Mental preparation – “More” pleasure rather than “less” stress

Goal: personal best at the Amsterdam marathon

Lio is 44 years old. She is a keen runner. Mainly road running. She’s been running since she was 16, and has experimented with numerous distances and disciplines.

The first time I met her was at a sophrology workshop I was running on the theme of self-confidence. The exercises she discovered appealed to her, and she dared to make an appointment for an individual consultation on mental preparation.

She explains that she has signed up for the Amsterdam marathon, and would like to beat her personal best. Her goal is ambitious, and she is fully committed to her training plan, which she follows to the letter. She even sometimes gets up at 4 a.m. to run before going to work.

Stress due to fear of failure

On the other hand, the closer she gets to the deadline, the more “stressed out” she becomes at the thought of “not making it”. The sophrology workshop made her aware of the fragility of her self-confidence, and she’d like to know how to go about finding some relief. She feels that the pressure is really getting to be too much, and that it’s becoming less and less enjoyable on a daily basis.

As our conversation progresses, Lio realizes that, in the end, she’s overwhelmed by the fear of not achieving her goal. This fear takes up all the space, and she thinks she needs to find a way to suppress it. But if this fear is so intense, it’s because deep down Lio really wants to achieve this goal.

Our job together will be to ensure that she does her “best” on D-day, accepting that there’s bound to be a little uncertainty, especially over this distance.

You have to” that doesn’t make you want to

I ask Lio what she could do better to give herself the best chance of succeeding. She tells me spontaneously about sticking to her training plan, her lifestyle and other things she can do before the race. But when I talk to her about the race itself, things get complicated.

She talks about ” not setting off too fast “, and ” regularly checking your watch to make sure you’re at the right pace “. From where I sit, I hear a lot of ” shoulds” and “shouldn’ts “: ” reach the goal “, “ don’t stress “, ” stick to the plan “, ” go to bed early “, ” don’t set off too fast “, ” watch the watch “. It makes you dizzy, and above all, it doesn’t make you want to do it.

How about some good memories?

So I approach things differently, and ask Lio if she has any memories of races she enjoyed, and in which she ran very well. Two moments come to mind: a cross-country race and a trail run. When she tells me about these races, it quickly becomes clear that she wasn’t attached to her pace or time, as she usually is.

She didn’t ask herself any questions, running according to her sensations, fully connected to the present moment. She didn’t put herself in a “bubble”, but remained open to whatever was pleasant, especially the atmosphere and the scenery.

“I run very well when I don’t put pressure on myself”.

Little by little, she realized that having approached each of these competitions without focusing on a performance objective had really helped her, and that in the end, each time, she had done much better than she had imagined. Of course, this state of mind was helped by the context. In particular, trail running was new to her. This allowed her to let go and not put any pressure on herself.

For the marathon, it’s out of the question not to ask questions!

For the marathon, everything is different. She has already run several, and road racing is her specialty. So she has a time target in mind, and absolutely won’t give it up. For her, taking the start just to “participate” is out of the question. And she’s counting on me to help her “manage the stress”.

A fascinating experience in sports psychology

I’ve got an idea in mind, but she’s so used to it and under so much pressure that I’ve decided to tell her about an experiment in sports psychology carried out in 2001 by Nadine Debois and Fabienne d’Arripe-Longueville. These two researchers from INSEP worked for a year with rifle shooters from the Pôle France.

They compared the emotions experienced by these high-level shooters during their best and worst performances. What’s exciting about their results is that the quantity and intensity of negative emotions, including stress, were equivalent in both types of performance. This means that stress was also present during the best performances.

This raises the question of whether there is any point in spending time and energy “fighting” stress by trying to make it go away. The second essential point is that the best performances were characterized by a greater presence of positive emotions (e.g. serenity, well-being, pleasure, desire to shoot, etc.).

Ultimately, this would mean that it could be far more interesting to seek to develop and reinforce positive emotions, rather than seeking to reduce or even eliminate negative ones.

New ways to tackle the marathon

Hearing this conclusion, Lio immediately makes the connection with her feelings during the two positive memories she evoked. So I ask her to think about what she could do to make her marathon more enjoyable. Combining her ideas with my suggestions, we come up with the following short list:

• Focus on pleasant things along the way, using all 5 senses (sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste).
• Sometimes clapping children’s hands
• Look at people in the audience with a smile and pay attention to the smiles you receive in return.
• Use a short breathing exercise to relax and fill yourself with what’s important at the moment (calm, lightness, confidence, etc.).
• Regularly look far ahead, to automatically regain a more fluid stride and optimal breathing.
• To complete this, I suggest a final exercise to Lio: to do a few long runs , hiding her watch when working at a specific marathon pace, and focusing on how she feels rather than on the numbers. I can tell she’s a little nervous about the idea, but she decides to give it a go.

Integrating new practices into training

Little by little, Lio implements the tools she has chosen during her training sessions. She is gradually realizing that her training sessions are becoming more enjoyable, and is gaining confidence in her ability to put in place what will help her to enjoy her race and express her full potential.

At the same time, she does a little visualization so that all the tips she’s chosen become automatic. As time went by, her stress level dropped to a perfectly acceptable level, even though we hadn’t focused on it.

Record broken…with a smile!

For my part, I’ll always remember the consultation when we debriefed her marathon. She came in with a big smile, and told me she ‘d loved her run.

She set everything up, and was struck by what she was able to exchange with the spectators thanks to the looks, the smiles, the handclaps: ” It really reboosted me! ” And then she had this to say: ” From the 20th kilometer onwards, I stopped looking at my watch. I trusted myself. I crossed the line 5 minutes ahead of my goal. And I realized that my body did indeed know 🙂 ”

As far as I was concerned, there was nothing more to say. If, perhaps: ” Well done! AND thank you 🙂 ” !