A recent article in TIME Magazine called “Getting and Staying in the Zone” says something Sasha Cohen brilliantly illustrated in her Olympic long program, “…the truly great athletes, … know that maintaining a competitive edge is less about keeping it honed to perfection at all times, than realizing they can lose the edge every once in a while and still get it back.” After a nearly perfect short program and the nation’s expectation of a gold medal, Sasha stumbled twice at the beginning of her long program. Somehow she found the presence of mind to finish the rest of the program with grace and artistic brilliance – and still earn a silver medal. Perhaps she already knew what the TIME article claims, “Athletes need to train their mind with the same discipline that they train their bodies.”

The article describes how thoughts have direct and powerful connections to physiological functions. “At the root of most slumps is a perceived decline in performance.” How an athlete defines a particularly bad day can shape the rest of his or her career. While the slump may be due to a daily or seasonal variation or the fact that they ran into an exceptional opponent, if the athlete believes this is the beginning of the “end”, that belief can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Athletes are often unaware of the connection between belief and the body’s performance. Athletic skill (especially for the gifted) is so second-nature that it’s tempting to think it all resides in muscle memory. But “even those rote actions involve a tremendous amount of mental processing. …Any learned sports skill begins in the thinking part of the brain.... As these neurons get excited, they activate nerve cells connected to the limbic system just under the cerebrum of the brain, the area associated with emotions such as fear, anxiety, elation and satisfaction. That area is tied in turn to the motor cortex, which controls the muscles.” So if your dominant emotions are fear or anxiety, you trigger the fight-or-flight response with a racing heart, adrenaline, and tunnel vision. This is probably not the type of reaction you want during an event – unless you’re racing Gary Hall in the 50 free.

One way that sports psychologists are suggesting athletes control this reaction is to become aware of their “self-talk”. “The average person speaks to himself at a rate of 300 to 1,000 words a minute.” In a long race (for example the Bay swim), this leaves a lot of time for talking yourself into losing. In those first moments after the start when the pack is pulling away, you can either think, “There’s a lot of time ahead of me. Anything could happen. I’m going to keep working hard.” Or you can think, “This is hopeless. I’m already almost dead last. What’s the point?”

“Aynsley Smith, director of the sports-medicine research center at the Mayo Clinic gives her athletes a …system of thought swapping. ‘I tell them that self-talk exists on three channels: positive, negative and escape.’” She advises to try to switch to a positive channel when your thoughts (and performance) are tanking. However, if the anxiety level still remains high, try an escape channel, for example imagining how Janet Evans or Michael Phelps would handle this situation. Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing are also good for helping athletes quiet the inner beast, allowing their bodies to perform. In other words, regardless of how you do it, it’s important to learn how to get out of your own way when it counts the most. (Source: TIME Magazine, January 16, 2006, “Getting and Staying in the Zone” by Alice Park.)