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Motor Sport Psychology - Seven key steps to making sport psychology help you go faster

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Seven key steps to making sport psychology help you go faster

What is sport psychology and what actions should you take to improve by using it?
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Many of you in motor racing and motor sport will be unsure of what sport psychology is and if this is the case, then you’ll certainly be unsure of how it can help you go faster more often.

This article will address these two questions.

Here then are the seven steps to going faster with sport psychology:

1st Step

• Understand what you’re aiming at

You must commit to a narrowly focussed goal. You can think big, and the bigger the thinking the better, but you must act small, especially in the early days of setting out to achieve what you want. To make this commitment you must generate, with input from those around you, an intention to achieve something you truly need and want. The more benefits you can come up with for achieving your goal, the more likely you are to stay the course and get there in the end.

2nd Step

• Know who you are

What you do and think is an expression of your values. Get familiar with what you’re like. If you know who you are then you’ll understand how you react to pressure and will nip problems in the bud before they become too great. Find out what you believe in and what you think are the right and wrong ways to go about your racing.

3rd Step

• Narrow down your focus

You narrowed your focus in Step 1, now narrow it again! Step 1 was about the bigger picture. Step 3 is about specific action. There may well be 101 things you can do to help achieve your aim, but I guarantee you success will lie within a handful of them. What are the few things worth bothering with and therefore the many we can just ignore for now?

4th Step

• Get ‘Team You’ around you

You can’t get the job done alone. You need a support structure. Who helps you when you need rest, recovery and downtime? Who or what helps you keep a balanced approach that keeps you fresh for the major challenges? When you feel you can’t cope, who or what do you turn to?

5th Step

• Get out of your comfort zone

You must engage fully in the process of change. Establishing a better mental approach is a form of training and so the same principles apply as though you were gaining muscle by lifting weights. You need controlled overload, to learn from the experience so that you come back stronger. If it doesn’t get uncomfortable at key times, you don’t move forward. (This doesn’t mean ‘no pain, no gain’ all the time though!)

6th Step

• Never give up

Winstone Churchill roused a nation against a wartime enemy with these three words. What thoughts, actions and objects do you have in your life to remind you of the same sentiment?

7th Step

• Continuously improve

A maximised mental approach is not a destination; it’s a never ending process. There will not be a time when you say, ‘that’s it I’ve got it!’ There will be big breakthroughs, but there will always be ‘more to come’. Ever heard a racer say ‘that’s it, we’re maxed out now’? I bet you have, but I bet they’re not consistently getting the most out of themselves and their team.


* The Mindset for Racing Finish Line *

You now know seven basic steps to make sport psychology work for you. Of course, and just like the engineering set up on your cars, karts and bikes, the devil is in the detail. The principles are simple but the process is tough. The ‘what’ is easily defined but the ‘how’ depends upon many, many things, with your personality being one of them. If it was nice and easy then everyone would be doing it!

You know what the top guys do and what you should be doing, don’t you?

Enjoy your racing and never give up.

See you at the tracks.

Mike Garth
Sun1400
www.sun1400.com
Motor Sport Psychology
Motor Sport Performance Coaching
Tags: faster, mike garth, mindset for racing, motor sport psychology, motor sport, sport psychology, sun1400
Posted Sun Mar 2 2008 3:52 AM by Sun1400 | Permalink | Comments(0)

Five ways a word that generates a snigger can help you achieve your racing goals

There’s a word in sport psychology that always generates a snigger whenever I introduce it to a client and especially so when I use it at a workshop.

That word is ‘arousal’.

Trying to introduce the concept of ‘arousal’ and its effect on performance can sure generate a few laughs, believe me. Imagine explaining it to a group of primary school aged hot-shoes and their parents!

So what’s it all about, and why should you bother about it if you want to go faster?

Arousal is the degree to which you are ‘up for it’ (no please, stop sniggering now…), ‘geed up’ or ‘wound up’. Having a higher level of arousal doesn’t necessarily mean you are more ‘in the zone’. It simply means you’re closer to being manic than you are to being asleep. Being more manic means your heart will beat faster, your breathing rate will increase, you’ll take in fewer sights and sounds from the world around you and you’ll have more adrenaline pumping throughout you. It also means you could well have more thoughts racing through your head, and probably not all positive ones either.

