Building Mental Toughness & Strength For Cycling - #FDF | EVOQ.BIKE

Building Mental Strength

Mental Toughness is a skill required in many aspects of life. In sport, it’s the ability to stay focused when you are under pressure in a race, or deep into a hard interval, or preparing to give that winning sprint effort. Training and racing are demanding on the body and the mind is constantly telling the body to work hard. This requires a lot of fortitude, and toughness. Can you show up to the workout every time and give it your all? When that race day comes around are you prepared to perform at your best?

There is always a similar moment that you can witness when watching an athlete who is about to win. They are in the zone not thinking, just doing. The pain disappears from their face. sometimes for a long time, sometimes just briefly but it always happens. Our minds are capable redirecting the pain and redirecting our focus from the ups and downs of competition and training if we let it. That’s mental toughness. The great athletes we all look up to have it mastered.

Mental Strength Training

Here’s the good news: mental toughness is trainable. Recall back to one of the first times you ever did an interval session. First few minutes pass and then all of a sudden you are counting the seconds go by and you think to yourself “I'M SUPPOSED TO DO THIS FOR HOW MANY MINUTES?!” But, you get through it, or most of it, and then that’s it. Think about a year later. Did you improve? Did your intervals get longer? Do you find yourself more comfortable with doing intervals in the first place? If you answer yes, then your mental toughness was trained, intentionally or not. Yes, you probably also made some physiological improvements(we hope) but the willingness to go out and get after is also improved, and that’s your mental toughness.

Tips For How to Improve Mental Toughness

Humans are amazingly flexible and adaptable to changing conditions, and you just need to get in the repetitions. By repeating habits, and following these tips you will strengthen your mental toughness, have more effective training sessions, and find training more enjoyable.

Practice for your goal every time you get on the bike

Rehearse your ideal outcome over and over before the main event. Tell yourself exactly how you want that target or race to go every time you get on the bike. Be specific. Find parallels in your workouts to your races, or if you are training for specific power gains, remind yourself what your goal is and why the interval session you are doing today is going to help you be better next week! The bigger the goal, the more it helps to get into the details of what it’s going to take to accomplish that goal.

When it comes time to go for it, you will know you can keep digging because you can remind yourself of the hundreds of hours you spent making sure you would be ready for this day!

Develop a Pattern before events or workouts- Have a routine

Knowing you are coming to the battle prepared will give you a ton of confidence and fortitude in your effort. Knowing you ate 3 hours ahead, have been focusing on eating like an athlete, you prepared your nutrition strategy. Make sure you have your gels and sports drink, recount your warmup routine,

Give yourself a checklist and when you have done the things on the checklist, it’s go time!

“you got this!” -Just breathe

The more stress I’m feeling, the more internal noise there is going to be. Having a repetitive phrase you pre-plan to use can help your mind focus on the task at hand. Say it to yourself over and over! Convince yourself to be convinced in yourself! When the race is on and you are at the pointy end of a really hard battle, having something very simple to focus on is really helpful. Have a meditative mindset. Focusing on your breathing can help you find that focus when it starts to drift as things get hard.

supplement Hack- caffeine

A smiling athlete can last longer in the hurt box than one who wears their pain on their face, but it’s also been proven that adding caffeine reduces the perceived exertion of an effort which gives renewed focus and allows athletes to endure longer. There is a limit to how much caffeine is effective, I like 25-75mg per dose for a longer event, and up to 150mg for a short sharp effort 60 minutes or less.

Related Post: Best Supplements for Cyclists

Don’t Fear Failing- Copy success

The first step to winning at the Big event and becoming the athlete you want to be, is usually not winning. When you fail a workout, or implode in a race, don’t beat yourself up about it. Take notes, figure out where a few good things happened, and where things might have started going wrong. You will have more grit the next time you go for it. This is a great opportunity to talk with more experienced athletes, or someone you look up to with similar goals. Pick their brain and figure out what was different on the day for them. Copying traits about their mindset that stand out to you and try to do them next time. Give yourself a few days to get your legs back, refocus and try again!

do your homework!

