What do you expect from yourself when you come to training? What do you hope for? What does the coach expect from you athletes?
The Zone in Sports
In what state do you arrive at training? Are you always in the ideal zone at training, and how do you achieve that zone? These are just some of the questions that have always interested us, and through working with athletes, we have come to some answers.
Most athletes will agree that they expect themselves to give the most they can during that training session. To be concentrated, successful, to work hard, and to push boundaries little by little. They hope for a certain type or method of training, but also that they will be in a position to execute every task that is ahead of them. Coaches, on the other hand, have their own expectations; they expect athletes to stick to the established rules, to listen to them, to be concentrated, highly engaged, and not to question their methods of work.
The theme of this text is precisely entering the zone, which often eludes athletes during training. The zone is, of course, a very different concept for each athlete. For one athlete, the zone at training means being confident, present in the moment, concentrated, and relaxed. For another athlete, the elements of the zone will be different.
The fact is that athletes are often not in the zone, especially at the beginning of training. Sometimes they are aware of this, and sometimes half the training session can pass before they realize that something needs to be changed.
4 Steps
In our work, we have formulated 4 steps, that is, questions that athletes go through at the very beginning or immediately before every training session:
- Where am I?
- How do I feel?
- What do I want?
- How will I achieve it?
At first glance, the questions are very simple, even a bit funny considering that the answer to some is always the same and never changes. The first two questions are aimed at raising awareness of the space and the state in which the athlete arrived at training, while the last two are aimed at setting goals specifically for that training session.
The Answers
The first question is regularly the funniest to athletes, because why ask it if every single time, every training session, you train in the same hall/stadium/pool… That may be true, but not every athlete comes to their training session equally aware of the fact that it is now necessary to switch to another mode, the training mode. Every space possesses a certain energy and rules.
When you are in a hospital or a school, you know how to behave; it is similar with your training venue. When you become aware of what surrounds you and flood your attention with details (everything we see/hear/feel), then it becomes clearer to you that you are no longer on the street, at school, or at home. You have stepped into an environment where other rules and expectations exist—your own and the coach’s.
The logical continuation is the second question, because you do not always come to training in the same mood. Your mood, level of motivation, or concentration can vary greatly from training session to training session. Variations are more frequent if you do not become aware of your state. When you are aware that you are tired or sleepy before training, then you can do something to wake up your central nervous system, for example, do a more explosive warm-up. If the matter is currently unresolvable, merely by becoming aware of it, you can try to put it in the background and focus on something much more important for the training.
The third and fourth questions are a matter of setting goals for the training session. What do you want to achieve with this training, what is your short-term goal, what things are you working on, what are you developing? For a training session in which you want to have high concentration, goals are essential because they direct you to where you want to go. However, the ultimate goal will often remain unachieved if you do not have a path to that goal.
We achieve the path to fulfilling the goal and awareness at the moment of performing the activity through focus points onto which we direct ourselves at that moment. Our athletes are aware of the capacity of their own attention, and therefore they always choose 2-3 focus points to focus on.
If you want to enter the zone at training faster and more frequently, try to become aware of the space that surrounds you, observe in what emotional and physical state you come to training. If it is not ideal, try to change it for the better. Ultimately, set specific goals for each training session and define the most important things you need to focus on when achieving those goals.
