Keeping track of mental and physical training leads to athletic success

You may have heard the phrase before; winners keep score. This is not meant to be a negative thing, saying that winners are only focused on score. Rather, I think this statement more represents that winners are aware of the energy and effort that they are putting forth in order to earn their successes.

Winners, or those who achieve success in their goal pursuit, do not get there on accident, and certainly do not get there overnight. Success is achieved through constant and consistent effort towards the training that is necessary to achieve the desired outcome. In addition, the tracking and monitoring of the progress that is made helps to strengthen the mental toughness of that athlete, which makes achieving these levels of success possible as well.

Think about this; you spend all year working away towards achieving a certain goal. This may be a personal best, a provincial medal, or a top 10 finish. You work so hard towards the goal, but you don’t really take in what that journey of effort has looked like. You do not cheer yourself on and reward yourself for the baby steps that you have made in order to make that final goal possible. In fact, you’re probably so focused and critical of yourself when that goal does or doesn’t happen, but you give no responsibility to the work you did, or didn’t, do to get there.

I have been finding myself increasingly encouraging athletes these days to be monitoring their physical and mental training activities in order to see their impact. Following your daily activities simply by writing them in a logbook of any sort, will give you a clear picture of the work and effort you’re putting out towards your goal. Ideally, you’ll see that you’re taking all the necessary steps needed to climb that long staircase up to your big goal. However, you may also notice by keeping track, that the work you’re doing is not as effective as it could be to get you to where you need to be. For example, maybe you’re working towards a new personal best in a long distance race, but as you’ve started tracking your workouts you’ve noticed you spend 95 percent of your time working your bench press. Although it may also be a goal of yours to increase your upper body strength, you must also consider how much is that training really getting you towards your PB goal? It’s probably not, and without writing it down and keeping track, it is really easy for us to dismiss the misdirection of our efforts.

Tracking your workouts, for example, will help you to see the effort that you’re putting out, the progress you’re making (increased speed, shorter times, increased strength, etc.) towards your end goal. As you see the progress, you begin to feel more confident, more motivated and more likely to push forwards to advance yourself closer to your success. You feel the effort paying off, and you’re seeing it in front of you as well. As you see the progress, it becomes harder to deny. Therefore, our confidence continues to build, only strengthening our efforts in our goal pursuit. The more you feel confident in your abilities to succeed, the more motivated you will be to take those risks, push that little bit harder, and drive yourself towards the finish line. These are the mental strength gains that you will see from regular monitoring of the small steps to success.

Now imagine you’re at the end of the season, just about to find out if all your hard work has paid off, and you’re going to find out today if you’ve reached that goal you’ve so diligently been working towards. Scenario one is that you achieve your goal and feel a sense of pride knowing you fully earned that success, as you took your training seriously and made the most of your training efforts. Scenario two is that you fall short of reaching your goal. Had you not been tracking your training efforts, you may consider this whole year a write off and a waste, as you didn’t get the goal outcome that you wanted. However, because you’ve been tracking your progress and you have other evidence to support the growth that you have made, you feel proud of how far you’ve come and how much stronger you are as an athlete as a result of your consistent effort. Even though you did not achieve that big desired goal, you feel a sense of pride and accomplishment, as well as satisfaction with yourself, knowing you did what you needed to to make it happen. At the end of the day, if your goal was not entirely within your control, meaning the outcome was also dependent on other athletes or officiating, you cannot beat yourself up over not achieving that outcome.

Although it will not solve all of your training dilemmas, tracking your progress will help you to give credit to yourself where credit is due. It will help you hold yourself accountable for your own training and successes, and will help you to see the little steps you are climbing along the way. Think of it as little high fives all the way to the finish line. Really, who wouldn’t want their own personal cheerleader cheering them on and telling them how awesome they are all the way through their journey? Be that cheerleader for yourself, and celebrate those little triumphs through regular monitoring and tracking of your progress.

Courtney Marchesin, MA, sport psychology consultant, is the mental skills coach for the Alberta Sport Development Centre’s athlete enhancement program. Contact her at courtneymarchesin@gmail.com.