How to do mental training for cycling race

Posted by tan xiao yan on

in every cycling season, all cyclists would extremely expect the oncoming event and set up new goals. To achieve their new goals, they would strive to improve their physique strength by spending most of their time on power training. Cyclists realized that training is the only way to reach their goals. And there no shortcuts.

Almost every cyclist would attach great importance to physical training while they would always ignore training their mind to prepare for the cycling race because they haven’t realized the significance of mental training. In reality, Both psychologist and previous cycling champion attach great importance of mental training, which could help people face the difficulties in the cycling race. And the metal toughness of cyclists might have a vital effect on the result. Therefore, before participating in the cycling race, cyclists should train both their physique and mind. Some effective methods of mental training are listed below.

Making use of Anxiety
It is common that cyclists feel nervous before cycling race. It is quite normal because the nervous indicates that you really care about the cycling race and its result. Therefore, normal nervous is a positive emotion and it would have a positive influence on your training and performance. However, excessive anxiety might have a negative effect on you. Excessive anxiety causes muscle tension, increases stress levels, and reduces focus.

When you feel nervous before the race, you should observe the degree of your nervous to judge whether it belongs to normal one. The symptoms of excessive anxiety are obvious. For instance, if you are suffering from excessive anxiety, it would be difficult for you to concentrate on your daily training. Or you would find it is hard to fall asleep at night. After confirming that you are actually too nervous to train yourself, you have to do something to release yourself from that emotion. For example, you could transfer your concentration to other things and make it become a positive emotion for your training.

Visualizing the race route
Sometimes, cyclists feel nervous because they don’t familiar with the cycling route or afraid some unpredictable situation. Therefore, cyclists could attempt to ride the route before cycling race if it is possible. In this way, cyclists could alleviate the anxiety and do good preparation for the race. Sometimes, Cyclists might not have the opportunity to get familiar with the race route in advance, but you could visualize your riding in your mind as rehearsal. And you would find that the rehearsal in your brain is also helpful for your anxiety alleviation.

Controlling your breathing

During the process of race, cyclists would feel discomfort and pain after long-distance riding. When you begin to feel tired and pain, you would tense up. Once you begin to tense up, your muscles and posture would also tense up, which would consume your limited energy. Therefore, the best way to save you energy is to relax when you have tensed up. The effective way is to control your breath. When you feel pain and discomfort, you’d better pay your attention to your breath and the upper body and relax your arms and shoulders. You could take a deep breath, which brings oxygen to your lower lung. After a while, you would found that your pain and discomfort disappear either because you have transferred your attention from the pain in your legs or because they got more oxygen than before.

Motivate yourself by Mantra
During the competition, a positive indication will help you push yourself harder. Therefore, it is significant to link the pain of competition with a positive emotion, not a negative one. You have to persuade yourself that the pain is temporary and you have accomplished the same thing in the training. And you also could complete the same task in the competition. Besides, you could come up with some simple words that could inspire you during the competition so that you could obtain some mental energy from it, overcoming all difficulties in the competition. For example, you could use “victory” to remind yourself that you are striving to win the competition. Or you could use the item “insistence” to inspire yourself to move forward.

Focusing on what you are doing
Sometimes, the competition would last several hours, which ask for cyclists’ insistence. Cyclists might feel so tired and so challenging when considering that there is a long distance ahead. In order to keep a positive emotion all the time, you’d better avoid thinking that you are going to ride for around seven hours. And what you need to do is to focus on the every pedal. the whole route seems to long for you, but you could divide it into several small segments so that you wouldn’t be scared by the long distance.

Celebrating Small Victories

During the process of competition, cyclists might generate the idea on when to give up because they are too tired to continue. To overcome this kind of idea, you could set up some small goals and attach them to your bicycle or your pants. Once you have accomplished one task, you could tear out the paper which the goal on and celebrate your small victories, which might motivate you and push you moving ahead.

Holding Realistic Expectations
It would be terrible if you are affected by other competitors in the cycling race. You have to follow your own plan and carry it out. Before participating in the race, you’d better set up realistic expectation and stay calm when other competitors overtake at high speed. Besides, holding realistic expectation could avoid you giving up at the midway. If you set up high expectation, you might feel quite upset when other competitors do a better job than you, which have a negative effect on your performance. If your expectation is low, you would easily give up once you came across some obstacles during the competition.