Skatergirl slouches on a bench in the lobby of the rink.
Practice is over and she’s getting ready to go home.
She pulls off her left boot and places it on the bench next to her.
She kicks off her right boot and lets out a sigh.
Skatergirl has been in a slump.
At the beginning of summer she was making lots of progress, but when competition season started she stalled out.
“I don’t want to go,” Skatergirl thinks.
“My jumps aren’t ready.
My stamina isn’t there.
My spins are trash.
I should just withdraw.”
Don’t want to compete
Your jumps aren’t ready.
You don’t want to compete.
You didn’t make as much progress as you wanted.
You don’t want to let your coaches down.
You don’t want them to see you fail.
You don’t want them to be embarrassed.
You don’t want them to be disappointed in you.
You want to withdraw from the competition.
Unfortunately, there are roadblocks standing in the way.
Your parents already paid for your flight and made hotel and rental car reservations.
Even if they can be canceled, the competition fee is lost and your parents might not give you a choice.
They might tell you, “suck it up.”
Or they might say, “You have to go because we already paid for it.”
However, there is another reason you might want to go.
But, before I tell you the reason, it’s important to identify the reasons why you don’t want to compete.
Take your time and give it some thought.
Write them down so you have a record.
Here are some examples:
- I don’t feel ready.
- I wanted to have a triple lutz in my program, but I haven’t been able to land it in a week.
- My stamina isn’t good enough.
- I’m recovering from an injury, so I can’t show off all of my big ticket skills.
- I don’t feel like I’ve made any improvement since last season.
- I don’t believe I deserve to go.
- I’m afraid I won’t show any improvement from the last competition.
Once you’ve written them down, take a moment to look them over.
Chances are, each of your reasons, like the ones above, have nothing to do with your physical skills, and everything to do with your mental game.
Going through this process is important.
You have to identify the reasons you don’t want to compete, so you can deal with them and move forward.
Remember, awareness is the first step towards change.
You have to know what the real problem is before you can take action to improve your mindset.
One reason to compete
There are a million reasons an athlete might not want to compete, and most of them boil down to expectations.
So, let’s switch gears and look at one surprising reason to compete, even if you don’t feel ready.
Competition is 100% mental, and the competition mindset is totally different from the practice mindset.
Because of this, the only way to level up your competition mindset is to compete.
Yes, you can do practice competitions or simulations.
But, those are never quite the same as the real thing.
It doesn’t matter how well they are put together.
Your reaction to a real competition is always more intense.
Remember, success is built on mistakes and failures.
In order to improve at something, you need to make mistakes.
Like learning a triple, you don’t go from starting the basics on day one to mastering it on day two.
The same is true for competition.
In order to improve your performance in competition and your competition mindset, you need to practice competing.
Baseball players, hockey players, basketball players, compete all the time.
Figure skaters are lucky if they spend 10% of their season competing.
So, as a figure skater, you need to go to as many competitions as you can.
Mistakes are a part of the process
It doesn’t matter why you’re apprehensive.
Maybe you’re afraid that you’ll fall apart and all the work you’ve put in during practice will go to waste.
Maybe you don’t feel like you’ve improved, and you don’t want to let your parents down.
In order to build your skills, you naturally allow yourself to make mistakes during practice.
It’s important to allow the same process for competition too.
Even if you don’t feel ready, you need to compete in order to practice your competition mindset. I guarantee, no matter what happens, you’ll learn something from the experience that will allow you to improve your competition mindset for the next time.
You can’t wait until you feel ready.
Like in practice, in order to get better at competing you need to experience it.
When you start treating competitions as a laboratory to practice honing your competition mindset, you’ll find that your worries surrounding competition will lose their power over you.
Give it a shot and be curious to see what happens.
Mental skills training can make a difference because it can help you access what is already there during competition and practice.
Start here: download “Confidence Myth Busters,” a complimentary eBook and make a change.