Competition Preparation for Sports Performance

This is an important question to ask, because it clearly varies from sport to sport. In track athletics, for example, most of the year’s training is geared towards successful performance in one or two key events in the relatively short outdoor season. In professional soccer, however, top players can play around 70 games for club and country. Each week, therefore, they will have periods of training and preparation according to their match schedule.

The most general advice that I could give here is that competition preparation should begin at least 24 hours beforehand. However, at major tournaments or championships normal training often stops some time before actual competition, so the preparation period could be a relatively long period.

Do you have a pre-competition routine?

In the last 24 hours before competing, it helps to have a routine that you can rely upon to get you into the right physical and mental state for competition.

Uncertainty is a source of stress for many of us and, as some of you may know, the sudden realisation that you have forgotten something can cause outright panic! Having a routine is an important part of staying in control of yourself and your performance.

If you want to make sure you are really prepared, a simple pre-competition routine can be really beneficial. Start by setting out three columns on a page with headings ‘Time to race’, ‘Activity’ and ‘Notes’. Use the notes section to add more detail if required, perhaps to build in some contingency. Set out the activities that you need to carry out to perform at your best, in order of time to competing, so that they are easy to follow.

Who’s in control of your competition preparation?

As you develop as an athlete, it is advised that you take more of the responsibility for setting and refining your routine. As a youngster you will need direction, and later some guidelines, but most of the best athletes can take care of themselves and only use their coach as a source of information or support. Paula Radcliffe, for example, has taken control over her whole regime, and spends much of the year away from her personal coach, but uses experts that she trusts to help her when required.

Role of Goals in Preparation

Your ‘race-day’ routine provides an opportunity to focus on the process goals that, when put together, add up to a great performance. Putting tasks into your routine that keep you focused on doing things right in your race (process goals) will help keep you on the right track and help you to deal with unwanted distractions.

Focusing on your goals will also help you to create a sense of readiness. If you have achieved your goals in training, and other competitions, having them in a list can be a good source of confidence.

Controlling the Controllables

Another helpful exercise which helps ensure that you are in control of your performance is to look at controlling the controllables. Ask yourself “what might influence my performance in … (the next competition)?”. Then divide these into 4 sections and identify whether they are: Controllable or Uncontrollable; and Helpful or Unhelpful to you. You can plot these on a page, divided into quarters (controllable/helpful, controllable/unhelpful, etc).

First look at the controllable influences. Are there any controllable influences that are currently unhelpful? If so, what action can you take to make them helpful?

Then, look at the uncontrollable influences. If any of these are unhelpful, what can you do to try reduce the influence of these factors upon your performance? This can come down to attitude, such as “well, the weather is uncontrollable, and can be unhelpful, but it is the same for everyone so I have to learn to cope with it”, or there may be something you can do to plan for unhelpful events.

What if……?

You can always plan for the unhelpful scenarios, no matter how unexpected. Groups of athletes that I have worked with have identified some incredible situations, such as a tornado hitting the race venue, or the water being turned off half way through a slalom canoe event. However, this exercise tends to throw up events that do happen at competition, including bad weather, other competitors’ tricks, traffic jams and security alerts. The message is this: if you have experienced these things in your mind, and have decided on how you will cope with them, you will be at an advantage should they happen on the day.

Using imagery in preparation

Imagery (a.k.a visualistation/mental rehearsal) is often used to learn or practice skills, or to stimulate positive emotions, but it can also be very useful in preparing for the big event.

As well as imagining the race – in some sports such as golf, alpine skiing or slalom canoeing, fori example, you can ‘walk the course’ in your mind – you can put yourself into the atmosphere of the competition, the venue, the social scene. The more you get to know about an event and its environment or atmosphere, the more composed you will feel when you get there. For example, if a venue is know for having poor warm-up facilities, or a certain ‘buzz’, try to experience these in your mind. If you know who will be there, recreate scenarios in your mind and practice your response.

Final Tips

Try to view competition as something greater than the duration of your match or race or round. Give yourself time to get things right, and recognise that your actions several days before, even weeks before, your event can have a bearing on performance. You won’t for example, suddenly manage to rehydrate on the day of a race if you have neglected your fluid intake all week.

The more you use a plan or routine, the more you refine it based on experience, the more reliable it will be on the big stage. Try developing and using a these preparation techniques over a period of time that starts with minor competition, even though you might be tempted to put less effort into your preparation at these events. To begin with, your plan might feel awkward, but wit time, practice and fine tuning it will come good if.

Build in some flexibility and don’t get hung up on details. What we don’t want is for your plan to become a source of stress. It is there to take some of the mental effort and strain out of the competition experience, not to add it!

Finally, your routine is yours. What works for you might not work for others. What works for others, therefore, might not work for you.

Do you want to improve your mental skills? Try Ken Ravizza's DVD "Mental Skills for Competitive Athletes" or Daniel Gould's DVD "Five Essential Mental Skills for Sport"

Improve your focus and motivation or sports confidence with handy strategy cards from  Mindsport Ltd's Sam Kotadia.