Mental Preparation Before Competition

Before beginning any race or participating in any type of competition, individuals need to be mentally prepared. Just like training your body, you need to prepare your mind. This article will give you three suggestions for getting your mind ready for competition.

Mental Readiness
You actually begin to prepare mentally with each practice you do. You can't just turn your mental preparation like a switch. It takes time and many successful repetitions. You can train your mind with these mental exercises to clear your mind.

Create a Safe and Magical Place
Now step inside this place both mentally and physically. Use your senses. What music do you like to listen to? What do you smell? Do you feel a cool or warm breeze? When you are in this place, you block out all thoughts of nervousness and failure. You begin going through your race tactics mentally. Your only concern is the performance you are about to do.

Use Your Inner Voice
Start talking to yourself. Block out distractions and focus on execution. Speak positive things to yourself. Avoid all thoughts of negativism. Use your inner voice to bring up positive results from past performances. Place your mind in a state of calmness that focuses only on good results.

Use Visual Reminders
Be a child again. Place positive visual stickers on your bike, running shoes, uniforms and water bottles. You can place key words on these that remind you of the positive effort you are going to give. Use these stickers to override any negative thoughts that come into your mind. Use words like sprint, pump, breathe, relax and climb.

Application
You want to rehearse and practice your mental preparation about one to two minutes before the start of each practice. Then, when you need to call it up before your race or competition, it will be easier to do. Perfect preparation makes for a perfect practice, which makes for a perfect race or competition.

Total Recall
After your race and your mind has returned to normal, recall the events of your competition. What was good? What was bad? What will you change? Store these thoughts for future use. If you had a good day, you can always recall how you felt at the time of completion. The ability to recall past successes will help you mentally build for the future.

sources; Active.com