~ KROCKY
~NAU athletes Maggi Congdon and Alex Carlson at the NCAA Indoor Champs this weekend.
January cut cold and bright outside the office window when the athlete and I met to talk. They told me about their years developing in Africa. The spoke of the groups, the focus and the beautiful, remote villages at 9000ft. “People train really hard on gravel roads in shoes with holes in them. They just run for the sake of running. They show up every morning and every evening and they just train. They don’t know if they will have a race, ever. This was me.”
At the time of this conversation, a major US marathon was about a month away. The field was very deep. This athlete was seeded a little ways down the list. “I would like to surprise, I know I can win,” they told me.
We moved on to construct an approach for the upcoming marathon. This athlete had visited the course in the months prior. They had trained the same hills and turns that they would meet on race day. Their plan was to tuck into the lead pack and wait, to let others do the work and let the course dwindle down the field.
They planned to be patient and cover every move that others made. “At around 10k I’ll be tucked in right in the middle of all of those great athletes. There are going to be people watching at home, and they will ask if I’m still there!”
On the last loop of the race, with about 6 miles to go, this athlete planned to be right there with the leaders. “Around mile 23 or 24 I will be one of about 3 people. Then two will break away. It will be me and just one other person. And on that last uphill, that one person will fall back and I will win the race.”
After our meeting I took everything that this athlete had shared and scripted a visualization. It included who they wanted to be: African pride and a grateful US resident, how they wanted to see – happy to be there, present, and precisely what they wanted to do according to their race plan and what they had practiced. I included phrases that they had emphasized in key moments to try to access helpful emotion. About a week later, we walked through my script and recorded it for the athlete to listen to daily.
During those last two talks that I had with this athlete, I felt an energy from them that I had never encountered before. A sense of absolute knowing. I remember, the evening after we recorded the visualization, I met a friend late one evening to do some work. We were both quietly bent over our tasks when I asked him, “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Yes,” he said. Who doesn’t like a secret?
“This athete is going to win this marathon,” I told him. Weeks would pass. I would work, and the athlete would train and recover and visualize, before we would find out if this was true.
Visualization
Visualization (also called imagery) involves seeing yourself race in your mind. Many successful athletes utilize this practice. They have good reasons for doing so. Used consistently, visualization can improve a runner’s ability to make optimal decisions within a race by enabling them to practice doing so in their mind. Every decision that we make and action that we take is enabled by neural connections. When an athlete visualizes effectively, the same neural connections that become active in real life become activated. Repeated activation strengthens neural connections, thus enabling the decision associated with them to become easier to make with each activation. An athlete who visualizes executing their loose plan is more likely to execute that plan within the race because they have strengthened their neurological ability to do so.
Here are some guidelines for effective visualization practice:
Step One: Plan the actions you will visualize.
Well in advance of an important race (weeks or months in advance if possible) plan the specifics of what you will visualize. Focus your imagery on the actions that you want to see yourself take inside the race. Your loose plan is an ideal visualization plan. If you do not like to design a loose plan instead choose 1-3 moments within the race when you know that you will need to make a wise or brave decision. Plan to visualize yourself making those decisions during those moments inside the race.
Often, for the purpose of visualization, athletes will shorten their loose plan instructions into concise cue words. Here are some examples of how to change loose plan instructions into cue words:
In the first mile – Loose plan: Get out with teammates. Cue word: “Get out”
In the middle of the race – Loose plan: commit to the effort and maintain position. Cue word: “commit”
In the last quarter of the race – Loose plan: make 3 competitive moves. Cue word: “3 moves”
Visualize yourself executing each chunk of your loose plan, while saying the cue word that you have planned. See yourself respond to that word within that chunk in your mind the way you want to respond in real life. How long should I visualize each chunk? you might ask. I’d suggest spending one minute or more visualizing yourself execute each chunk of the race.
Step Two: Decide where and how you will visualize.
Visualization is traditionally carried out sitting quietly with one’s eyes closed. However, many athletes also use it while they are running. For example, some will see themselves carry out their loose plan throughout an easy run. Others will bring the racing environment to mind while working out – especially at the end of the workout when the effort gets tough and they are making hard choices similar to those that they would want to make in the race. In order to visualize while running, keep your eyes open (haha) and try bringing images of the race environment into your mind’s eye. Then “see” yourself making the decisions from your loose plan in that environment.
I encourage athletes to be creative regarding how they use visualization. The whole point is to see yourself executing your plan well in as realistic a way as possible. There are probably as many ways to do this as there are athletes.
Athletes often ask me, when is the best time to visualize? My answer is always, when you are most likely to do it consistently. Sometimes, athletes ask me if they can visualize in bed. You can, just keep in mind that the more realistic the experience of visualizing, the greater value you will get from it. Visualizing standing up in your racing singlet is more realistic than lying in bed. But, it is probably better to visualize while lying in bed than to not visualize at all.
Ideally, I recommend designing your visualization plan (and therefore your loose plan) at least one month before an important race. Further out is even better. Practice it 3 times per week if you can. Although any practice is better than no practice.
