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How Sports Training Goal Setting Makes You A Better Athlete Part 6
http://sportsmentaltoughness.com
The best mental preparation is physical preparation. If I prepare physically and do everything
I am supposed to do, I earn the right to be confident when I walk into the arena to compete.
The question then is, "How do you get up mentally, not just for the competition, but for every
day's work out, that drudgery of training, that monotony of doing the same things over
and over again?"
Because much of what we do in sports is repetitive in nature, to really perfect something, you
have to do it over and over again. That's when things stop being fun because it's not
new. We love new things, but doing the same thing over and over, boy, it's tough.
What I would try to do, when I felt beat or down or tired, is I would try to close my
eyes and imagine the greatest experience possible. I would ask myself or I would ask my teammates
when we're working together, "Why are we here? What are we doing this for? What's the goal?"
We would identify the goal and ask, "Is it still worth working for right now? Is that
goal still worth working for when I am tired?
Is it still worth working towards when I am beat? Is it still worth working for when I
just want to go home at the end of the day? Is it still worth it?"
If I can honestly say, "It still is," then I do one more routine. I give it that little
bit extra and that's what I did.
Once again, it is easy on the good days. It is easy when things are going well. It is
hard when you are tired and you just want to go home at the end of the day. Having said
that, there are times when you do have to pack it in and go home.
You are going to reach a point of diminishing returns when you are training. That's where
you have to be smart and ask yourself, "If I stay in this gym for 20 more minutes, is
it going to make me a better gymnast or is it going to tear me down and make me a worse
athlete? Am I risking injury by staying too long?"
You have to be smart and you have to ask those questions to yourself all the time.
For me personally, I always thought I could do a little bit more. I'm tired and I want
to go home, but I can do a little bit more. So I would force myself to do that little
extra. It really paid off.
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