- Add up those hours of training
that you've put in for your next race.
The physical hard work,
the sweat, the tears,
and the dedication to getting your body
in the best possible shape,
but what about your mind?
A triathlon isn't purely about
swimming, cycling and
running, there's actually
much more to it when it
comes to mental preparation.
So in this video we're
going to be addressing that,
and to help us we're going to be speaking
to English Institute of Sport,
Psychology Technical
Lead, Deirdre Angella.
We're also gonna be hearing
from a couple of pros,
Lucy Charles and Lionel Sanders.
(up-tempo music)
Right, the first topic to
address in race psychology
are those dreaded pre-race nerves.
Now love them or hate them,
I'm sure you've experienced
that slightly sick feeling you get
in your belly before an event,
and some people get it worse than others.
But pros do experience this as well,
and if they don't deal with it,
it can have a negative effect
on their performance, as it can ours.
It was Lionel Sanders, who
speaks quite openly about this,
when just before the race at
the Challenge Championship
the rules were changed and it was
no longer going to be a wetsuit swim.
Now, this put him into a
little bit of panic mode,
and he explains how he felt,
and how he dealt with it here.
- I found out about 40 minutes before
it'll be non-wetsuit, which of course
strikes fear in the heart
of the weak swimmer.
Immediately, I lost the mental battle,
and it struck a bit of fear into me.
Then I walk out to the water and I see
that the current's coming this way.
That's the way we're going into first,
and the wind's coming this way,
so there was a little
bit of bumps into it.
I said "You gotta shorten that stroke,
"take a real choppy, short stroke."
and I took that to a whole new level.
I think I had a hundred
strokes per minute,
a new personal best stroke
rate for the entire swim.
I probably got maybe four
inches per stroke of distance,
and it was really disappointing, the swim.
- Lucy however, has the opposite scenario,
because she has her
strongest event, the swim,
at the beginning of every triathlon.
In this instance she also
had that extra pressure
of coming back as defending champion.
- Yeah I think I almost
felt more pressure though,
because last year I knew I wasn't well,
so it kinda took all the
pressure off, I was like,
"You know what, even if you
finish it's gonna be a win."
Whereas this year I came
in, defending champ,
felt really strong, knew
training had gone well.
So I was trying not to put
too much pressure on myself,
but I really wanted to win this one,
so I'm really happy I did.
- So how can we deal with
those potential situations,
and control those pre-race nerves?
I think it's time we bring in Deirdre.
Well to start with, what are nerves?
We all know what they feel like,
but what is it and how do we deal with it?
Nerves is a description
that we've been taught,
we've been learnt to
think of as a bad thing.
For me nerves can be helpful or unhelpful.
Helpful nerves are very much about
using how you as a system functions.
It's your thinking, it's your emotions,
it's your behavior and your physiology.
We tend to feel nerves in our body,
but nerves will also be linked
to the worrying thoughts
that we've got going on in our head.
And the really useful thing is,
to help make nerves more helpful,
you can either use your thinking,
you can do something differently,
or you can manage your physiology.
So there's lots of different options.
It doesn't have to be just
about thinking something.
- [Presenter] How do you
manage your physiology,
what do you mean by that?
- What we know is that if we manage,
for example if we manage our breathing,
that sends a signal to our heads
that there's less
threatening things going on.
So if you can manage that response,
that your body's gonna get anyway.
It's going to happen, that's
what it's there to do.
You just manage the signals that
the body is sending the head.
- [Presenter] If you do have
that horrible, sick feeling
the night before a race,
or the morning of a race,
how do you change that around?
What can you do about it?
- That horrible, sick
feeling that you experience,
somebody else will experience
as maybe excitement as in,
"Good, I've trained really hard for this,
"and I'm ready for this tomorrow."
So it's not so much
about maybe changing it,
that's probably always gonna happen,
because that's what your body does,
to get ready to do
something that's important.
It's about starting to
accept that it's there,
and notice it's there, and practice
allowing it to happen, and stay on task.
So your task for that night might be
to make sure you've had a good dinner,
you go to bed on time, you
get whatever work or family,
or whatever commitment stuff done,
even though you feel how you feel.
- Thankfully, as soon as
the Starter's gun goes
you take those first few strokes,
those nerves seem to magically disappear.
But it's then that other
mental challenges can arise.
Those thoughts of self doubt in the swim,
as maybe people come past you.
Or when you're on the bike and you're just
not hitting the numbers
your coach has set,
or you get onto the run and your legs
just don't feel how
you thought they would.
The possibilities that your mind
can throw at you are endless.
Now admittedly it is different
for a short distance
triathlon to an Ironman,
but I actually found that
racing a 200 meter freestyle
I had enough time for several
unhelpful thoughts to come into my mind.
Staying focused for an
hour up to 17 hours,
depending on the distance you're racing
is a massive challenge.
