ANY COMPETITIVE ATHLETE WILL TELL YOU THAT WHAT SEPARATES THE GREAT
HOPEFULSFROM THE GREAT ACHIEVERS IS THE KNOWLEDGE AND APPLICATION OF
MENTAL SKILLS. HERE, U.S. OLYMPIC TRAINING CENTER SPORT PSYCHOLOGIST
JAMES BAUMAN, PH.D., REVEALS JUST WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO SUCCEED IN SYDNEY
THIS SUMMER--OR AT LEAST JUST IMPRESS EVERYONE AT THE GYM.
The day before Jonathan Jordan was to compete in the 1996 NCAA
Track and Field Indoor Championships in Bakersfield, he got food
poisoning and had to be rushed to the hospital. His coach tried to
convince him to withdraw from the next day's race, but with the
championship on the line, Jordan refused to quit.
The next morning, the 26-year-old triple and long jumper from
suburban Chicago focused all his energy on the one good jump he knew he
had to make. "I put everything into it," he said. "I was more relaxed
than I ever was." When the jump measured an expansive 23 feet, a
surprised Jordan said, "Oh my God." He had placed first, in spite of his
weakened condition.
"In such situations I have found myself asking: 'How can I compete
now?' But you concentrate and dig for something you didn't know you had,"
says Jordan, who will head for the Olympic Trials in Sacramento this
summer.
A computer with all the gigabytes in the world is useless without
the software to make it run. And so it is with the Olympian, whose mind
is the software controlling that collection of hardware known as flesh
and bone and muscle. Aside from their astounding physical prowess, it is
the Olympians' mental muscles--and how they flex them--that really sets
them apart from everyday athletes.
"The difference between you and the guy next to you is almost
completely mental," says Curt R. Clausen, 32, the six-foot-one former
public administrator whose newly shaved head will stand out in the
50-kilometer Olympic race walk in Sydney. "At the highest level," says
Clausen, who is ranked No. 1 in the United States and fourth in the
world, "that's what makes the difference."
In my more than 10 years of working with hundreds of athletes, as
the sport psychologist at Washington State University and one of four
sports psychologists for the Sport Science and Technology Division of the
U.S. Olympic Committee, I have seen how "mental management" contributes
to an athlete's performance. Some Olympians even say it accounts for 90%
of their success. While it's difficult to quantify percentages, we do
know from years of research and hundreds of studies just how important
psychological preparation is to optimum athletic performance.
It can even conquer the worst of distractions, as it did for Kathy
Ann Colin, who overcame physical injuries, the distraction of college and
a family disaster before becoming the No. 1 kayaker in the U.S.
Colin has had her eyes on the Olympics since she was 6, thinking
she'd get there through gymnastics. But after tearing a ligament in her
right knee when she was 12, she turned to kayaking. She had to give that
up, too, when she left her hometown of Kailua, Hawaii, to attend the
University of Washington. But after graduating from college and landing a
good job with Boeing,. Colin knew that if she were ever to compete in the
Olympics, she had to train full time. Three years ago, she moved to the
U.S. ARCO Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California, to work out
with the national team.
When finally, last summer, the day came for her to qualify for the
2000 Olympics, tragedy struck. Colin's parents, who had flown all the way
from Hawaii, were robbed at the airport and left with nothing but the
clothes on their backs.
"I spent the whole day crying and rounding up clothes from
teammates," the athlete recalls.
On top of that, she and kayak pair teammate Tamara Jenkins were
having trouble balancing, and their warm-ups were "awful." When experts
predicted that the race would be the fastest anyone had seen in 20 years,
the pair was distracted, nervous and excited--all at once.
"I knew what I had to do," says Colin. "I had put too much time and
effort into this." So with all the tenacity her five-foot-eight,
145-pound body could muster, she turned to Jenkins and said: "We can do
this. Focus and relax and don't worry about anything else. Just do what
we do."
And they did. Colin and Jenkins will be paddling for the gold in
the K-2 in Sydney this summer.
Numerous studies over the years confirm that successful athletes
are better able than the rest of us to deal with distractions. Olympic
athletes in particular find ways to remain focused on an event to the
exclusion of negative influences such as unruly crowds, inclement
weather, even family problems. In his 1986 comparative study, Stanford
University's Albert Bandura, Ph.D., internationally known for his work in
personality and social learning theory, showed that while the vast
majority of us spend lots of time worrying about things we can't control,
successful athletes attend primarily to those cues or stimuli that are
relevant, or within their control.
And where mental ability counts most is in preparation.
Tags:
athletes,
bakersfield,
concentration,
food poisoning,
gigabytes,
mental rehearsal,
next morning,
optimism,
performance,
physical prowess,
sport psychologist,
track and field
