When carrying out a solo sports activity for a long period of time, the mind can easily wander.  Solo sports such as running, swimming, and cycling are without the benefits of a team sport such as football, rugby, and cricket where your teammates spur you on and keep you focussed.

When your mind begins to wander, your internal dialogue  (when you talk to yourself… or ‘self-talk’) kicks in.  It is important that you use positive, constructive and effective self-talk to improve your performance. If your concentration strays, it can easily move on to demotivating or irrelevant thoughts, such as dwelling on a disagreement you had with someone, or thinking about what you’re going to eat that evening.  Negative thoughts (such as thinking about a disagreement) can demoralise and shift your physical state into a less empowering mode, where as distracting thoughts can make you momentarily lose focus, causing a break in stride or rhythm.

How do you ‘self-talk’ productively?

For the duration of your activity you should treat self-talk as though it was your own personal motivation coach sitting on your shoulder shouting (or whispering if that works best for you) instructions into your ear to spur you on and push you further.  If you’re competing in an event with a set distance or timeframe, you can combine this self-talk into your routine, so when you run the event for real, it will play out like a familiar journey.

To illustrate this point, cast your mind back to a place you regularly go on foot.  If you remember the first time you had to find that place, it probably seemed to take a long time, with your mind taking in every piece of information you see and hear as you make your way there… where as now the journey feels effortless and short – almost like your mind is running on autopilot and skipping out most of the journey that you are aware of.

The very same is true of self-talk.  You will create a familiarity, your mind will automatically create “hyperspeed” key points that are activated at particular points in the event, and this familiarity helps to retain focus and performance.

How to train yourself in self-talk

You should firstly become aware of your thoughts during training. Many people will practice full race length in training, so for a week try talking to yourself in the same structure during your training regime.  Keep your self-talk and thoughts positive.  Be aware of how you’re training and when you start to feel fatigued and tired.  Try to self-talk yourself back into a positive frame.  Next time, make sure you self-talk and motivate yourself just before the previous negative feelings set in (both physical and emotional).

If you would like help achieving this and building an effective self-talk programme that works for you, get in touch and we’ll be glad to help.

Why self-talk works

After a great performance, many athletes when interviewed about their success will say “things felt right” or “I felt in ‘the zone’”.  What they mean by this is that they were in a peak mental state, eliminating all self-doubt and negative thoughts, enabling them to focus on the positive and complete their objective.  The achieve this by a combination of things (which I discuss in other articles), one of them being positive self-talk.  Your coach motivates you in the training environment, so when you’re on your own in competition, you can only motivate yourself… and why would you ever deny yourself of that?

Your performance is controlled by your body, which in turn is fuelled by your thoughts.  You control your thoughts.  Therefore, you control your performance.  If you ever think negative thoughts during training and competition, then it’s about time you stopped sabotaging yourself and started to be the best personal trainer that you’ve ever had!