Fitness: Mind games make the Olympics unpredictable

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As much as we marvel at spectacular gold-medal performances, every Olympics has dramatic upsets where medal-loving athletes never make it onto the podium.

““Sometimes athletes don’t achieve their goals,” says Jean-Francois Ménard, mental performance coach and author of Train Your Brain Like an Olympian. “That’s why we love the game so much. They are unpredictable.”

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MIt isNard says the pressure at the Olympics is unlike any other. It begins when the Olympic year begins and increases as the flame approaches.

For years, athletes were left alone to manage stress. But, these days many athletes and sports federations are using the services of mental performance coaches.It isnard to help deal with the pressure to succeed while the world watches. Tools like self-talk and visualization are used to sharpen focus, and the importance of establishing a familiar routine is ingrained in their competition preparation toolkit.

However, it cannot be denied that every athlete, no matter how experienced, experiences an Olympic-sized concussion before competing. But nerves are not the enemy. They are nothing more than a signal the body gives when something important is coming. They are also a source of energy that can be tapped and used to the player’s advantage. This is how self-talk and imagery work. Athletes use mantras to create a sense of calm and control, and imagery to play out the race in their heads and sharpen their focus. The idea is that MIt isThe nard says, “Turn an ‘oh sh** moment into a ‘yes’ moment.”

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MIt isnard said.

However, there is no doubt that the Olympics are at a higher level. Athletes spend four years preparing for their Olympic moment. From the moment they entered the Olympic Village, there was no doubt that the event would be like no other

The athletes’ village, Canada House, is a cafe where superstars like LeBron James break bread with a teenager experiencing his first Olympic Games, which makes the Games so special. This kind of distraction causes athletes to lose focus, so mIt isInstead of the myriad distractions that the Olympic Games create, Olympians train themselves to focus on the familiarity of the venue. Pools, tracks, courts, and fields are places where athletes feel most at home, whether they’re at the Olympics or at their local training facility.

Still, things happen. Athletes tripping, skipping dives, blowing a landing, false starts and going out too fast. But athletes choking under pressure is not unique to the Olympics. It is more visible given the intense media coverage that accompanies each game. Greg Louganis hit the diving board, Perdita Felicien hit a hurdle, sprinter Jeremy Wotherspoon dropped a few steps from the starting line and swimmer Ryan Lochte blew a half-length lead on the anchor leg of the men’s 4x100m freestyle. Our memories even decades after they happened.

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For some athletes, one mistake means the end of the Olympics. Others have a second chance to reach the stage. According to MIt isnard, a poor performance is not a harbinger of things to come, but an opportunity to correct mistakes and refocus efforts on the next opportunity for excellence.

“When things go too well, it’s scary when things don’t go as planned,” he said.

Regardless of whether the sportspersons performed well or not, MIt isnard says the conversation should focus on the implementation, not the outcome. In a victory, athletes must highlight the right things and maintain that momentum. If things don’t go as planned, they need to refocus on the details needed to execute their game plan.

“They have to be put in a situation where they do what they have to do to be successful,” MIt isnard said.

The ideal is for athletes to find the flow state in which they perform best. A much-studied phenomenon, flow is when athletes focus so much on the task at hand that everything else is overlooked. Distractions and self-doubt do not exist, and a sense of effortlessness and hyper-concentration is achieved. One of the hallmarks of finding flow is relying on the skills, training and preparation the athlete has brought to the Games. The more those skills are challenged, the better the athlete’s chances of doing what they’ve spent the last four years training for.

By watching TV, we often get a sense of how focused a player is before competing. We can also identify a bad case of performance anxiety. But that is what makes the Olympic Games special. Some athletes rise to the occasion and some fall prey to all the hype. And it’s not always the most experienced athletes who handle the pressure well. A teenager walks into his event without a care in the world and wins a gold medal that inspires the world. Olympic failure shocks the world. But it is those moments that make the Olympic Games so special.

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