Here then are the five ways arousal can help you achieve your racing goals:

1st Way

- Block out the irrelevant

More arousal will narrow your field of vision. At times there will be all sorts of peripheral rubbish going on around you that have absolutely nothing to do with helping you go faster.

2nd Way

- Hit the sweet spot of your emotions

Your arousal level can affect your emotions. If you take one thing from these articles on motor sport psychology, remember that performance is an emotional event. There are a set of emotional levels at which your best performance exists. Get the set-up on the arousal and then the emotions right and you’ll be flying. (Unless you’ve got the right tools, it’s a lot easier to change the rear tyre pressure though, isn’t it, but is that where the next tenth is going to come from?)

3rd Way

- Kick back and recover

Champions recover their expended energy better than non-champions. When it’s time to rest, boy do they rest. These quality athletes can drop their arousal level when they need to and take advantage of down-time.

4th Way

- Avoid complacency

Some of you will need a higher level of arousal to perform than others. You folks are similar to a race horse that needs a dab of mustard under the tail! When it’s a low pressure event, being able to up your arousal as you need to can stop you being too laid back and unfocussed.

5th Way

- Get a solid sense of personal control

Control is everything with performance. The more you control your car or bike the more confident you get, right? Well what if, even when events and others are piling on the pressure, you knew you could control your arousal, just as you wanted to?

* The Mindset for Racing Finish Line *

There is no ‘off-the-peg’ solution to giving you optimum performance for a certain level of arousal. Thankfully, we are all different, even if in motor sport, we are all racers.

Dependent on whom we are, what we are doing and when we are doing it, there will always be an optimum level of arousal to get the most performance gain at that time. Quick riders and drivers are always aware of their arousal level, aware of what it should be and have the skills to turn it up or down as needs be. Their tool for changing arousal is a dial, not a switch.

The better the athlete, the finer the dial.

You know what the top guys do and what you should be doing, don’t you?

Enjoy your racing and never give up.

See you at the tracks.

Mike Garth
Sun1400
www.sun1400.com
Motor Sport Psychology
Motor Sport Performance Coaching
Tags: arousal, mindset for racing, motor sport psychology
Posted Mon Feb 25 2008 7:04 AM by Sun1400 | Permalink | Comments(0)

These three big reasons will explain why perfectionism brings trouble to racers

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These three big reasons will explain why perfectionism brings trouble to racers

Why total dedication and absolute perfectionism can STOP success at the big races
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Do you think being more motivated always leads to faster lap-times, more race wins and more championships? Is having bucket-loads of motivation always the way to go, with no possible downside?

Well folks, motivation is a good thing, no question, as without it we may as well give up this petrol-fuelled sport we love and go fishing. (At the Cleveland Champ Car Race in 2000, after a particularly tough weekend, a fellow engineer felt so ‘beaten-up’ by it all he nearly went and did just that. Thankfully for the fish, he still had enough motivation not to jack it all in.)

However, what’s not so widely understood is that a belly-full of motivation can sometimes bring a dangerous downside with it. In sport psychology it’s known as ‘maladaptive perfectionism’. I don’t bother myself with what it’s called and neither do my clients but I am bothered when I see racers doing it because it can really hold them back.

Here are the three big reasons why perfectionism can bring you trouble:

Reason 1

You imagine everything should go perfectly well and may even visualise doing so. (Visualisation is a useful technique we’ll discuss another time.) Something completely out of your control then happens that ‘ruins’ your ‘perfect’ race weekend. For example, you get stuck for a short while behind a back-marker whilst leading. It only takes one, sometimes small thing, to set your emotions off in all the wrong directions.

Reason 2

You place unreasonable expectations upon yourself and so create unnecessary anxiety that slows you down. You think Michael Schumacher, Valentino Rossi or Stefan Everts have mostly perfect race weekends so you should too. (All three of course have had some shockers in their time.) I’ve been with successful teams and unsuccessful teams and both types have an enormous amount of mechanical and human problems to solve. The good ones just deal with the problems better, but they are far from perfect.

Reason 3

You can be so bothered about getting it all nice and neatly perfect that you don’t apply focussed attention to the job in hand. That is, you can be so concerned about getting it perfect that you don’t start it at all. The ‘it’ could be testing a new part, trying a new line on the track, trying a new training technique, etc. (To those that know me well, I hold my hands up to this one in my younger days, but working at it has brought a huge improvement.)


