The One Science-Backed Tip Athletes Use for Their Success (That You Need to Start Using NOW)
January is almost over. That’s one month down and 11 more to go to turn your life around in 2020.
I’m a fan of New Year’s Resolutions and goal setting, contrary to most people who hate them nowadays. There’s a couple reasons why they’re hated:
Unsuccessful people hate them because they’ve done them time and time again and continue to fail each year.
Successful people hate them because most “New Years Resolutioners” don’t change their behaviors in order to be aligned with their goals. Successful people watch the first group fail because they don’t act successful, they just wish to be successful.
You’ve already heard 100 times, if not more, that you need to change your behavior and actions in order to become more successful, but hearing that alone doesn’t actually change anything. We need to find out what does.
For some people, their behaviors change once they feel like they’ve hit their lowest point and they’re afraid- mortified of the position they’ve found themselves in. We see this happen all of the time where someone turns their life completely around and finds success after almost dying from a drug overdose. We also see this all of the time after extreme weight gain that threatens their life.
It’s likely that you’re not at the point of being completely mortified of your current position yet; lucky for you, today we’re going to talk about a tool that athletes use to change their behavior so that they can continue to find success and wins and how you can too.
Physically and Mentally Preparing for Success
In the article, “How to Set and Conquer Your 2020 New Years Resolutions Goals,” there was one important piece that I left out: how to change your behavior in order to find this success.
If you don’t know how to set SMART goals, I recommend giving this article a read, but if you’re familiar with all of the right steps you’re supposed to take and still find yourself struggling to change your habits, patterns, and behaviors, then its because you haven’t heard this yet. It’s not a secret tip, but it’s one that people don’t realize is important so they never do it.
Every athlete and coach follows SMART goals, but they also work on changing behavior from a psychological standpoint to align more with success. You need to be both physically and mentally prepared for success.
Why You’re Failing
If you’ve followed all of the steps in this blog post, but still fail to execute your goals, it may not be a problem with your plan; its a problem with your behavior.
You Have a Confidence Issue.
You’re wishing for luck. You’re hoping that things just work out for you, yet you’re not really doing anything to ensure that you’re successful.
While you may not recognize this yet, the issue isn’t that you believe in luck; the issue is that you believe you’re unlucky. You have no confidence in yourself.
That’s a lot for me to say about you, considering we’ve never met, but I guarantee it.
And why should you be confident that you can achieve these goals, anyway? You’ve probably never done it successfully before and confidence is gained from doing something over and over again and understanding that it works; having faith that it works. You haven’t gained the ability to be confident in this type of success yet.
The things in our lives that we are confident about, we move through and accomplish more easily; if we know we can cook or bake, we have no problem trying new recipes and cooking for our family reunions. If we’re confident that we’re good at our jobs, we have no problem trying something new and failing because we’re confident that we’re valuable nonetheless. But if you’ve never done this new thing; competed in powerlifting, lost 20 pounds, ran a marathon, we have no confidence built in this area yet.
That’s one major reason why you’re failing. The second reason may be that you’re struggling with a fixed mindset.
You have a fixed mindset.
I have struggled with what they call a “fixed mindset” for as long as I’ve known (and this usually stems off of lack of confidence, in my experience). A fixed mindset essentially means that you believe that all of your skills and traits are “fixed,” and that you can do everything in your power to succeed, but you’ll still fail.
Essentially, you believe people were just “meant” for success and got lucky, while others, like yourself were just born unlucky.
With a mindset like this, it’s no wonder you don’t really try. You have ambitions, goals, and dreams, but deep down you’re not confident and you feel stuck.
We act based on how we believe. It’s the law of nature; that’s just how we’re programmed. We can oftentimes observe the people around us and know what they believe to be true about themselves based on how they act.
Now that you feel really badly about yourself (kidding!), it’s time to show you a tool that successful athletes use to change their life.
Visualization: The Tool That Athletes Are Using
Hippies call it “manifestation.” Coaches call it “visualization.” I don’t care what you call it; it works.
If you want to know how this has worked for me personally and how I feel it has changed my life, check out my Instagram post.
How to Visualize like an Athlete
The concept is simple: visualize your desired outcome. You want to win your powerlifting meet? Visualize the platform. Visualize the crowd. Visualize yourself warming up backstage. Visualize your first attempts, second attempts, and third attempts for each lift. Visualize the plates on the bar. Visualize the effort and power you’re going to exert through each attempt. Visualize how hard you’re going to push. Visualize the speed of the bar as you come back up from your squat. Visualize being relentless.
You need to be detailed.
How is this success going to feel? Are you calm during the storm with razor-sharp focus? Are you emotional and tearing up as you pull 400 pounds for the first time on that platform? Are you laughing as you rack the bar because of how easy the bar just moved for you?
How is this success going to sound? Are your family and friends losing their voices from how loud they’re cheering you on from the crowd? What are they saying? How do their voices sound?
And how is this success going to taste? Probably like gummy worms and peanut butter jelly sandwiches.
You need to prepare for different scenarios.
Visualize what you’ll do if the bar moves easier than expected.
Visualize how hard you’ll push if the bar moves slower than you hoped. Visualize what you’ll do in each scenario and how you’ll fight through it and get that win.
This helps so that you’ll be prepared for each scenario on your meet day.
When Should You DO IT?
In my opinion, you should set time away from your day at least 2x/week to visualize, but it’s easy to do it everyday and if you can, I would recommend that. It takes no more than 10-15 minutes to get yourself deep into that visual.
During competition prep, I recommend my athletes visualize meet day during their main movements a few weeks out from their meet, at minimum.
If you’re not competing soon, I recommend doing it first thing in the morning, right before bed, or in the shower.
Athletes That Use Visualization
Almost all successful athletes are doing this. Many coaches use this as a tool for their athletes because it continues to give better results.
You may not hear every athlete talk about it, but it’s a part of their routine during their season as much as training practice and sports nutrition are. Here are two iconic athletes that openly talk about their visualization methods.
Michael Phelps
Michael and his coach use visualization to prepare for any outcome that may occur on meet day.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold uses visualization to create his reality both in bodybuilding and later on throughout his career. He claims that what differentiated his physique from anyone else who was also in their training just as hard as he was, was the mind and his own thoughts.
What Does the Research Say about Visualization?
Glad you asked. There have been many studies on how visualization has improved performance.
In this study, researchers had had participants test their 1RM on bicep curls.
One group was set to practice bicep curls only through visualization techniques (no lifting). The second group was set to only practice via physical training (no visualization).
The third group was set to incorporate both physical training and visualization. The only group to make progress was the third group.
That’s big because progress is limited for bicep curls when talking about max strength (in comparison to the squat, bench, or deadlift).
Another study tested the “cognitive strategy-strength performance relationship” of their participants and found that their strength had improved by 61-65% after incorporating visualization techniques.
If you’re interested in reading more, check out this systematic review from 2016, which discusses various other studies in relation to sports performance, movement, and visualization.
