Monday, August 24, 2015

MIND OVER MATTER: YELLOW LIGHT MOMENTS


When it comes to athletic success, there is often a point where an athlete needs to push himself to his limit. In some sports, like swimming and track and field, this “comes with the territory,” but there are other sports, like soccer, basketball and tennis, where athletes are asked to push themselves in practice to develop the physical conditioning that may well make the difference between winning and losing in games. Few athletes may possess the iron will of a Michael Phelps or a Novak Djokovic to push themselves unrelentingly hour after hour -  but there are mental strategies that can help an athlete who is on board with the need to push himself but may find himself giving up too quickly when pain or fatigue set in.
                            

     WE’VE ALL BEEN THERE… You are approaching an intersection as the light turns yellow. Most of the time, we speed up to make it through the yellow light. Sometimes the light turns red as we are going through the intersection. It happens with drivers thousands of times every day.

     Sometimes, a driver slows down and comes to a stop at the intersection.  And while it is often a matter of our ability to get an immediate read on our timing relative to the light, there is something else at play… our motivation (in this case, the motivation to save time).

     We’re coming up to the intersection… the light changes to yellow… and we’re thinking “I don’t want to get stuck waiting at this intersection. What a waste of my time that is. I want to go on my way.”  (And if we are in a rush, all the more so…)

     And so we go through the light. (Hopefully it’s yellow… how many senseless deaths are cause by people running  the red light – but that’s another matter for another time.)

     But any reasonably responsible driver will also be saying something else to himself/herself at the same time … something like “I need to stop at the intersection because that is the safe thing to do under the circumstances.”   Or even “I need to stop at the intersection because there could be an officer nearby – or a traffic camera, and I don’t want to get stuck with a ticket.”

     IN OTHER WORDS… we are faced with two reasonable but opposing motivations – one which translate into “GO” and the other which translates into “STOP”

     It all happens in a fraction of a second, but in that fraction of a second ONE of those factors (“GO” or “STOP”) wins control and determines our behavior.

     This thought occurred to me recently while doing interval training on the bike. As I was pedaling at maximal effort I was feeling an energy drain – and probably would have dropped down to a lower speed.  But all of a sudden an image came to mind that gave me a surge of energy – enough energy to keep me going strong! (What was the image? See the end of the article!)

     There I was, my body sending signals of pain and fatigue to my mind, which in turn was ready to activate the “STOP” response … when a different (opposing) thought came into my mind which sparked the “GO” response instead. That thought prevailed over the other tendency and won out… with the result being that I kept going “full throttle” instead of giving in to my original temptation to slow down.




     A similar situation was reported during the 2008 Summer Olympics, when U.S. Olympian Jason Lezak captured the world’s attention by recording (unofficially) the fastest relay leg in swimming history to help the U.S. to a gold medal finish in the 4 x 100 freestyle. This was one of the races needed to help teammate Michael Phelps set his Olympic record of eight gold medals – a loss in this event would have put an early end to that quest.

   Lezak was going against French swimmer Alain Bernard, who, at the time, held the world record in the 100m freestyle, and had earlier that day bragged to his teammates that they would “smash the Americans.”  Lezak was swimming the final leg of the race, and trailed the Frenchman noticeably at the turn. With 50 meters to go, Lezak was a full body length behind. After having taken first place in this event for nine consecutive Olympics, the Americans had come up short in both 2000 and 2004. In fact, just prior to the 2004 Olympics, I asked Jason what aspects of the experience – his second time there – he was most looking forward to, and he replied, “I’m looking forward to getting the gold in the 400 freestyle relay back from the Aussies.”

     So when Lezak swam his part in what television commentator and former gold medalist Rowdy Gaines called “the greatest relay I have ever seen,” besting his own personal record by 1½ seconds, he later explained:

“When I flipped at the 50 and I saw how far ahead he still was, I really thought, ‘There's no way (I can catch up with Bernard). The guy holds the world record. This isn’t possible.’ And then I changed and I said, ‘You know what, that is ridiculous. This is the Olympics, and I'm here for the United States of America. I don't care how bad it hurts. I’m just gonna go out there.’ I’ve been part of two teams at the last two Olympics that came out behind, and I wanted … to show that we are the nation to beat in that relay. In like five seconds I was thinking all these things. I just got a supercharge and took it from there.”

     Whether it is that “supercharge” that helps an athlete surge ahead in competition, or just the motivation to maintain a high level of energy and effort in practice … it often comes down to that “Yellow Light Moment” and WHICH ONE of the conflicting messages we tell ourselves – “Take it easy” OR “Keep on going!” – takes hold.

   I often ask athletes to picture some sort of image or scenario that will remind them of the way they want to perform. In this case – me on the bicycle - I thought of filling my car up with gas to fuel me on the way … and then imagined passing someone on the highway (i.e. going strong). That image over-rode the other signal my body was sending my brain – the one of feeling tired and feeling about to quit. 

   Another time I was on the treadmill, going at full speed, when the pain/fatigue kicked in. Although I was similarly tempted to slow down, I thought to myself “What if I was to get my second wind in the next 2 minutes? What if I was to get a surge of energy if I could just keep it up for the next two minutes? I thought to myself that IF that would be true and IF I would have slowed down instead that would have been a shame… and that thought – that my second wind could be right around the corner – gave me the determination I needed to keep going for the next two minutes. THAT MENTAL STRATEGY MADE THE DIFFERENCE between stopping and keeping going. 

     Like the saying goes – “mind over matter.” Which one of two opposing thought will prevail in your mind. That is what matters!

Post Script… There is probably not a basketball coach around who hasn’t made his players run suicides in a certain time, (e.g. 28 seconds) only to have them run again because some team members didn’t make the required time.  So the team runs again, and still comes up short. Eventually they push themselves and everyone finishes in time.  The thing is that by the fourth or fifth time they are that much more exhausted, and yet they manage to run the best time of the lot. This certainly speaks volumes about the mental part of our ability for endurance!  As former Celtics great and Hall of Fame basketball legend John Havlicek put it:

“Most people think they’re overworked so they stop. They could have kept going but they didn't. They weren't beat physically, they were beat mentally.”


            © by 2010 by Dr. Mitch Smith.  All rights reserved.

No comments:

Post a Comment