How Athletes Train Their Minds for the Olympics
During the women’s downhill race on Wednesday, Bode Miller, who has been an NBC color commentator for the alpine ski events at this Olympics, offered some insight on the mental toll of his former profession.
“Everyone says that the pitcher’s mound is the loneliest place in sports. I would say the Olympic start gate is the loneliest place,” Miller said. “You have hundreds of millions of people focused on you. There’s no one who can help you. You’re alone at that point. You’re fully exposed.”
Such is the psychological weight of competing in the Games that even stone-cold killers like Mikaela Shiffrin aren’t unaffected. The 22-year-old two-time gold medalist confessed to throwing up out of nervousness before the first run of her slalom race last Friday. Granted, with the exception perhaps of Austria’s Marcel Hirscher, Shiffrin has had more pressure on her than any other athlete in Pyeongchang.
How does she deal? We asked a few sports psychologists for their tips on performing in such a high-stress environment.If you have a sneaking suspicion that you could be a peak performer, but you just need some encouragement, you might want to work with a therapist. Here’s how to find a therapist near you.
More here – Outside
Some great pieces of advice in this article. I believe we all need to learn to make peace with the possibility of failure and accept it in almost all things we do . It is such a limiting action to go over all the possible outcomes of what you believe may happen in the future, rather than focusing at what is at hand.
Chris D
Interesting…. I throw up at the thought of going to work at the same job for 35 years. In fact I throw up at the thought of doing the same job for 10 years even !
There is a point at which, during any high level performance task, the training takes over.
The trick is to get yourself to that point.