How Champions Prepare to Compete

By: Stephen Ungerleider, PhD
From: Mental Training for Peak Performance: Top Athletes Reveal The Mind Exercises They Use To Excel

If you decide to enter competition or if weight lifting is your primary sport, you may want to modify your approach to better meet the higher demands. Here's how.

Find a good coach. One important part of learning the sport of weight lifting is getting hooked up with a qualified coach, says Coffee. You need to have the right physiological and psychological makeup before you begin. Most important, you need a coach who understands the sport and knows the potential dangerssomeone you can trust. He suggests that athletes under age 12 (with the exception of highly developed preteens) not engage in weight training. "You don't want to push kids too early, both from a physiological and developmental perspective as well as an emotional one. In general, if you have an athlete with some prior training, you can move into weight work slowly and do body buildups on machines. But when you get to the serious free weights, then you have to be careful. And you must be coached by a competent professional."

Concentrate on positive images. Jacob focuses on positives rather than negatives when he lifts. He is constantly asking himself, "What do I have to do to make this a successful lift?" He tries to keep his focus on positive imagery. "The lifts that I do make are the ones with positive images in my head," he says. Jacob is not one to dwell on doubt, but he obsesses about the right posture and the correct form and about keeping his positive thoughts in sync with the weight he wants to clear. "If I keep my back tight, I'm going to make the lift. My experience has been that when I am trying to fix something, I don't succeed. I have three attempts to make a lift, and I need to think that I'm going to make it each time."

Take care not to overpsych. With weight lifting, as in other explosive sports, it doesn't do any good to get psyched too far in advance, according to Byrd Goad. Athletes need to know their pace, visualizing themselves on the platform, seeing and feeling the arena, imagining the competition, and becoming more familiar with the surroundings. Byrd Goad experiences her sport as an athlete would skiing, playing basketball, or any other major competition. You need to get acclimated and visualize the venue before you get there.

Don't overfocus. Coffee is quick to remind his athletes that weight training must be fun, and there has to be joyfulness in each lift. "You have to be mentally focused, but in the same breath you have to be very loose," he says. "You don't want to be too focused or too intense. There is a certain personality that allows you to progress and be a champion in this sport." In big-time competitions, Coffee will try to distract an athlete if it is appropriate. He will try to get a competitor to loosen up by telling a funny story so that he has a positive distraction.

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Reprinted from: Mental Training for Peak Performance: Top Athletes Reveal The Mind Exercises They Use To Excel © 2005 by Stephen Ungerleider, PhD. Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098.

© 2006 Rodale Inc.
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