tell yourself) becomes destructive. Your energy level slowly drops and fades away. How do you pull yourself out of these situations? How do you find yourself and turn the direction of the competition around so that you ultimately defeat not only yourself, but your opponent as well?
Losing Focus at a Competition
Situations where we lose focus and motivation are an integral part of sports, whether during training or at a competition. These moments can happen to anyone where, due to various reasons (a mistake, a coach’s criticism, comments from the crowd…), we start thinking negatively and our focus gets lost. In those moments, it is actually crucial to become aware of it, understand why it happened, and know how to bounce back so you can be yourself again.
Competition Routines
Mental preparation must follow physical preparation every step of the way. These two components need to go hand in hand if we want our performance at competitions to be elite. In the exact same way we train our body’s muscles through workouts, there are also ways to train our mental muscles. With good mental preparation, we will be ready to maintain a high level of focus throughout the entire performance and control our emotions and reactions at crucial moments. It would be excellent if you learned a few routines that you can perform either during training or a competition to get yourself back on the right track. Routines can be something you say to yourself or something you do that helps you feel better.
HOW TO HELP YOURSELF WHEN THINGS AREN’T GOING WELL AT A COMPETITION:
- Focus on your breathing to bring yourself into the present moment. By doing so, you let go of that negative self-talk and the emotions that have overwhelmed you. Aim to make your inhalation as close to your normal rhythm as possible, while trying to slow down and prolong your exhalation. You can do this simple exercise within a minute or two, or if you have a bit more time, you can even dedicate up to 5 minutes to it.
- Use positive self-talk to fire yourself up and offer encouragement.
- Focus on the present moment and the task right in front of you by utilizing focus points.
- Consciously decide that you will keep fighting regardless of the circumstances of the competition. The most important thing is to give your all, no matter how you feel at that exact moment.
- View the competition as a challenge rather than a threat. Every performance provides us with lessons for the future, whether it was good or bad.
The ultimate goal is for you to use some of these tips during a competition when you see that you’re doing poorly or losing focus. However, it is highly important that you practice all of this during training sessions, in situations where things aren’t going the way you want them to. That is the only way you will truly be able to apply these tips, and you will have the faith that they can help you during a competition as well.
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Mental Training Blog guest: Lucija Cvitanović, mag. psych.