Preseason: Time to Condition Body & Mind for Peak Performance

By: Melinda Burris Willms

Fall conditioning is a vital period for hurdlers that entails intense physical and mental preparatory training for the intensely competitive and hectic season ahead. Success in the meets to come requires a full commitment of team members to putting in the hard work and long hours of repetitive drill practice to condition your body to achieve peak rhythm and stride and maximum speed, physical components that are crucial for successful hurdling. The preseason also offers time for athletes to focus on the key element of mental concentration; having your head in the game is vital because confidence on the field allows you to combine physical fitness with mental conditioning so you arrive at the start of the season in sync physically and mentally fit and focused on a single goal of giving your best performance.

[am4show not_have=’g5;’]

[/am4show][am4guest]

[/am4guest][am4show have=’g5;’]

Coach McGill agrees that taking advantage of the time the preseason affords to practice and advance each athlete’s performance level is vital. He explains:

My biggest thing for hurdlers is, be ready to do a lot of drills over hurdles at various heights and various spacings. Drills should be done slowly and meticulously, being sure to execute the motions correctly when the hurdles are lower and closer together, so that it will be easier to transition into doing drills at faster speeds, and then ultimately coming out of the blocks at full speed. The off-season is the only time of year available to build hurdle endurance, establish race rhythm, and, most importantly, address technical flaws without having any meets in the way. Once the competitive season begins, all training is geared toward preparing for competition, so some flaws will have to go unaddressed.[1]

Ultimately, the goal of putting in the hard work of doing repetitive drills in the preseason is to master the basic movements correct hurdle form requires so that in the regular season, your range of motion is fluid and rhythmic, optimizing your speed and making you competitive on all levels.

Coach McGill also stresses the importance of using the preseason as a “time to establish a weight routine that will help the body to endure through the long haul . . . [warning that] . . . if you wait until the season starts before you start lifting, you won’t be able to establish the foundation that you need . . . because, again, the meets will be in the way.”[2]

The message is clear: make use of the valuable time the preseason offers to address weaknesses and improve upon strengths. The time for building form and endurance and synchronizing all the many factors that make a successful season must be honed before the busy meet schedule is in full swing.

Synchronizing Body and Mind

Experts agree successful athletes possess a certain mental fortitude that enable them to cope with the psychological demands competition in sports requires. Mark Coogan, an Olympian marathon runner who was a member of the 1996 U.S. team and currently serves as head coach of Dartmouth’s Women’s Cross Country team contends that superior athletes possess a “psychological edge” that is either genetic or has been acquired through training that makes them “more consistent and better than [their] opponents in remaining determined, focused, confident and in control under pressure.”[3]

Strategies for Psychological Conditioning:

1. Setting Goals:

Setting goals is a motivational tool that reinforces the personal belief that the objective can be accomplished. By setting the desired goal down in concrete terms, the enduring commitment, level of work, and lasting determination to seeing the goal through to fulfillment is increased exponentially.[4]

2. Visualization:

Visualization is a valuable tool athletes use to mentally picture themselves perfecting a move or skill they are struggling actualize.[5] For instance, utilizing mental imagery, a hurdler could visualize himself performing a challenging drill correctly, coming out of the block at full speed, executing the motions smoothly and clearing each hurdle, completing the meet at the desired rate of speed.

Costly Intangibles

While physical and statistical matchups between athletes are simpler to evaluate, than mental tenacity, both skills are vital for success. In fact, in challenging circumstances, it is often psychological toughness that wins the day. Comments such as: We just lost focus; they took us out of our game; or, in the end, he just wanted it more; and similar variations on this theme are common after disappointing performances and unexpected losses. These sentiments illustrate the strong impact emotion, anxiety, and allowing your opponent to “get into your head” has on your ability to effectively compete.

Choking is commonly used to refer to athletes who suddenly lose the capacity to perform at crunch times, moments in competition rife with intense pressure. Though the term has entered the popular vernacular, psychologists sometimes use the word too, to describe instances when an athlete “gain[s] or lose[s] psychological control or get psyched out in split seconds.”[6]

Choking Coping Mechanisms:

1. Self-awareness:

Athletes must learn self-awareness so they are able to recognize their emotional triggers including internal anxieties and external factors that may include a variety of situational stressors: atmosphere, location, verbal, audio, body language and other cues, etc., which may be at the root of their struggle to perform well under pressure.[7]

2. Cultivation of cognitive coping mechanisms:

Once an athlete has identified his personal psychological triggers that are affecting his performance, the next step is to work with coaching staff and if necessary, a sports psychologist to find the best coping strategies to effectively keep the individual’s emotions in check and allow him to maintain mental focus and a sustained level of performance. Implementing coping strategies to deal with emotional stressors brought on by the pressure of competition and the accompanying external factors that heighten anxiety, have been proven to alleviate the negative impact psychological angst can have on performance regardless of level of athletic conditioning and inherent talent. Proper mental preparation gives athletes the tools to adequately cope with aversive stimuli, enabling them to maintain the necessary focus to achieve their goals.[8]

Coach McGill recommends preventative measures to fight competition day anxieties:

1. Athletes should have a pre-race routine that they do consistently at every meet, regardless of how big or small it is. Sticking to a routine provides an emotional comfort zone in foreign environments.
2. Arrive at the venue early enough to get a feel for the landscape . . . [find out] where the warm-up area is, where check-in is, etc.
3. Anything you do to decrease anxiety will elevate your ability to stay calm and focused.[9] 

[1] Steve McGill, email to author, September 9, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Mark Coogan, Mental Toughness: The Psychological Skills (Techniques). Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) News & Notes, August 23, 2013. http://www.ustfccca.org/2013/08/techniques-2/mental-toughness-the-psychological-skills-techniques.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] “Why are Psychological Skills Important for Athletes?” Athletics Training, 2017, http://www.athletics-training.com/articles/sports-psychology.html.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Steve McGill, email to author, September 13, 2017.

Bibliography

Coogan, Mark. Mental Toughness: The Psychological Skills (Techniques).  Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) News & Notes. August 23, 2013. http://www.ustfccca.org/2013/08/techniques-2/mental-toughness-the-psychological-skills-techniques.

“Why are Psychological Skills Important for Athletes.” Athletics Training. 2017. http://www.athletics-training.com/articles/sports-psychology.html.

[/am4show]