Psychology in endurance sports - winning

When everything an athlete does blends into a perfect storm, anything is possible.

Let’s finish this blog series on winning by looking into something that is at the heart of every sport - winning.

This is a very personal topic because winning can mean different things for different people.

How this looks in practice is the topic of the last blog post in this series.

Winning

When it comes to endurance sports there are basically two motivating factors, the desire to win and the desire to compete. What both approaches have in mind is that the people who are winning are pushing their bodies to their limits. Only those athletes who give their everything can claim victory regardless of the place they end up in.

If on a good day an athlete wins or achieves a PB but knows their performance wasn’t the best, they will have this nagging feeling they could and should have done better.

On the other hand, if they truly get to their limit and beyond and ended up short, they know they have to put in the work and prepare better.

Focus on performance

The approach most amateur athletes take is to base their winning condition on their performance. Getting to the finish line in a give amount of time is a considerable achievement and can help an athlete gain confidence and courage to try harder and go beyond what they think is possible for them.

It’s the battle against one’s weaknesses that is the motivating factor and often times it’s everything an athlete needs to stay motivated to go forward.

This should also be the default approach with younger competitors who are just starting out because it’s important to frame their performance against their own abilities. In younger age groups, the difference between someone training for just 1 full season compared to someone doing their first race after 4-5 months of training is huge.

Keep a log of past performances and set benchmarks that will keep the athlete fired up for more in the future.

Focus on outcome

Once an athlete starts winning from time to time and finishing in the TOP 10 places, it can be beneficial to shifting their mindset to an outcome centric approach.

Winning should be the key drive but it still has to have an emphasis on performance. If the win seems out of reach they still have to feel like they can push harder. They still have to feel like they have a little extra left in them. They have put the time into training and know that they should be in touching distance of the top spot in a race. More often then not this will give them the little extra push to put their head down and go for broke.

Stay prepared

An athlete can’t simply put on a number, go all out and expect to win. Winning is as much a psychological effort as much as it is a physical one.

The athletes who win constantly analyze every aspect of their own performance as well as look for strengths and weaknesses in their opponent’s performance. They take everything into account from the environment (course, weather) they race in to how ready someone looks at the start line.

Most amateur athletes don’t have to go into that much detail but if they really want to put on a performance they can be proud of, they have to look for those small details that will give them an edge during a race.

Keep a short memory

After the race is before the race. An athlete winning or achieving a personal best means nothing for when they are at the start line of the next race. Just like hand in a poker game is different, so is their performance in the current race.

They can learn from past races (or poker games) how they react to different situations as well as how their opponents reacted and apply this to future races.

As long as they keep their sight forward and are ready for the next challenge they will be able to find one. Once they keep looking back at what they achieved they will fall into the entitlement trap and stop pushing themselves forward.