* The Mindset for Racing Finish Line *

Motivation is the bedrock for moving forward and being successful but it can fuel perfectionism and cause you to get in your own way. Not all highly motivated racers are ‘negative perfectionists’ but those that have these non-helpful patterns of thinking, feeling and acting are putting the brakes on when they could be accelerating.

Riders and drivers who are quick year-on-year understand the balance that is needed between focussing on what they did wrong and planning what they are going to do. It’s about the next corner, not the last one. They also understand that these helpful patterns of behaviour are learnable and can always be improved with proper training.

As a quick tip: When you do your post-event reviews (you do these, don’t you?) make a rule to ‘drop the guilt’ say two days later. Make ‘drop the guilt’ a slogan within the team, get it printed up, say it to team-mates when you feel they need a nudge. You obviously need to know the technicalities of what could be improved, whether it’s mechanical or human, but trying to get everything right to the nth degree and then feeling bad when it (inevitably) doesn’t happen will not help you.

Another quick tip: If you’re going to fail (and we need to do this if we’re going to get better), work on ‘failing fast’.

You know what the top guys do and what you should be doing, don’t you?

Enjoy your racing and never give up.

Mike Garth
Motor Sport Psychology
Motor Sport Performance Coaching
Tags: karting psychology, mindset for racing, motor sport psychology, racing psychology
Posted Sun Feb 17 2008 2:24 PM by Sun1400 | Permalink | Comments(1)

Motor Sport Psychology - Fear of Failure or Need to Achieve?

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Fear of Failure or Need to Achieve?

Which side of the line are you on? The battle between fear of losing and the need to achieve and which trait the top racers have
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The 2008 season is almost upon us and two British hopes are well on with their preparations. In F1 Lewis Hamilton continues to post competitive times in testing at Barcelona and Jerez and Tommy Searle raced to victory yesterday in the MX2 traditional curtain-raiser at Mantova.

What do you think motivates athletes like Lewis and Tommy to succeed? It’s very likely their motivation to do so has far more to do with a real need to achieve rather than a strong will to avoid failure. On reading this sentence you may think that these two things are one and the same, but although they are indeed two sides of the same issue, the consequences of which one you choose are massive.

Imagine going into a race gripped by fear of cocking it up, how are you likely to be? How close to ideal is your mind and body going to be? Fear of failure will put the brakes on your performance and in some cases can cause you to avoid challenges that might help you in your quest to become faster and better.

For example, this might be during a race:

“I’ll look stupid if I attempt that double and come up short. I mustn’t come up short.”

But it can equally be during the week or off-season:

“If I sign that deal to race international single-seaters next year and don’t do well, that could be the end of my career. I can’t let that happen.”

Needing to achieve however means you’re not so bothered about failing and are ready to face the challenges head-on, just like Lewis and Tommy.


* The Mindset for Racing Finish Line *

Bjorn Borg, who until Roger Federer beat Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon in 2007, was the only man in history to win five consecutive Wimbledon Men’s Singles Titles, once said

“If you’re afraid of losing, then you daren’t win”.

This sums up what this month’s Mindset for Racing is about. Just because you hate losing, doesn’t mean you should fear it.

Winners have some major things in common, including a lot of failure early on and a lot of action to bring improvement!

You know what the top guys do and what you should be doing, don’t you?


* Reminder of the previous Motor Sport Psychology Article *

In the last article ‘Why Did That Happen?’ we talked about the reasons racers give for success or failure and the four key challenges to those reasons. You’ll remember that the top people always believe they can control the reasons for an outcome. This is something that some people do naturally, but you should know that it can be learned through specific training.

What happens though when the reason we give for success is “I am a good rider / driver”, ie it’s down to talent. What are you going to do when you step up a class / level and you’re not top dog anymore? How talented will you feel then and what will you feel you’ll be able to do about it?

Recent research (‘Subtle linguistic cues affect children’s motivation’ in the journal Psychological Science) has established that kids respond to challenges better when they believe they did a good job in a similar challenge before. Crucially, kids are less likely to respond well when they believe the reason they did well before was their talent.

Like all of us, the kids cannot change or control their talent, but they can change and control the job they do next time.