Study the course! Break down that KOM climb you are going for. This all ties back into practicing for your goal every time you get on the bike but being prepared is so empowering. I love a good surprise party, but when it comes to sport performance this is a big NO NO! Preparation is hands down my preferred way to bring my “A game”. Consult with a coach on this too! Brendan and I coach because we love inspiring people to be their best selves and keep searching for their real potential! Talking to someone (it doesn’t even have to be us) who has experience doing what you are doing is an irreplaceable way to fast track you to getting to the level you want. Make sure your coach or mentor has experience with your specific goals. Humans aren’t robots. No amount of research data could perfectly predict how an athlete will relate to a training plan or interval schedule. There is nothing that can replace first hand experience!

do longer intervals

Here’s a scenario: “I cant do 2x30’ interval because the longest intervals I’ve done are 20 minutes”

If you are apprehensive of a 2x30' minute training session, break it down, and find a progressively longer interval break down that works for you! 2x30 is 60 minutes of work, so start small and work your way up over a few workouts. You can add either repetitions or duration to each workout and by doing this a bit by bit, it’s definitely both a great training habit but also a good for mental toughness.

4x10 minutes, then a 4x12, followed by 3x15, 2x20, 1x40, 5x10, 4x15, 3x20, 2x30.

This is a super standard way to extensively build your aerobic strength, but it also presents opportunity to focus for longer and longer stretches of time:Mental Toughness. Win Win

Mental Toughness Training

What exercises increase mental toughness? There are lots of things you can do to learn how improve your mental toughness.

Directing Your Attention: When you are in the hurt locker during a bike race, you can direct your attention where you want to go. Do you direct your attention to the pain you are experiencing, or do you focus on your pedaling, your breathing, and holding the wheel in front of you? Ultimately, you can’t really control how much pain you feel, you can only control your effort. If you only focus on how hard something feels, you will lose focus and perform worse. Direct your attention towards doing things right rather than negative thoughts.
Task-Oriented Cues: Set goals for yourself during a race to keep you focused on your effort rather than what’s going on around you (or within you). A few examples could look like:
- Get to the bottom of the first climb in the top ten of the pack
- Consume 1 gel every 30 minutes
- Get my teammate in good position with 3 laps to go
If you direct your attention towards the race, you will be less likely to worry about how you feel on the day.
Everyone Else Is Hurting Too: Half of bike racing is a mental game. If you’ve showed up well prepared and you know you’re one of the stronger riders there, remember that when the going gets tough that everyone else is suffering too. This is where the selection is made, if you have that little bit extra to dig deep, it might be the difference maker.

Bring it all together-FLOW State

Michael Jordan stepping onto the court in the 4th quarter. I can’t think of a better example because when Jordan was on, he was unstoppable. That’s what made him a legend. He missed shots, and he had bad days, and he had many rivals, but when he was on, he wasn’t beatable! When everything is going right, and all of the pieces above have come together in just the right way, and it feels effortless, that’s the Flow state. It’s trying without trying. Sometimes this state of flow comes automatically, other times it’s found and lost, but unlocking that is the key to mental toughness, and mental toughness is the key to the flow state. Use all of the above strategies to get back to the flow!

You’ve been there: you make it to the half way point in an interval and that thought creeps into your head “oh maybe this is TOO hard” yes it’s possible you hit a physiological limit, but what if you gave it just another minute. Just one minute. Just breathe. After a few breaths, you realize you are back in it, and all of a sudden the last 5 minutes of the effort are EASY! Your mind has control and even if you lose the right state of mind you can get it back.

Building Mental Toughness

How to increase mental strength? Practice makes perfect. “Keep your head up” is actually a proven way to improve performance. you need to put yourself under pressure to improve, but you also have to make sure you arm yourself with the right information to show up prepared for your race. Prepared for your effort. Use all of these strategies, and if you want me to give you feedback directly to your goals, shoot me an email (Patrick@EVOQ.BIKE) or contact us online to learn more about the training programs for cyclists available from EVOQ.

Race Preppatrick walleAugust 6, 2020Comment