Preparing Your Mental Game for Quarterfinals
Competing in a sport is a skill. Over years of coaching we’ve seen time and again that many athletes believe the keys to achieving success in sport are grounded in the idea that the physical training is the most important variable. In the early years of CrossFit, it was a commonly held belief that in order to excel, you needed to hurt every day and amass as much volume as possible without getting injured. As the sport has evolved, the testing bodies have changed, and more athletes have aged from rookies to veterans, there has been a shift towards taking a more mindful approach with balancing volume and intensity. But, even with changes in better training approaches, we’ll still encounter athletes who fail to translate their fitness capacity to their ability to execute under pressure.
There is tremendous value in refining your personal understanding of the art of competing. This can be categorized as mental training, which is often overlooked, but can be an incredibly beneficial performance enhancer that doesn’t require any additional physical effort in the gym. These tactics include: how to warm up effectively, how to create optimal strategies for each workout, how to plan and time nutrition intake, how to maximize recovery methods, how to prepare your mind state, and how to review your execution so that you can learn from mistakes. Whether you’re an athlete looking to improve your competition abilities or a coach looking to guide your athlete, we want you to walk away from this year’s Quarterfinals knowledgeable and aware of how to control the controllables, and be proud of what you accomplished.
Pre-Event Planning and Workout Review
Developing a pre-event plan will help you take out some of the guesswork that goes into competing. We know that writing something down commits it to memory. Take the time to think through the below for each event
Confidence & Perspective:
Big picture - how is this event a “stepping stone” toward the bigger goal?
Build confidence - use this to list out the preparation you have done for this event, or create positive affirmations to remind yourself that you are capable
Focus for the day - to help you keep everything in perspective
Event Planning & Strategy:
Event Details - write out the specific of the event (rep schemes, time domain, weights/weight changes, transitions, etc.)
Event Plan/Strategy - plan out your strategy for the event in as much detail. Visualize the event as you develop your plan
Fueling, Warm up, and Recovery
Pre & Post Workout Fuel - proper nutrition is a huge component of optimizing performance. Have a plan to ensure you are fueled for the event and any subsequent repeats
Warm up & Cool down Plan - Warming up and cooling down can make a huge difference over a multi-day competition. This will minimize “monkey-mind” on game day and let you focus on your performance plan.
Passive Recovery Plan - What are you going to do on your off day or in between events to maximize recovery? With the expansion of additional days to complete four workouts, you may find yourself with more time on your hands vs a normal training day. How can you plan to maximize that time to help you feel recharged between events?
Event Review
Objective Review - create a detailed analysis of your performance including split times by round (indicator of pacing), breaks on movements, and rest or transition between movements
Subjective Review - this is a physical review of the event. How did your body react to the different combinations of movements? Where did you fatigue? Were there specific physical limiters?
Mental and Emotional Review - Athletic performance is as much about mental preparation as it is about physical preparation. Learning to improve the way you think and harnessing your emotions is paramount to improving as an athlete. Use this to reflect on the emotions and thoughts you experienced before, during, and after an event so that you can grow from the experience. Remember: that which we can measure, we can improve!
Control the Controllables
The unknown and unknowable is a staple of this sport that makes the mystery of the event tests both exciting , but also sometimes anxiety inducing. Despite not having control over what the workouts are, one way to leverage your mental preparation is by asking questions to identify what you do have control over. The questions below are a starting point for determining your event planning and strategy for each event:
What are my strengths in this workout?
What are my weaknesses in this workout?
What is the time domain?
How can I be as efficient as possible with each movement?
How do I move as quickly as possible?
How do I breathe through a movement?
How do I limit or utilize transitions?
What is the best way for me to partition reps?
What am I going to say to myself when it starts to hurt?
Asking and answering these questions ahead of time will create a structure to analyze, strategize, and visualize every obstacle of the workout before it begins. It will also keep the focus on yourself and your own performance - not a competitor or other variables outside of your control.
Managing Nerves
The vast majority of competitors at the highest level of any sport will often tell you that no matter the circumstances, you may never feel 100% prepared. You might have the best training block and taper of your career, and you still may doubt yourself, you still may be afraid of choking in big moments, and you still might fear that you won’t be able to endure the discomfort. Recognizing that these fears are a very normal and natural part of competing may help alleviate a negative association with feeling nervousness. Using pre-event mental tactics such as visualization, pre-event “walk throughs”, and having strategic discussions with a coach can build confidence by rehearsing the event ahead of time and planning strategies to tackle any obstacles.