It's actually something that
both Lucy and Lionel touch on.
They talk about their thought processes,
through their respective races
at the Challenge Championship.
- I never though that I was gonna win.
I never aloud that thought into my mind,
really until 20 and a half kilometers,
and really there was no
reason to think that.
Because through lap one I had the deficit
to Kienle down to 35
seconds into the front.
Angert 70 seconds, and then
I ended up catching Kienle.
Actually after two laps I
had it down to 22 seconds.
So you do the math on
that, through two laps
I had pulled back about 40 seconds,
so it literally shoulda come
down to a sprint finish,
if I pulled back that same
amount for the final lap,
and I was mentally preparing myself
for that sort of a thing to happen.
- Yeah it's pretty scary,
it's scary as hell.
I always expect my run to
feel awful, I don't know why,
in training it feels awful all the time,
Then I get off the bike in
the race and feel pretty good.
Normally I imagine them chasing
and imagine them coming past
and definitely don't want that to happen.
So I'm just watching my numbers as well,
and making sure they're not dropping off,
and just hammering it. (chuckles)
- During even a short race you're going
to have moments of feeling invincible,
and then you're probably
gonna have moments
of feeling like you want
to throw the towel in.
Well, I think it's time
we spoke to Deirdre again,
to find out how you can
keep your mind focused,
and remain positive throughout
all of your next race.
Once you've started the race
and hopefully those nerves,
or good nerves or whatever
they are have gone,
but then it's a different
challenge of how you stay focused.
Triathlon on the whole is a long event,
how do you stay focused throughout it?
- That comes from your
preparation beforehand.
It's knowing what it is
you're gonna focus on,
and having that strategy in your head.
But it's also really important
to consider the what if's.
There's always things
that happen in triathlon.
There's some things you can control,
some things you can't control.
There might be changes.
The organization could change
the format of the event,
or you could have a mechanical failure,
or any number of things.
So it's actually being prepared
to be adaptable when those things happen.
Rather than seeing it as a barrier,
you already know what your
strategy is to get through that.
- And what happens if it's something
that you couldn't have even
mentally prepared for happens,
how do you deal with that?
There's a scenario that
you've not imagined?
- I think in principle of
good psychological practice
if you like, is around flexibility.
Rather than dealing with musts,
and shoulds and have to's
that are quite definite
and quite black and white,
it's having that flexibility
in your psychological approach
to go, "Okay that's happened, that's okay.
"I can deal with because
I know how to do A, B, C."
- [Presenter] During a race
I have quite a busy mind
for example and I drift
off all over the place.
Do you need to try and stay absolutely
in the moment for the whole of a race
or is it okay to drift off,
and how do you bring your mind back again?
- I think I would say it's almost
impossible to stay focused for an hour.
- And Ironman can be up to 17 hours.
(chuckles)
- Exactly, so I think
that's part of the skill,
is having the awareness to notice
when your head's wandered somewhere,
and actually is that wandering
somewhere helpful or not?
So if it's not helpful then you
bring it back to what you're doing,
and you want it to be something tangible
that you're working on, or
it could be on a visual,
whoever it is that you're trying to chase.
Or it could be that if
you're starting to think,
if you're coming into transition,
what you're gonna do in the transition.
You're always focused on what you're doing
there and then, or what's coming up.
- Talking about what's coming up,
we heard Lionel talk about
he didn't start to think
about the end of the race until 1K to go
and he thought maybe I can win it.
Is it ever okay to think,
I might be able to nail this race,
I might be able to win my age group,
or, oh no it's all gone out the window.
When you start to think
about the actual end of it,
or should you always stay
within it, if the makes sense?
- In principle you should
be trying to stay in it,
but if thinking about
outcomes starts to cause
noise in your head and distractions,
then it becomes about noticing that
and coming back to where
you are here and now.
And again it's, what have
you done in training?
What do you know that works?
What are the things that
keep you focused in training?
You're not trying to
reinvent the wheel in a race,
you're just trying to do
what you'd normally do
in training, in a specific situation.
- A really interesting
insight there from Deirdre,
and I actually find it
quite refreshing to know
that it is okay to let your mind wander,
but it's about recognizing it,
and to know how and when to bring
your thoughts back to the process at hand.
It's definitely something
that I need to work on myself,
and hopefully you can
actually take that away
and implement it yourselves.
Hearing Lionel and Lucy talk openly
about their thought processes,
both before and during a race,
proves how even the pros still need
to actually work on this area.
It is very much a matter of experimenting,
and working out what works for you.
And once you've got that process,
it's about sticking to it.
Now if you are lucky enough that
you've already developed a strategy that
works perfectly for you
we would love to know.
So make sure you share that
in the comments section below.
And if you haven't yet done so,
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We've actually done an Ask the Pro video,
looking at how they
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and that's just here.