Step Three: Assume the Internal Perspective
When visualizing, try to assume an internal perspective, which means to view the scene through your own eyes and from within your own body. The alternative, the external perspective, involves watching yourself from outside of your body, as you would watch yourself on a screen. The internal perspective is the most realistic way to visualize, and therefore more neurologically activating than the external perspective. However, it can take practice to learn to adopt the internal perspective. If you are only able to see yourself from an external perspective at first that’s ok. You will still benefit from visualizing in this manner. But, learning to adopt the internal perspective will likely make the practice more effective over time.
Step Four: Create a Vivid Image – Include embodying who you want to be and how you want to see
Next, imagine yourself embodying the qualities of the person who you want to be in the race environment. The athlete in this story saw themself embodying their African pride, the youth who ran on gravel roads in shoes with holes in them. They also felt their pride and gratitude to be an American resident. You might adjust your posture and attempt to open yourself to the emotions and sensations present when you feel like that person. You might remind yourself how you choose to see – of the purpose of that race as written on your loose plan.
Begin by picturing yourself in the training or race environment. Make the image vivid by involving all of your senses. Consider what you will see there, what you will hear, what you will feel physically and emotionally, what you will smell, and even (if possible) what you will taste.
Step Five: See Yourself Perform Well Most of the Time
Most of the time visualize yourself performing well. Simply see yourself executing your loose plan as scripted. Be sure to include the awareness that you will feel physically uncomfortable inside the race itself and perhaps also resistant to making competitive moves. This point cannot be over-emphasized. Discomfort that we expect is less alarming than discomfort that comes as a surprise.
Step Six: See Yourself Face Adversity Some of the Time
When practicing visualization include some normal adversity (about 10-20% of the time). For example, you might see yourself lose your teammates at the start of a race. Or, your mind might wander to unhelpful thoughts. Or, you might get boxed in, or the pace might feel harder than expected early in the race. If you prefer not to envision a specific adversity I suggest simply bringing to your mind the feeling of “uh oh.” But regardless of if you envision a specific adversity, or “uh oh,” imagine yourself saying the cue word that you planned in your loose plan to recover from adversity and see yourself overcoming that adversity successfully.
Step Seven: See Yourself Finish Proud and Happy with your Effort Only
Despite the value and power of visualization, this last step offers an important warning. The greatest misconception about visualization is that visualizing will magically manifest a specific outcome in reality. This practice of visualizing oneself finish with a particular time or ranking is called outcome-focused visualization. Most athletes who have not received instructions on how to visualize well simply see themselves win a race or run a specific time over and over with the belief that doing so will cause this to happen in real life. This is not the case. I know far more tragic stories than victorious ones associated with outcome focused visualization. The practice of outcome focused visualization comes with a great deal of risk.
Outcome focused visualization typically causes the athlete to feel more attached to those outcomes. Their need for things to go a certain way is heightened. As a result, rather than focusing on what they are going to do in the race, athletes become fearfully vigilant of how they feel and how the race is unfolding around them. At the first sign that the race is not unfolding the way that they visualized, athletes who have practiced outcome focused visualization are far more likely to blow up or give up than those who never visualized. Utilizing an outcome focused visualization is like practicing an I-need-to perspective, and compromises an athlete’s resilience within the race similarly.
It’s important to remember that visualization is a tool to strengthen the execution of skills within an athlete’s control. Earlier, we learned that the outcome of each race is the sum of the actions taken within the race and that the more present and focused on each moment we are the higher quality each action that we take is. So, considering that visualization is a practice that trains an athlete to act well in their competitive moments, runners will get the most out of it by visualizing themselves focusing where they need to be focused in order to act well within the race.
So, instead of outcomes, I recommend that athletes focus their visualizations on actions and simply see themselves finish the race proud and happy with their effort. Leave the specifics of time or ranking to be discovered on race day.
The Athelete and the Marathon
On the day of the marathon I watched the race with some friends. At the start I could see this athlete standing proudly on the start line. Then, about 10k in, at least 20 athletes were running together at the front of the race, when someone near to me asked, “is that athlete still there?”
Later in the race, where they predicted, this athlete broke away from the field with one other athlete. A few kilometers later, they won the marathon.
I remember looking at my friend with whom I had shared my prediction weeks prior. His eyes met mine, wide and speechless. “Have you ever seen anything like that?” I asked him.
I tell you this story because it still gives me chills. It is also an example of how visualization can help an athlete make impactful decisions within a race. But, I also fear that it could be misleading regarding the purpose of visualization because it deviates from some important guidelines regarding outcome focused visualization that I just shared. Based on the details of this story, it might be easy to presume that this athlete “manifested” their marathon win through their visualization. I do believe that this athlete tapped into something very intuitive regarding the details of how that race unfolded, some sense of destiny perhaps. But, they also prepared extensively for those Olympic Trials. They visited the course months prior and they practiced parts of it repeatedly within their workouts. In my opinion, their visualization simply served as further practice of the excellent race plan scripted and prepared by the athlete and their coach. But the feeling they gave me in our meetings, and the way that race unfolded, are still some of the most magical memories of my career. I have never seen anything like it before or since.
MENTAL PERFORMANCE 
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