Optimising your psychological performance

PART 2: MINDFULNESS

We continue our series on practical psychological techniques to improve your athletic performance, with one of the most powerful techniques in modern psychology – mindfulness. Mindfulness has become a particularly prominent technique in recent years; the United States military has made mindfulness a mandatory course for soldiers, yoga practices build mindfulness into their design, and mindfulness has been hailed as the new wave in therapy for an array of psychological conditions.

The second part of this series aims to equip you with a fair understanding of mindfulness, and teach you practical techniques that can be used to improve your psychological performance in the arena. This specific mindfulness technique works hand-in-hand with the practice of coherent breathing, which was expounded upon in the October edition of HQ so if you haven’t yet, I would recommend reading that article first.

NOTE

There are a number of ways to practice mindfulness, and which one you subscribe to is entirely based on your desired outcome. The technique discussed in this article is largely sport-specific, tailored to the equestrian environment, and designed to integrate into the other two components of this series – coherent breathing and mental imagery.

BEING PRESENT

Mindfulness is the practice of being consciously aware and existing solely within the present moment, in a nonjudgmental way. While this seems easy enough, the act of present moment awareness, is in fact, in stark contrast with most of our daily lived experience. We perpetually catch ourselves letting our mind wander or operating on autopilot: how often do we arrive somewhere with little to no recollection of the drive there, or find ourselves in the kitchen, unable to remember what we wanted? Studies have concluded that we spend approximately 47% of our time with our mind wandering, and that a wandering mind is a strong predictor of unhappiness.

In spite of these deceptively simple definitions, mindfulness far from represents an easy and palatable practice. It is the culmination of a cornucopia of various actions, perceptions, values and practices. It is about selfknowing, observing one’s own emotions and perceptions, and overall it is a practice designed to train and strengthen the mind and cognitions.

A common association for most people is that relaxation is the opposite of stress and anxiety, when in fact this is not the case. While relaxation has shown to help, the mind often continues to wander even when relaxed; this causes rumination which actually fuels the anxiety. This is why we are often stressed or anxious even though we are relaxing, or on vacation.

While mindfulness is usually attached to meditation practices, therapy, yoga and the like, the intention for this mindfulness training is slightly different. Mindfulness, when used correctly, can have significant and influential results in a wide sphere of activities. In a sporting context in particular, aspects of mindfulness allow for the growth of performance enhancing virtues. I have hand-picked aspects of mindfulness that pertain particularly to sporting performance enhancement for this training. As such this training focuses on the following aspects:

- Overcoming distraction;

- Improving focus and concentration;

- Curating selective attention (the ability to tune out noise, and single-mindedly focus in on one selected aspect);

- Outlining a process of self-regulation;

- Tackling adversity; and

- Handling pressure/utilising pressure to thrive.

HOW IS IT DONE?

Mindfulness is a complex technique, and to summarise how to do it in one paragraph would be jeopardizing the quality significantly. So instead, I am going to teach you how to do three important aspects of mindfulness, specifically for your ride. The three pertinent aspects of mindfulness are intentional breathing, grounding, and objective gentle observation of thoughts.

Intentional Breathing: The coherent breathing technique from last month fits in perfectly with mindfulness, and therefore, the best way to begin is by doing the coherent breathing technique. As always, aim for the 6 second inhale and exhale with a priority on overall rrelaxation. Do this for a few minutes to induce subtle relaxation and bring focus to your breath. This is the most important aspect of mindfulness; as you go through the process, if you begin to find it difficult, always return to the coherent breathing technique, and focus on your breath.

Grounding: Grounding is the process by which we begin to self-regulate and gain control of our thoughts. It is designed to bring you into the present moment in a practical way. Close your eyes and bring your attention to the sensation of touch. If you are on your horse, run your hand through their mane and focus only on what you are feeling. If not, then just touch the chair you are sitting on and focus on how it feels. Now open your eyes and find 5 things you can see; focus on their shapes, their colours, and anything else you need to focus on in order to keep your attention on the visual targets. Completing this task within your present surroundings forces your mind to think only about what is happening right now, and is the first step towards intentional focus.

Objective observation of thought: While we have laid the foundation, the next step is to begin the training of your mind, and, like any training (fitness, strength etc.), this can be a tedious process, but the results are impressive. Begin by returning focus to your breathing, now let yourself think by letting your mind wander for one minute. Once the minute is up, continue to focus on your breathing and try to think only of your breath. When your mind drifts to other topics gently observe that your mind has wandered off and guide your focus back to your breath. When this happens do not get angry that you got distracted, because it only makes the anxiety worse. You can do this for as long as you’d like, but ideally longer than 5 minutes. We are training your mind to recognise distraction, and select not to attend to it, subsequently reconditioning your mind to focus intently. Grasping this construct leads to strong abilities to selectively attend to information, resulting in increased focus and reduced performance anxiety.

As you move through this process, you can begin to combine these aspects as you get better at each individually. Whenever you find yourself distracted, remember to bring the attention back to your breathing, and go through your grounding if need be.

WHY DOES IT WORK?

Mindfulness is posited as being a cushion against stress. The training has an abundance of neurological studies backing its efficacy. The two main ways that mindfulness impacts your brain are:

1. by increasing activity in select parts of your brain that are responsible for your body’s stress response, mindfulness reduces perceived stress, and prevents the triggering of psychological performance inhibitors that are caused by stress; and

2. by decreasing activity in other areas of your brain, mindfulness slows the fight-or-flight response.

The majority of athletes are somewhat familiar with the flow state, otherwise known as being “in the zone”. Recent findings in the field of psychology suggest that this flow state shares significant similarities with mindfulness. Being in the zone can be seen as representing a state of total absorption/immersion in the task at hand and is thought to be the underlying psychological state during times of peak performance. The main feelings experienced by the athlete and arising from this state are that of focus, energy and enjoyment. Similarly, the essence of mindfulness can be summarised as a present moment focus. Essentially, it is posited that mindfulness is so effective in a sporting context, because it trains your mind to get into the zone and stay there, on command.

HOW CAN I USE IT FOR MY RIDE?

The above mindfulness technique is intended to train you to focus and selectively attend to tasks while ignoring distractions. Much like any other training, it takes time, and cannot be done in haste immediately prior to the ride. The techniques discussed will definitely help calm you before a ride, but it is far more effective when thought of as a training programme with ever increasing benefits. Think of it this way – you don’t do push-ups right before you enter the arena, you do them for weeks in preparation for competition. This mental training can be thought of in much the same way.