Great mental tips how to boost your running performance!

When it comes to running or other endurance sports your mind can be your biggest asset or you worst enemy…  What you are thinking or having running in your head affects your performance and also how much you enjoy your training. I’m sure that you spend tremendous time amount of time thinking about sport related stuff, but most of these thought are likely to be unintentional and unplanned. The first important step is to notice and become aware of your thoughts when you cycle, run or swim.

There are two powerful mental strategies that elite and other runners use. One of them is association, which helps you to focus on your inner sensation and monitor any inner changes occurring in your body. This involves even things you’re your breathing rate and muscular sensations.  The other one is dissociation, which is the opposite, it helps you to direct your attention away from the sensations of your body and basically, help you to reduce your awareness of your fatigue. Athletes usually favor association in competition and dissociation in training. Association is linked to faster running time while dissociation reduces the sense of effort and physical sensations such as fatigue and pain.

Today, I am going to focus more on the dissociation technique and give some ideas.  These tips can help you to relieve boredom and monotony during your training and by “distracting” you from your body and body related thoughts, they can also  extend your training time and hence overall distance.

Here are some great tips how to BOOST your next training with dissociation strategies!

1. LISTEN TO MUSIC to generate positive thoughts and distract you from the physical demands. You could use very cool application such as Runkeeper for iphone.

2. PLAY COUNTING GAMES while you are running. Count number of red cars, or number of trees or number of dogs. You can be very creative.

3. PLAY THE ALPHABET GAME by working through A to Z for chosen categories such as names or countries.

4. PLAY THE RAINBOW GAME by trying to notice as many colors as you can, aim for all the colors in rainbow while you are running.

5.  USE YOUR ACTIVE FANTASY and imagine what you would do if you won the lottery, how you would spend your winnings.  You could of course, be much more imaginative… and think about all the people you would want to go out on a date with….and the rest I leave it up to you 

I would be happy to hear any feedback and how it goes for you. Enjoy your training! Next time, I will show you how to use association techniques to focus on your inner sensations. 

Dora 

Dora Kurimay is a Sport Psychology Consultant in the bay area and her consulting includes work with many athletes from different variety of sports. She can be reached dora@dorakurimay.com