My favorite mental preparation tools – The Positive Logbook

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Doubts and underperformance

This year, she has decided to put all the odds on her side and has been extremely serious about everything: training, diet, sleep. And yet, she’s been churning out performance after performance since the start of the season. Her latest races have all ended in withdrawals.

At the first appointment, she was on the verge of tears and completely questioned her riding, to the point where she was considering quitting. In two weeks’ time, the French championships take place, and initially they were her goal for the year. But as things stand, she feels totally lost and has no idea how to approach them. She doesn’t feel any desire at all.

Aiming for pleasure

As a first step, I suggest he puts aside his performance objectives and focuses solely on the notion of pleasure. Pleasure is the foundation of any sustainable, fulfilling performance. This instantly struck a chord with Clarisse, and she confided in me that she no longer has any pleasure, either in training or racing. She’s obsessed with performance and puts enormous pressure on herself. As a result, she has no idea what will help her reconnect with this notion of pleasure.

Evaluate your feelings

For the coming week, I invite her to try out a tool: the Positive Logbook. After each workout, she can rate the pleasure she felt by giving a score between 0 and 10 (0 = “I didn’t feel any pleasure” and 10 = “It was really great!”). I also ask her to rate the two moments she enjoyed the most, excluding any satisfaction linked to the notion of success. The prospect of this experience is very appealing to her, and she immediately mentions her desire to buy a nice notebook to record her observations.

Becoming aware of what we love

By the next appointment, she’s already smiling a lot more! Keeping her logbook and asking herself the question of pleasure has made her realize that what she really enjoys is training with other girls! For several months, however, she had been riding alone to gain maximum control over her training and give herself every chance of success. The problem was, it didn’t suit her at all.

She said to me: ” In fact, I realize that I’m bored alone. Time doesn’t pass. I’m subjected to my workouts. In the end, it’s counter-productive. “Over the past week, she got back in touch with her former training partners and from the very first group outing, she realized that this was indeed what she had been missing the most, what she needed to regain her desire, pleasure and confidence !

The reward was immediate, as she was able to cross the finish line in her weekend race!

Rely on what you love to establish your race strategy

To prepare for her French championships, I suggest that she continues with her notebook, gradually increasing the pleasure she feels in order to identify even more precisely what corresponds to her, what drives her in her practice. A few days before the race, she uses her training analyses to draw up a small sheet with 4 essential points :

• before the race: meditate for a few minutes to start in a state of inner calm
• during the race: look ahead, encourage each other positively in difficult passages, and
• at the end, to have a song in her head that she loves and that gives her a boost.

Pleasure-seeking generates performance

The following week, at the debriefing, she was absolutely delighted; not only had she finished her race, but she’d also really enjoyed it, and finished with a much better ranking than she’d hoped for, even though she’d put aside the performance objective to focus on the fun!

Using a positive logbook has enabled her to get back to basics, to find out what drives her, and also to get to know herself better by precisely identifying the various sources of pleasure, so that she can use them to set her competition goals!