If you are not familiar with STRAVA, it is one of the premier Aps for everything related to an athletes’ performance in running, swimming or biking. I was introduced to the Ap earlier this year by my son, and quickly became a convert. It integrates with my Wahoo bike computer providing a wealth of information regarding my personal performance relative to my own, as well as other athlete’s performances over the same routes I ride. I have found it to be a very motivating tool to attack my personal fitness goals. More on STRAVA in a future post, but I thought the introduction was necessary to those who may not be familiar.
STRAVA sends out email blasts to their members including a blog called “STRAVA Stories”. Their post from 8/22/21 included a story on Katie Zaferes, two-time Olympian and Triathlon Bronze medalist in the 2021 Toyko games. The post is entitled: “How To Build a Champion’s Mindset With Katie Zaferes”.
Here is the link to the Post – it is a quick read but a very good one!
In the article Katie covers the following topics:
Build Yourself a Tool Box
Develop an Explorative Mindset
Learn to Love Nerves
Make Visualization Work for You
Don’t let Feelings Define Outcomes
Journaling Works
Have Fun
Use a Mantra
Of course, my sport psychology brain eats up all of these topics! However, two really jumped out at me. In her section “Build Yourself a Tool Box, she mentioned a book by Deena Kastor. This was not an author I was familiar with, so a quick visit to Amazon helped me to locate her book “Let Your Mind Run – A Memoir of Thinking my way to Victory”.
In the book, Deena tells her story of how she became a runner as a youth, continued as a successful runner in high school at the highest level, and how she nearly hit burn-out in her college years – a situation which she turned around culminating in an Olympic medal for Team USA in the Marathon. I thoroughly enjoyed her book as she gives an elite athlete’s perspective on the value of mental skills training. I will write more about her book in a subsequent post, but kudos to Katie Zaferes for picking up Deena’s advice and implementing into her own program (and sharing it with all of us as well!). The same techniques from running also apply to most any other sport (shot-gunning included).
The other section that jumped out at me was “Develop an Explorative Mindset”. In this section, she mentions she tends to perform better when she approaches a competition with an attitude of “let’s see what I can do today” rather than “this is what I must do today”. I think we can all relate to this. When you go to a shoot thinking ”I really need to get that last punch today”, what happens? Thinking about the result instead of the process makes you shoot consciously instead of sub-consciously. We get cautious and start trying “not to miss” targets and steer the gun instead of letting the sub-conscious guide execution of the shot. Katie’s thoughts reminded me a bit of Grace Callahan’s view of counting up her hits towards 100 instead of counting down her misses (if you missed the post on Grace, you can find it here).
The recreational and amateur athlete can surely learn from the likes of Olympians like Katie Zaferes and Deana Kastor. Many thanks to them for sharing their thoughts and mental skills tools with us and thanks to STRAVA for bringing athletes such as these right to our in-boxes! To learn more about STRAVA, you can simply go to www.strava.com.
For those interested in Deena Kastor’s book, here is the Amazon Link: