Two weeks earlier, Skatergirl secured a spot for herself at Nationals by placing fourth at the championship series. Initially, she’d been super excited that she’d made it through, but now with the competition coming up in two weeks, she was in full preparation mode.
For the past several weeks, Skatergirl had been on fire during practice.
Her jumps were crisp. Her run-throughs were clean. She was even hitting all the rotations in her spins, which was something her coaches had been nagging her about recently.
Life was good. Everything was going great.
However, today Skatergirl was falling apart.
At the start of the first session of the day, Skatergirl stepped onto the ice with her skate guards on. Then, when she started to warm up the elements for her first long program run-through of the day, she popped or fell on every single triple.
And, it didn’t stop there. While going into the first position of her combination spin, Skatergirl slipped off her edge and landed hard on her hip.
After that, she fell on a triple flip and slammed into the wall.
Finally, to add insult to injury, while skating to the boards to get a drink after popping all the jumps in her long program, Skatergirl tripped over her toe pick and face planted onto the ice.
By the time Skatergirl’s lesson with Skatercoach rolled around, she was exhausted and frustrated.
“You seem to be struggling a bit today.” Skatercoach said. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” Skatergirl said.
It was the truth. Skatergirl had no idea what was going on.
Nothing had changed between the previous week and today’s session. She was still the same person.
The only difference was that Nationals was a week closer.
“Do you think you’re starting to get nervous about Nationals?” Skatercoach asked.
“Maybe a little?” Skatergirl said.
“I see.” Skatercoach said. “Well, don’t use up all your energy before the competition starts. You’ve been doing great in practice the last few weeks, so I’m sure everything will be fine when you get there.”
As the week progressed, Skatergirl slowly transformed from a figure skater into a Zamboni. Her jumps were a mess. Her programs were a disaster. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong.
By the time Friday rolled around and Skatergirl had a session with Mentalgamecoach, she was so frustrated, smoke was coming out of her ears.
“I couldn’t do anything this week.” Skatergirl said. “My run-throughs were horrible, and I couldn’t land a jump to save my life. Is there anything I can do?”
“Well.” Mentalgamecoach said. “One thing you can do is focus on the present.”
“Okay.” Skatergirl said. “But what exactly does that mean.”
“Focusing on the present simply means directing your attention to whatever you are doing at the current moment, instead of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.
“Whether you’re getting a drink, blowing your nose, or taking a lap around the rink, when you focus your attention on the action you are currently executing, you are in the present moment.”
“Ah. Okay.” Skatergirl said. “That makes sense. But, why is it important to be in the present?”
“Let me ask you this. When you are thinking about Nationals, how do you feel?”
“Anxious.”
“And when you fall on a jump, how do you feel?”
“Frustrated.”
“Now, pretend you are on the ice and going into a triple Lutz. How do you feel when you focus your attention on going into the jump entrance? “Hmm. I feel a little better.”
“Exactly.” Mentalgamecoach said. “When you direct your attention to your current action, aka focus on the present, it’s a lot harder to be anxious and frustrated. And as you already know, the less anxious and frustrated you are, the easier it is to perform well.”
“Okay, that makes sense. I’ll do that during practice this coming week.”
“Awesome. Remember, focusing on the present is an ongoing task. You will get distracted, it’s natural, so rather than trying to force yourself to stay in the present all the time, it’s more important to learn to recognize when your mind is wandering. That way you can bring your attention back to the present more quickly.
“Focusing on the present is like a jump. The more you practice it, the easier it will get, and the easier it gets, the more it will help you in whatever situations you encounter.
“So for this week, your homework is to recognize when your mind is not in the present. Do you think you can do that?” Mentalgamecoach asked.
“Absolutely.” Skatergirl said, nodding her head enthusiastically.
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