Using routines to prime your brain for success!
by Ashley Samson, PhD, CMPC
University of Kentucky Kinesiology & Health Promotion
Routines are one of the most important tools that you can use to improve your training and competitive performance. Routines help you to become completely physically and mentally ready to perform your best.
Most people think that you only need a routine for competitions, but using a routine for every day that you train makes it that much more effective in those competitive situations. As your competition is approaching, it's important to start thinking about how you want your body and mind to feel that day. And you can start the prep for that now.
Why are routines important?
There are a lot of things in sports that athletes can’t control such as weather conditions or the course they have to run. Ultimately, the only thing athletes can control is themselves. Creating a routine to prepare for competition helps to keep you focused on those things that you can control: your body and your mind.
By creating a routine that you do before every training run and competition, your body and brain start to associate that routine with performing. Then when it comes time for that race, your body and mind are ready to perform after you do your routine because of that association. In addition, a routine can help decrease some of those "competition jitters" because you are doing something already familiar to you.
How do I create a routine?
Like most concepts in sport psychology, there is no right or wrong way to create a routine. It's what works best for you!
For a routine to be effective, you want to have a mental and a physical component so that you are prepping your mind and your body. Many of you have warm-up exercises to do before your training runs/workouts, so those are a great place to start for the physical component of the routine.
While you are doing those exercises, pair each physical exercise with a “mental” exercise. Perhaps you might listen to your favorite song to pump you up while you do a warmup jog, then visualize the splits you want to hit while you complete stretches, and then run through strategies in your head while you complete warm-up drills.
It's whatever works best for you. Just start getting in the habit of doing it before every training run and race. As you start to make it a habit, your brain will associate the routine with "go time" and you will find that your training runs and races will become more consistent, as your routine becomes more consistent.
Ideas for Routines
Here are some ideas of things you might build into your routine, based on the past topics we’ve learned about over the last nine months:
Confidence-Reminders (going through your “highlight reel” with evidence of your awesomeness)
Self-Talk (walking through your self-talk, making sure that you’re hitting the “3 P’s”)
Mantras (perhaps having a different one for each part of your physical warmup)
Imagery (visualize yourself being successful while stretching)
DO Mindset (brainstorming how you might rephrase some of the common “don’ts” that come up for you and planning when you’ll use the DO statement)
Shifting (going over strategies for how you will shift from negative to productive when things get hard)