“Come on. You can do this. You have to land this jump if you want to make the podium.”
Skatergirl is skating into her triple salchow. It’s the last element in her program, and she’s tired.
Even though she can do this jump in her sleep, she’s nervous. She’s skated a clean program up to this point, and she doesn’t want to mess up.
Skatergirl vaults into the air and slams onto the ice. In an instant, her clean program comes to an end.
As Skatergirl peels herself off of the ice, she’s left to wonder, “why did it all fall apart?”
Get out of your head
When you’re in your head, your muscle memory goes offline, which causes your performance to tank.
This is the root cause of Skatergirl’s mistake. She was worried about her placement which caused her nervous system to activate, and as a result, she fell on a jump that she never misses.
Thinking puts you in your head, which causes you to lose access to your muscle memory. And, this is especially true when your nervous system is over activated.
Three causes of nervous system over activation are fear, worry, and anxiety. These emotions that often rise from comparisons, frustration, and result oriented thinking.
Comparisons are pretty straight forward. They occur when you compare yourself with other athletes.
- “They look so much more confident than me.”
- “They have a triple lutz and I don’t.”
- “They have a $20,000 dollar long program.”
Are all examples of comparisons.
Frustration may stem from many different causes. Some examples are:
- Lack of practice time due to injury, vacation, or scheduling.
- Problems leading into competition, losing a jump, losing a spin, getting injured.
- Feeling like you haven’t made enough progress.
And finally, we have result oriented thinking. This includes:
- Worrying about scores.
- Worrying about placement.
- Worrying about what other people think about you.
All of these thoughts are about something you don’t have control over. And lack of control is what causes over activation.
Orienting
Avoiding these thoughts entirely is impossible, but there is something you can do. It’s called orienting, and you can use it to get yourself back into your body.
First, start by scanning the area around you and picking an object. Then, focus on that object with all of your attention. If it helps, you can even describe the object to yourself in detail, the important thing is that you are entirely focused on it.
The divots on the boards. The lines on the ice. A glove in the hockey box. A unique tissue box holder.
These are all things that you can focus on. Spend some time focusing on that object, until you feel yourself calming down. Then, repeat the process from the beginning.
Conclusion
When you are in your head, or overly activated, you lose access to your muscle memory. And in order to have a good performance, you need to have access to your muscle memory.
Your muscle memory is where all of the countless hours of training are stored. Losing access to this resource, is like losing access to all of your training.
If skaters took Mental skills training as seriously as they do their on ice technical skills, they would find that their technical skills would improve exponentially.
Start here. Download “Confidence Myth Busters,” a complimentary eBook and make a change.