Performance Coaching: Thinking and Performance

Performance Coaching focuses on establishing specific processes aimed at improving performance. The goal is to achieve peak performance while maintaining the athlete's well-being.

Besides being a Coach, I'm also an UltraRunner, and I often get asked this question: what do you think about during your endless hours of running?

I've thought a lot about this question. There are many aspects to consider in an athlete's daily life. We can divide these aspects into a few broad categories:

• Physical preparation
• Mental preparation
• Equipment setup and maintenance
• Personal aspects related to daily life not included in the previous points

For the purposes of this article, we can further divide all the aspects that fall into the macro categories listed above into two further sets:

• Things to do that require commitment
• Things to do that don't require effort (or can be boring)

The importance of staying focused

Important note: we're not just talking about competition, but also the many aspects that precede it. An athlete's focus—where they place their attention—during a performance is of fundamental importance. If an athlete becomes distracted during a demanding performance (for example, a difficult technical move, or a very strenuous athletic exercise), there's a risk that the task won't be performed correctly, and therefore won't yield the desired results (the technical move isn't properly metabolized), or even that the athlete might suffer an injury (the athletic exercise isn't performed with due attention).

We then have a second possible situation: the athlete is faced with an undemanding or boring task (a long, slow cool-down run, for example, or a stretching session that doesn't prove exciting). In this case, the greatest risk is that the athlete will become bored and, over time, will associate important parts of their day with boredom (causing a loss of motivation and a decline in effort and, consequently, results).

Performance Coaching: What to Think About During Performance?

Let's return to the opening question: what do you think about during your endless hours of running? Now let's reframe it from a performance coaching perspective and with a possible application in any sport: what is useful to think about during performance?

My advice is this: during a challenging performance, pay full attention to what you're doing . Nothing else, think only and exclusively about what you're doing at that precise moment. Concentrate on the precision of your gesture, the correctness of your movement, and giving 100% if the athletic exercise requires it. This way, your performance will yield the desired results.

During a performance that requires little effort (or even turns out to be boring), focus instead on why you're doing that thing, on the benefits that unexciting task will bring you. When what we need to do doesn't require our concentration, it's more effective to think about how that particular task is an important piece of our larger puzzle.

In very short:

During a challenging performance, focus on what you're doing.
During a boring performance, focus on why you're doing that thing.

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