Posts Tagged ‘ sports-skills ’

Goal-setting is a common weakness for struggling athletes and a common strength for successful athletes. Do it wrong – or avoid it altogether – and watch your chances for success plummet. Do it right, and watch your motivation and self-confidence improve. For many athletes, it’s the key to enhancing performance. Many years ago, psychologist...
More »

The prominence of professional sports in America places athletes on the highest pedestal of celebrity, praise and respect. This cultural phenomenon gets replicated in college athletics in the form of big time Division I athletic programs. Often times, these programs incite the same excitement and feverish fandom as professional sports do – sometimes even...
More »

Fear; we’ve all felt it. When face-to-face with a mountain lion, or riding in the peloton, fear elicits the “fight or flight” response. It’s a source of motivation. When humans were a part of the food chain, fear motivated you to run like hell or fight for your life. In a race, it can...
More »

Injury is among the most challenging experiences you can face as a cyclist. When you’re injured, you almost certainly can’t ride in the way to which you’ve become accustomed, and you’re often not able to ride at all. If you were injured in a crash, your mental fitness may have taken a hit; perhaps...
More »

Ron Wolforth, director of Pitching Central, a Houston Texas based pitching development facility has developed a total pitching development program called “The Athletic Pitcher.” Wolforth shared how he teaches the metal aspects of pitching performance, and works with pitchers at his pitching boot camp to produce more mentally tough and competitive pitchers. Wolforth was...
More »

There are many group dynamics that take place within a sporting team. One of the most important is cohesion. One is always hearing about how important it is for a team to “gel” or “bond” or “have good chemistry.” Cohesive teams can achieve dramatic and awesome things. The way players interact has a tremendous...
More »

The following is an article by Mark Jenkins MD as it appears on the Rice University website. Here’s a link to the full article. It is no secret among athletes that in order to improve performance you’ve got to work hard. However, hard training breaks you down and makes you weaker. It is rest...
More »

Unlike other aspects of cycling, climbing success is considered by most to be almost 100 percent dependent on fitness and natural ability. It occurred to me, however, that there is actually much more to it. Over the years, I’ve picked up numerous tricks and techniques that have allowed me to occasionally put one over...
More »

Marilyn King was training for the 1980 Olympics when she was involved in a car accident which resulted in a back injury that left her bedridden for months. During her recovery, she spent hours using mental training techniques, watching films of Pentathlon, and visualizing herself competing. Although she was unable to train physically, her...
More »

Your legs are burning. Your lungs are burning. Thoughts of flaming out, backing off, or giving up are dancing in your tortured mind. What will you do next? The mentally fit cyclist is highly skilled in responding to suffering, and thus has a distinct advantage over many competitors. When we cyclists use the word...
More »