4 Ways to Improve Mental Performance
When mental performance is brought up, it is usually just to let you know you need to work on it, but no actual constructive ideas on how to improve it are given. You may hear things like, “Get tougher!” “Work on your mental toughness!” “Just get your work done!”, or “Just get over it!”
I remember hearing these things at different stages in my life and thinking, “Thanks for pointing out the obvious, but how do I fix it?” It seemed like no one had an answer. To change things up, we thought we would actually give you four easy ways to start improving your mental performance immediately.
Meditation
Meditation is a great way to clear your thoughts and get present. One study showed that “meditation training led to faster switching between the brain’s two general states of consciousness”(1) - between mind wandering and a state of concentrated focus. It is easier to do your best when you are present and focused on the task at hand. There are many ways to meditate that have been shown to deliver results. For our readers, we recommend this simple meditation to clear your mind:
Turn on some calm, lyric-free music (or do it in silence)
Set a timer for 5-10 minutes (use a softer-sounding timer so it doesn’t bring you back in an abrupt way.)
Sit with your legs crossed and a straight back, or simply lay on your back, and close your eyes.
Let your mind go blank. If you catch yourself thinking about something - positive, neutral, or negative - allow the thought to move along without judging it. Continue with this until the timer goes off.
It is natural for thoughts to come up so don’t think you are doing it wrong if it is hard to clear your mind when you first start meditating. Meditation is a skill that gets easier and more interesting with practice.
Visualization
Your brain cannot tell the difference between visualizing yourself succeeding through a situation and doing it physically. Visualization “allows improving motor performance solely based on internal emulation of action.. this emulation mechanism is implemented in brain regions that partially overlap with brain areas involved in overt motor performance including the posterior parietal cortex, the cerebellum, the basal ganglia, and the premotor cortex.” (2)
If you imagine yourself in a situation in which you want to be successful, your brain will activate and develop the same regions it would if you were in the same situation in real life. For that reason, we recommend spending at least 3-5 minutes visualizing yourself succeeding in situations that frequently come up whether that's in your day-to-day life or an upcoming competition.
All you have to do is close your eyes and think about that situation, imagine it going the way you want, and that it was easy. It may feel a little strange at first, but the more you do it, the easier and more vivid your visualizations become.
Positive Self-Talk
Start telling yourself what you will do instead of what you won’t do. When your brain hears things like, “Don’t miss this free throw,” or “Don’t _____.” All it is hearing is “Don’t miss this free throw.” or “Don’t do _____.” Our brains, for whatever reason, do not process the negative and we end up focusing on the wrong thing. Start telling yourself things like, “I am going to make this free throw.” or “I am going to _____.”
You can also create a powerful mantra for yourself that reinforces a positive belief about yourself. It can look something like: “I am confident and powerful.” or “I’m unstoppable.” Use the mantra to recenter yourself whenever you feel like you’re getting into the negative, or in preparation for a big performance.
This isn’t a woo-woo, new-age gimmick. A meta-analysis of 32 studies that looked at positive self-talk in sports performance, established “the effectiveness of self-talk in sport, encourage the use of self-talk as a strategy to facilitate learning and enhance performance…”(3) Self-talk creates a feedback loop between the sender and the receiver of the message, bypassing the conscious mind and speaking directly to the subconscious mind. Choose wisely the message that you want your subconscious to hear and internalize, a negative message can be received just as easily as a positive one.
Positive self-talk is something you can start immediately and continue in perpetuity. Whenever you catch yourself in the negative, start flipping it to the positive. Are you going to catch everything every time? No, but that’s ok. The more you practice, the more you will be in the habit of talking to yourself in a positive way, and positive beliefs are bound to take hold.
Pregame Routine
A pregame routine can be very simple or as complex as you would like it to be. We recommend keeping it simple because it makes it easier to get through and remember everything. Think of a pregame routine as a list of things to do before every game that will give you the best opportunity to have the results you want because it gives you energy and gets you into your optimal mindset.
A pregame routine doesn’t only apply to athletes. You can use this before important meetings and conversations as well - essentially for anything which you want to get into a specific headspace.
Stay away from things that are unnecessary and may be more of a nuisance than intended. This would include things like having to put your socks on in a specific order, needing to gel your hair before a game, and other things that are more superstitions than actual help to your performance.
A simple pregame mental routine could be as short and easy as 1) sitting down and closing your eyes 2) taking 3 deep breaths 3) feeling yourself get more relaxed on each exhale and 4) feeling yourself expand and elevate on each inhale and finally 5) standing up powerfully, ready to enthusiastically engage with the task in front of you. This could be done in under a minute and it feels great. Give it a try right now.
A more thorough pregame routine could start a day before your activity and include the following:
Eat healthy food and hydrate the day before and the day of the event
Go to bed at a certain time to guarantee will you get enough sleep
Wake up at least 4-5 hours before game time - especially if you are an athlete
Spend 5-10 minutes meditating to clear your mind
Spend 5-10 minutes visualizing the event and whether it going successfully
Create a positive mantra that helps you stay in the right mindset - repeat this mantra throughout your day and during your performance
Mental performance is all about being able to stay in the moment and not getting too over or under-amped. These four easy additions to your toolkit can drastically improve your mental performance, allowing you to achieve your best with much greater consistency. Give these a try and reach out to us on Instagram to let us know how they worked for you!
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Citations
K. Richard Ridderinkhof, Marcel Brass, How Kinesthetic Motor Imagery works: A predictive-processing theory of visualization in sports and motor expertise, Journal of Physiology-Paris, Volume 109, Issues 1–3, 2015, Pages 53-63, ISSN 0928-4257, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphysparis.2015.02.00
Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Zourbanos, N., Galanis, E., & Theodorakis, Y. (2011). Self-Talk and Sports Performance: A Meta-Analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(4), 348–356. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611413136
