I posted this on a thread a few years back:
I would say the development/use of mental toughness strategies depends on your personality, coupled with the task at hand. I read an excellent article by Pete Rea, the Zap Fitness coach, entitled "Deceiving Yourself to Success." It was in Running Journal. I think you can get it online at
www.running.net
He describes a few strategies such as acceptance, avoidance, segmenting, chunking, point of execution, and mind-off/mind-on.
I received the journal while racing in South Carolina. My copy is basically just a newspaper format, and I don't see that it has been archived into the website. So here are the key passages I typed up from the article:
Cognitive Racing Strategies, excerpts taken from article by Peter Rea, Deceiving Yourself to Success, Running Journal, May 2007:
Acceptance and Avoidance
With acceptance, the agreement a runner makes with himself is as follows: I am about to put myself through hell. I am aware of this, and I will suffer through it and conquer it. In other words, the athlete makes no attempt to psychologically cloud the pain through which he is suffering, but rather accepts the reality that in racing comes incredible amounts of discomfort.
The opposite of acceptance is a technique known as avoidance. In the avoidance-based strategy, athletes convince themselves they are feeling great, even during periods of distress. Self talk (using a mantra like “I feel awesome . . . I feel light and smooth”) is often in play with avoidance technique and tends to be utilized by runners in the longer Olympic events such as the 10,000 meters and the marathon. Most of the middle distance runners (800m, 1500m) with whom I have spoken prepared themselves for battle with no illusions as to the onslaught of agony around the corner, whereas more than 90 percent of the marathoners I questioned preferred to deceive themselves, even when feeling horribly, into believing all was well.
Segmenting
The idea with a piecemeal strategy such as segmenting is to break a race or training session into more manageable pieces. For example, rather than view a 20-mile run in its entirety, view it as an eight-mile intro followed by four separate three-mile “chunks.” This way, once a segment has been completed, the athlete can mentally move on to the next piece.
Point of Execution
P.O.E. is a technique employed successfully particularly during road races or cross-country efforts. The concept of point of execution is to choose a point on the course – preferably mid-race – where you can re-engage into a more intense push both physically, as well as psychologically, toward the finish. This point need not be necessarily at a set mile mark, but perhaps at a random spot such as a tree, mailbox, or street sign.
Mind-off/Mind-on
The idea here (very much like chunking and point of execution) is to shut the mind off and essentially disengage for a predetermined amount of time at the beginning of a race or tough training session. Former world marathon record holder Derek Clayton used this technique with great success during his 2:08:33 world record marathon in May of 1969 in Antwerp, Belgium. “I never could fully concentrate for over two hours,” Clayton told the British sports publication Athletics Weekly, “so tried playing games and viewing the first 25 kilometers as a steady fun run. I waved to the crowd, slapped hands, and even spoke to my fellow lead packers. I convinced myself I wasn’t racing. It wasn’t until close to 30 kilometers that I mentally turned the light on and allowed myself to truly let go.”
Even if only subconsciously, each of us has strategies to get us through the toughest of times, particularly races. Dr. Andy Palmer (Sport Psych PhD) used to say that usually the very best athletes have and employ cognitive strategies that even they are unaware of.