TRAINING for a particular sport involves weeks, months, or years of physical conditioning and “if you can mentally convince yourself that you can tackle a task, whether it’s a game or cleaning up a room, you can accomplish it physically.”
The mental aspect of training is just as important as the physical one.
Preparing for a competition is the best illustration where one must condition his/her mind to help the individual overcome the challenges of training as well as their aimed conquest of the competitions ahead.
Conditioning the mind is training the mind to be focused on the goal set by the individual, like any other muscle in the body, the more you train the mind the sharper it gets. However, how does an athlete prepare himself for mind conditioning and training?
Preparing the mind for competitions, according to sports psychologist, is a combination of disciplines, from “zen” to techniques of mental conditioning to include the academic knowhow and experience as an athlete.
Mind conditioning includes introspection and intuition as well as how the individual understands the sport. They should be motivated to enable the athlete to discover within himself his desire and passion to be able to create his emotional energies for his sport. This will help them raise their frustration tolerance as well as their patience as they go along facing the challenges that will develop their self-confidence.
Having the focus is also essential. It is important that athletes must free themselves from anything that will cause them to deviate from their goal. Focusing on their training or competitions can help athletes create a mind set for the purpose. However, mind setting is not only for the purpose of winning or achieving a goal.
Mind setting is a factor for development that helps the athlete advance to a higher level of training, providing the athlete a higher standard of expectation towards excellence in the field. In the process the athlete will also enhance psychological development or the so called “winnability IQ” because in this level he learns varying exercises and techniques which will enhance his chances of winning a competition.
Giving a thought for your game, is physical and mental conditioning in general, because the curve of sports according to experts, the training curve of sports mentally, is low during physical training, but as a competition approaches, physical training goes down and the curve of sports mentally goes up. That is both physical and mental abilities of an athlete should both be conditioned and trained.