Visualization
Visualization is one of the secret weapons used by elite athletes in nearly all sports. Sport psychologists have been researching and implementing visualization techniques for over 60 years. The idea is simple, get yourself into a relaxed state and watch yourself perform your event. There is debate about the effectiveness of first person (watching through your own eyes) versus third person (watching yourself on TV), however there is no debate that mental rehearsal of movements and events will lead to better performance.
Taking advantage of the benefits of visualization definitely requires some practice. Most popular types of visualization require you to go through a relaxation process prior to engaging in mental rehearsal, this can help clear your mind of unwanted distractions. Once you’re physically relaxed your goal is to recreate the sensations (visual, auditory, tactile) of your competition environment as closely as possible while performing an event according to your plan. As a way to practice, start by doing a relaxed mental “walk-through” of your workout for the upcoming day. This will give you an opportunity to practice visualizing movements and combinations of movements that you haven’t experienced before and will carry over to game-time visualization.
Pre-Event “Walk-through”
Piggybacking off of visualization, another technique used by elite athletes to maximize performance is to do a “walk-through” of an event prior to their full-effort attempt. In some cases this may mean doing a portion of the event at lower intensities, or doing a full-version of the event with no load (or an empty barbell). Performing a pre-event walk-through can offer you a number of benefits including:
● stimulate an immediate learning effect
● find “sticking” points in a workout
● refine strategies
● practice variations of movements
● perfect new movement standards
You should work with your coach to determine if doing a pre-event walk-through the day before your first attempt makes sense for you based on your training background.
Discuss with a Coach
The most obvious pre-event planning hack is to discuss your plan of attack with your coach! There are so many instances where athletes could have spared themselves a workout repeat if they would communicate their plan with their coach. Getting an outside perspective can be invaluable in a sport where qualifying for the next level literally comes down to single repetitions in 400+ rep events. If you do not have a 1-on-1 coach, reviewing these same thoughts with a knowledgeable friend or your training program community like TTT Compete can help you communicate your plan.
Emotional Management
One of the largest challenges for athletes during competition is managing the highs and lows of each event. For those who are aiming to qualify for the next stage, feelings of pressure can cause distractions, drain energy, or create a lack of enjoyment during the experience. If you find yourself battling these challenging feelings during competition, revisit what you identified in the beginning as your “big picture.” Being able to shift focus solely to your own performance and your effort versus what placement you get can create a lot of liberation. Athletes who are handicapped by the fear of losing or not achieving their goals impede their investment in focusing on what they need to do to win. Nobody can control the workouts or what athletes are doing, but you can control doing your absolute best and giving your 100% effort.
Developing a Mindset of a Champion
When you get nervous…
Ask yourself “is this a realistic concern?” If not, use mental skills and techniques to control the nervousness (relaxation breathing, positive self-talk, affirmation statements, reasons to feel confident).
“I am good enough that I don’t have to be perfect to get in” strive for excellence, not perfection. Things can go wrong or not as you expected and you can still have a great event.
Stay focused on the present. What can you do today/right now to ensure you have a great event.
Use relaxation breathing to stay physically relaxed.
Use positive visualization to overcome any obstacles you are concerned about.
Incorporate the nuances you know about the chaos of the sport into your visualization.
Use positive self-talk when you talk to yourself/think about any and every aspect of the competition.
Use performance thoughts or trigger words (see yourself making the lift, stay strong, be patient, etc).
Enjoy being here!
Control how you respond. When you feel nervous, ask yourself : “Am I controlling the controllables?” If the answer is yes, then you are doing exactly what you should be doing. So, feel confident and prepared.
TTT blogs
TTT Nutrition: 3 Ways to LEVEL UP for Quarterfinals
“Oftentimes it’s easy for more advanced people to skip over the basics when the goal is just weeks down the road. But, we think that is a major mistake as those basics can help ensure that you limit your injury risk in the build up, maximize your performance on each workout, and give you the best chance to stay performing across multiple workouts in competition week. As you get ready for the upcoming competition, here are three simple things you can focus on optimizing outside of the gym that will help you perform. “ Read more here
TTT podcasts
HOW TO completely SABOTAGE YOUR CrossFit Quarterfinals | EP. 164
Watch this episode on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform under “Corpus Animus Podcast”