The Four Pillars of Triathlon

 Imagination

Practical Techniques for Imagination 
 Focus on mental training does not have to be overly time consuming.  In fact, one of the best 30 seconds you can spend to enhance the quality and effectiveness of your workouts is to rehearse them.  Athletes who take a half-minute before their workouts to state their workout goal report vastly improved results.

It’s easy.  Just say to yourself (or aloud) the purpose of the workout.  If it’s a tempo ride, say, “The purpose of this workout is to ride at race pace for a portion of the ride.”  If it’s a recovery run, “The purpose of this run is to do some active recovery to get me ready for tomorrow.”

That takes about 3 seconds.

In the rest of the half minute, rehearse the workout the way you want it to happen.  In your mind’s eye, make a short video of the workout from beginning to end and see yourself achieving the goal of the workout. 

Of all the things you can do to improve your performance, rehearsing your workouts and races in your mind is perhaps the single most time-effective technique available. More and more athletes rehearse this way automatically before every workout to tangible benefits.  Their workouts are sharp and focused and less wandering.  Their 30-second mental rehearsal vastly improves the quality of their performance.  Yours can, too.

From The Four Pillars of Triathlon: Vital Mental Conditioning for Endurance Athletes, p. 25.

 Motivation

Practical Techniques for Motivation 
First, help yourself by doing what you can to succeed.  Stack the deck in your favor.  There are a few practical things you can try before using mental strategies or patterns.  Here are some proven techniques.

1.       Do your least favorite thing first.
That way, you got it done and during the entire rest of the day you can boost off the momentum of that accomplishment

2.       Find a compatible training partner.
If you make an appointment to meet a compatible training partner for a ride that includes a half-dozen hard hill repeats, you are more likely to actually get that workout done. 

3.       Make it easy to get out the door.
Be completely prepared ahead of time for your workout.  You wake up and the coffee is already brewing because you set a timer.  Your workout clothes are already laid out and your workout is written up on a piece of paper that is sitting next to the water bottle you already prepped the night before. No excuses, so off you go.

Even with all of these practical techniques you may still find yourself unmotivated.  What now?  In this case it’s time to use your submodalities to change your perception of the task ahead.  The pattern on page 36 makes motivation so easy it is like eating chocolate.  That’s why they call it the Godiva Chocolate Pattern.       

From The Four Pillars of Triathlon: Vital Mental Conditioning for Endurance Athletes, p. 36.

Here is a brief article on motivation from USA Triathlon

 Discipline

Practical Techniques for Discipline 
 Sometimes an unhelpful internal voice will pop up and try to convince you to stray off the path toward achieving your goals. You want to have the discipline to stick to the path.  One way to do this is through a pattern called the Helium Balloon Pattern.

Think of a time when you experienced an unhelpful voice in your head.  Now do this:
                                                                                                                             
1. Access the unhelpful voice. 
Imagine or recall a difficult situation from your past when an internal voice was holding you back (e.g. going on and on about how you can’t swim well).   

2. Alter the voice.  
Now, before that voice says anything else, have it take a giant, massive inhalation from a balloon of helium.  Then let the voice tell you whatever it wants again in its ridiculously high voice.  Notice how your evaluation of the voice has changed and you can hardly take it seriously anymore.

3. Rehearse.  
Identify a time in the near future when this unhelpful voice might crop up. Make a video in your mind’s eye, having this voice come up, breathe the helium, then say its message again.

From The Four Pillars of Triathlon: Vital Mental Conditioning for Endurance Athletes, p. 49.

 Recovery

No athlete gains fitness while in a training bout. They get fitter during the recovery period after a training session, when the body accommodates and adapts to the training load. Hence, recovery is absolutely indispensable to gain fitness.

Sleep is the best form of recovery. Here’s are two quick techniques to maximize it:

1. When you wake up and cannot get back to sleep, close your eyes and roll your eyes up into the back of your head for as long as you can. Lights out. You will just wake up hours later wondering what happened.

2. Keep a pen and paper next to the bed. When your mind is racing, jot down a few key notes, then ask yourself, “May we take this up in the morning and go back to sleep?” LIghts out again.