{"id":3323,"date":"2011-11-15T07:49:22","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T15:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drjimtaylor.com\/2.0\/?p=3323"},"modified":"2011-11-15T07:49:22","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T15:49:22","slug":"ski-racing-build-prime-confidence-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/ski-racing-build-prime-confidence-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Ski Racing: Build Prime Confidence: Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last season I wrote two articles in which I discussed the importance of confidence<\/a> and five keys to Prime Confidence<\/a>. With the new season approaching and this issue no less important, I want to return to the topic of confidence and devote my next two articles directed at racers to more practical ways you can build your confidence leading up to the first races.<\/p>\n

One mistake that racers often make is that they wait to do mental training until after they\u2019ve lost confidence, for example, they’ve had a string of DNFs or disappointing finishes. Yet you don\u2019t wait to get hurt before you start doing physical training. You don\u2019t wait to develop a technical problem before you work on technique. You do them beforehand to prevent the problems. The same thing holds true for building confidence.<\/p>\n

Walk the Walk<\/strong><\/p>\n

One thing I\u2019ve noticed in my work with World Cup racers is that they carry themselves a certain way; they move and walk with confidence. A first step in developing confidence is to learn to \u201cwalk the walk.\u201d How you carry yourself, move, and walk affects what you think and how you feel. If your body is down, your thoughts and feelings will be negative. If your body is up, your thoughts and feelings will be positive. Walking the walk involves moving with your head high, chin up, eyes forward, shoulders back, arms swinging, and a bounce in your step. You look and move like a winner.<\/p>\n

In contrast, not walking the walk involves your head, eyes, and shoulders down, feet dragging, and no energy in your step. You look and move like a loser.<\/p>\n

To give yourself a feeling of what this is like, try walking the walk and saying negative things about yourself. As you will see, it\u2019s difficult to do because your thoughts are inconsistent with what your body is signaling to you. Then try not walking the walk and saying positive things. Again, it\u2019s difficult because your thoughts conflict with what your body is doing.<\/p>\n

So, here’s an exercise for you. Every day as you enter and leave physical conditioning, focus on how you walk. Make a concerted effort to walk the walk. At first, it will feel uncomfortable, but the more you practice, the more natural and comfortable it will become and, before you know it, you just walk like a winner.<\/p>\n

Talk the Talk<\/strong><\/p>\n

You must also learn to \u201ctalk the talk.\u201d What you say to yourself affects what you think and how you feel. If your talk is negative, your thoughts and feelings will be negative. If your talk is positive, your thoughts and feelings will be positive. It\u2019s hard to think and feel negative when you\u2019re talking positively. Don\u2019t say, \u201cI don\u2019t have a chance today.\u201d Say, \u201cI\u2019m going to try my hardest today.\u201d By talking the talk, you\u2019re also being your own best ally. You\u2019re showing yourself that your fellow competitors may be against you, but you\u2019re on your side.<\/p>\n

Conversely, not talking the talk includes \u201cI\u2019m going to ski terribly today\u201d and \u201cI don\u2019t have a chance.\u201d If you say these things to yourself, you\u2019re convincing yourself that you have no possibility of achieving your goals. With that attitude, you really have no chance because not only is everyone else in the race trying to beat you, but you\u2019re planning on beating yourself too.<\/p>\n

Balance the Scales<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I work with racers, I like to chart the number of positive and negative things they say or do during training and before races. In most cases, the negatives far outnumber the positives. In an ideal world, I would love to eliminate all negatives and have racers only express positives. But this is the real world and any racer who cares about their sport is going to feel and express, for example, frustration, anger, or disappointment occasionally.<\/p>\n

In dealing with this reality, you should learn to\u00a0balance the scales<\/em>. The immediate goal is to increase the positives. This means rewarding yourself when you ski well. If you beat yourself up over a mistake, why shouldn\u2019t you pat yourself on the back when you get it right. Pump your fist, slap your leg, say, \u201cYes!,\u201d when you have a good run in training or finally get some new technique. It will psych you up, make you feel positive and excited, and it will build your confidence.<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve balanced the scales by increasing your positives, your next goal is to tip the scales in the positive direction by reducing the negatives. Ask why you\u2019re so hard on yourself when your skiing doesn’t live up to your expectations. The best racers in the world don\u2019t always ski their best. Why shouldn\u2019t it be okay for you to have down periods in your skiing?<\/p>\n

Also, become aware of your negativity and then do things that counter the negativity. For example, after you ski out, instead of dropping your head and saying, \u201cI suck,\u201d try pumping your fist and saying, \u201cCome on!\u201d I can assure you that it’s better to fire up than give up.<\/p>\n

This step of tipping the scales toward positives is so important because of some recent research that found that negative experiences, such as negative self-talk, body language, and emotions carry more weight than positive experiences. In fact, it takes 12 positive experiences to equal one negative experience. What this means is that for every negative expression you make, whether saying something negative or screaming in frustration, you must express yourself positively 12 times to counteract that one negative expression.<\/p>\n

Thought-stopping<\/strong><\/p>\n

Someone very wise once said, \u201cWe become what we think of most of the time.\u201d If you think you’re going to fail, you probably will. So, another useful technique to reduce your negative thinking and develop your positive thinking is called thought-stopping. This strategy involves replacing your negative self-talk with positive self-talk.<\/p>\n

List the negative statements you commonly say to yourself when you\u2019re training and racing. Next, indicate where and in what situations you say those negative things. This will help you become aware of the situations in which you\u2019re most likely to be negative. Then, list positive statements with which you can replace them. For example, after a bad day on the hill, you might usually say \u201cI had a horrible race.\u201d Instead, replace that negative statement with something more positive such as \u201cI\u2019ll work hard and ski better the next time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The thought-stopping sequence in training or competition goes as follows. When you start to think or say something negative; say \u201cstop\u201d or \u201cpositive,\u201d then replace it with a positive statement.<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Remember that how you think, walk, and act are skills. If your scale is tipped heavily to the negative side, you have become very skilled at these negative expressions. Like changing any skill, to get rid of these bad ones, you have to identify better skills, make a commitment to changing them, and practice the positive skills until they\u2019re ingrained and automatic. And then you’ll be one very confident racer!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last season I wrote two articles in which I discussed the importance of confidence and five keys to Prime Confidence. With the new season approaching and this issue no less important, I want to return to the topic of confidence and devote my next two articles directed at racers to more practical ways you can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1516],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ski-racing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}