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Coach's Note from Lance Watson
Do You Believe You Can be Great? You Just Need to Switch it On!! |
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| May 03, 2012 |
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Inner confidence about your ability in sport is a steady force within you. One of the reasons that people get so much out of sport is that it builds confidence in the unstoppable force of their true power. No athlete will fully excel without a strong sense of desire and inner self confidence in their ability. Your belief in your ability to race well, to excel on a given course, or to simply pull off a series of good intervals in workouts will drive your success.
Building sport confidence is a process of dreaming, visualizing, practice and performance that revolves around in circles of ever increasing magnitude and force. The more you dream success, the easier it is to believe those dreams and then turn them into reality. Just as the old adage says that 'practice makes perfect', the more attention you put towards perfecting your skills, the more likely that your skills will improve, reinforcing the knowledge of your own ability.
As a coach, I am a huge fan of planning and organization. Every athlete deserves a program that will carry them towards their biggest goals and success. None of this can happen without planning and a logical progression of fitness and skills. Often I will see when belief in these skills and fitness is lacking, as if the athlete themselves has an inner limiter of what they truly believe they are capable of. I can use training feedback to predict success and show athletes the way, and true success for me, as a coach, is when the athlete can see this path for themselves, can really see their own potential, believe in their ability to perform well and can take their whole program to a higher level.
Self confidence in one's ability can be learned, and should be addressed early in the season, so when the big races happen, there are no self defeating doubts and excuses, only a strong clear desire to succeed and reach the athletic potential they have been working towards in practices and training.
Many coaches and sport psychologists talk about listening to our inner critics and learning to tune into the naysayers of our brains: the little voice that says you are not fast enough or strong enough or fit enough. These voices are truly unhelpful and need to be addressed in any athlete who wants to really excel in sport. But, these negative thoughts, run deeper than that. While the thoughts themselves show an anxious athlete, they also point to a more systemic attitude that will surely get in the way of any success, no matter how hard the athlete trains.
Athletes have to believe in their ability, and they need to know their performance is valuable, necessary and needed. More than anything else, an athlete has to believe that they deserve success, they deserve to do well and that their success does not take away from anybody, only shines on the sport in general, and leads everybody in the right direction, which is up!!
Early season races should not just make you hungry to go faster, or finish higher up in your field. Early season races should switch you on to your potential and just how courageous you are going to have to be in order to dream, execute and enjoy your successes.
Know that when you hear those negative voices in your head, you have a choice to tune in or not. Tuning in deteriorates your confidence. Tuning out and deciding to believe in yourself and your real abilities feeds your desire and your enjoyment, and the more desire and enjoyment you get, the better you do, and so it goes.
Sometimes our most momentous decisions come in the middle of a race, the moment when you decide not to give up, the moment you bridge to the next pack and find that you can stay there, the moment you put your head down and find some draft in the swim and then discover that you can stay there. Use your early season races and strong workouts to find ways to turn on your courage, and do something great. These are turning moments in sport, and in our self-confidence, and create a wave that you will take into your season. As a coach, I can remind you to believe in yourself, to not peg yourself, and to remember your past accomplishments, but only you can honestly tell yourself that you deserve to be there and to switch on to success.
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