Getting in the Right Mindset
by Steve McGill
I have been asked several times if I coached Anna Cockrell, as she’s a great hurdler from North Carolina, and it’s a question that always jars me, because I have memories of Anna Cockrell dominating girls I coached back in her high school days. In her sophomore year, I was coaching a senior who was the best in the state, and as the season went on, Anna got better and better and beat my girl. I tried to warn my athlete, who didn’t have the best work ethic, that Anna was coming for her, but she didn’t listen. Anna had a drive that was unmatched. Considering the success she’s had since then, it’s apparent she still does. That happened when I still lived in Raleigh, NC.
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Two years later, after I had moved to the Charlotte area and was coaching for my school team, I saw her at a local weekday meet with maybe four schools participating. It was one of those early-season meets that coaches often refer to as “practice” meets because nothing significant is at stake, there’s no pressure, coaches might be experimenting by trying athletes in events that aren’t their main events. And for someone of Anna’s caliber, there was no one who could compete with her, or even come close.
But as I watched her warming up in the infield, I noticed that she was immersed in her routine. She had headphones on, locked into her own world, doing every stretch and every drill with high-level intensity and shape precision. She was not approaching her race as a practice race. She was preparing for it like she was going to battle for a national championship.
As I look back upon that moment, it leads me to reflect on the great athletes I’ve coached over the years, and what sets them apart. The quality they all possess is that they never have to get locked in because they stay locked in. Their intrinsic motivations are so strong that extrinsic motivations are almost irrelevant. They don’t categorize meets as easy meets and hard meets, small meets and big meets. They treat every time they step into the track as an opportunity to excel, to improve, to further their mastery of their craft. They have routines and they stick to their routines. They’re consistent with their habits. So they’re never overwhelmed by the moment. They have confidence in themselves. That confidence is based upon the work they’ve put in. They’re not hoping for a miracle. They are the miracle. They are the consequence of what happens when you put everything you are into what you do.
One athlete who lives far from me but has attended three of my camps (and with whom I maintain a relationship) has been texting me recently about things he needs to fix—in his start, with his arms, etc. But I tell him he needs to stop thinking about those things at this point of the season because it’s too late to fix anything. You gotta go with what you got and you gotta go with who you are. This kid is an extreme overthinker, but when I think about it, he’s an extreme version of what I see a lot of from athletes who struggle with the ability to lock in. Athletes who are hard workers but don’t reach their potential often limit themselves by taking a practice mindset into a race. They don’t trust their training, and they don’t trust themselves, so they’re not able to enter into that mental space where the mind is free of thought and the body is ready to go.
Overthinking, I would argue, is the most common ailment among hurdlers. Hurdlers are taught to think about every micro-mistake and every possible way they can drop time. In practice we’re always talking about technique, rhythm, block start, trying to refine and hone them. Learning to quiet the mind and slow down its chattering is an art form unto itself. It is learned through early-season races, where you can develop the habits that I talked about in regard to Cockrell. First and foremost, warm up with the same intensity, following the same routine, every time you race. Your warmup becomes your centering space; it becomes the method by which the mind slows down while the muscles prepare to fire. If you’re unfocused and distracted during your warmup, it’ll carry over into the race. If you’re anxious and fearful during your warmup, gawking at your opp moments as they warm up, it’ll carry over into the race.
I can’t name one great athlete I’ve ever coached who was loud on race day. And by “great” I don’t just mean national champions and state champions; I mean athletes who significantly improved over the course of their career and who came up huge in the big moments. These athletes always entered into a quiet space on race day. Every race day. Not just at states, not just at nationals.
As a coach, I emphasize speed on race day. I don’t have my hurdlers doing a whole lot of hurdle drills. Drills are for practice. I don’t have them doing any 5-stepping or 1-stepping. I don’t even use those much in practice, but definitely not on race day. The reason is the same as I mentioned above. Race day is not the time to try to fix anything. If you’re thinking about things, you’re slowing yourself down. You have to use races to find out where you are, to find out what your body will do without telling it what it needs to do.
When we get to the big races of the year, I know I’ve done a good job if my athletes don’t need me. They know what to do for their warmup, they know what they need to do to get their minds right, they have built an innate trust in their body’s instincts. Only from that quiet space, where the mind is free of thought, can those great races arise. There are no miracles in track and field. Seemingly miraculous performances are the direct result of training.
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