This has huge implications for how we coach youngsters. => Praise the action, not the person, or we may be giving false confidence.

The next time you’re down at the kart / moto-cross track with little Johnny / little Janet, you’ll think about this, won’t you?

Enjoy your racing and never give up.

Mike Garth
Motor Sport Psychology
Motor Sport Performance Coaching
Tags: f1, motor sport psychology, mx2, sun1400
Posted Mon Feb 11 2008 4:06 AM by Sun1400 | Permalink | Comments(0)

Motor Sport Psychology - Why Did That Happen?

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Why Did That Happen?

Four key challenges to the millions of reasons the top racers give for why things happen and the one simple answer we should all give
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What reasons do you give for your racing failures? What reasons do you give for your racing successes?

If you’ve ever worked on a race team then what reasons have you heard the rider or driver give?

“I was just unlucky”

“I may have won but the others had a bad day with problem pit-stops”

“We should have been on the same strategy as my team-mate”

“This car sucks!”

“That pre-season testing we did with the bike on the Dutch sand tracks has got me on the podium today”

Like me, you’ll have heard all these and hundreds more besides. Some are true, some are offensive, some are ridiculous and some are hilarious. The bottom line is that decision makers in race teams say these things and perceive them to be correct. And perception folks is reality, make no mistake.

In the first instance it doesn’t matter a fig what reasons are given. It only matters what answer is given when the four key challenges confront our ‘reason’. These challenges are just simple questions.

The four-key questions for the reasons you give:

Reasons for success:

1. Can you repeat it?

2. Can you control it?

Reasons for failure:

3. Can you change it?

4. Can you control it?

The top guys always answer ‘yes’ to the above four questions (two questions relate to success, two to failure). They do so because they learned to do it that way. They were not born instantly doing it just as they didn’t learn how to trail brake whilst in the womb. Mental skills are learned, even if in some cases they were learned very early.

To make it simpler, you can reduce the four key challenges to just one. When you give your reason for why things happen, just ask yourself – can you control it?

For example, the last quote above talking about pre-season testing being a reason for getting on the podium is one that can be controlled (and therefore repeated). This fuels confidence in going out at the next race and being successful yet again.

Mechanics and Race / Design Engineers are especially good at this, at least with practical and tangible problems. They tend to see such problems as ‘things that just need solving’ and so do just that. A former Technical Director I worked with, Malcolm Oastler, once said that after the basic layout of next year’s car was confirmed, to deliver a quick car at the first race was ‘just engineering’.

‘Just engineering’ = Cost pressures, tight deadlines, cash flow problems, material supply issues, breakages, failures, development, redesign, track testing, competitor pressure, etc.. However tough though, these are just controllable problems that give in to effort and smart thinking.

It’s also a whole load of fun!

Now what if us pragmatic racers could apply such motor sport psychology to our Mindset for Racing? Starting with the reasons we give for why things happen? How much faster could we go?

* The Mindset for Racing Finish Line *

Analyse the answers you give when you evaluate a day’s training, testing, practising or racing. The more important the outcome of that day is to you, the more effort you should spend on analysing. (There are reasons why we should avoid and specific ways to avoid overdoing this at times, and Mindset for Racing will discuss these in future.)

What reasons are you giving and most importantly can you answer ‘yes’ to the four key questions? When under pressure, your reasons will tend to be given at an emotional level, rather than a thoughtful one. If these emotional answers often result in a ‘no’ from the four key questions, then your mindset is letting you down.

These reasons can relate to any issue: Equipment, fitness, diet, technique, team organisation. Understand that your psychology / mindset is fundamental in how you evaluate everything to do with your racing.

You know what the top guys do and what you should be doing, don’t you?

Enjoy your racing and never give up.


Mike Garth
Motor Sport Psychology
Motor Sport Performance Coaching
mike.garth@sun1400.com
www.sun1400.com
Sun1400: Sunday 2pm - Ready to race?
Maximising your mental approach in motor sports

Mike Garth
Motor Sport Psychology
Motor Sport Performance Coaching
www.sun1400.com
Tags: bike racing performance, f1, karting psychology, moto-cross, motor sport performance coaching, motor sport psychology
Posted Tue Feb 5 2008 6:42 AM by Sun1400 | Permalink | Comments(1)

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