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.
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* * *
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 2014 by Dr. Mitch Smith. All rights reserved.
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