Train your mind to train your body

  In every field, we often come across people who have made winning into a habit. In sports, we often see such athletes. They seem to do well in any competitive scenario they face. How do these athletes manage to not only enjoy, but thrive in such difficult, challenging situations? It is the mind-set which separates them from the rest. In this blog, we will try and understand how athletes develop that attitude towards their sport and make winning into a regular affair. A winner’s mind-set- There is a very interesting incident which comes to my mind when I dwell on the winner’s mind-set. Once I took my daughter to a swimming competition as suggested by her coach. There was a 4 year old girl who had filled the entry for the free style race but she was the only girl to enter in that age category. As per the rules, she had to swim from the start to the finish to officially ‘win’ the race. It was the child’s first ever race, and probably did not even realize that she was the winner ev...

We all know how negative thoughts can impact our performance on the match field. Most athletes have no clue about how to deal with such thoughts. They find it almost impossible to bring their focus back to the present situation. But some professional athletes seem to thrive in pressure situations. How do they do it? Don't they get negative thoughts which distract them? Agreed, they have the experience of playing in similar situations many times before. But they seem mentally so strong.   Athletes who do not have that experience under their belt can use simple mental steps to manage negative thoughts more effectively. This blog will talk about these three simple steps on how to manage negative thoughts during your match and how to remain focused in those pressure situations. Step 1- Acceptance. Resisting negative thoughts is our biggest mistake. We try to resist them. We try to fight the thought. But guess what- the harder we try to fight- the harder it hits back at us. It is like a...

Training the mind is as important as physical training. Meditation is an extremely important tool for training the mind. Why should we meditate? Where do we start? Let us find out…. Why meditation? Most of the athletes I know, especially teen athletes work very hard in physical training, but devote no  time to train their minds . Professional players have full time sports psychologists at their disposal but most of us and especially kids cannot afford that privilege. Also for kids, the coach is usually too busy training a big group so he hardly has the time to attend to every child and his problems personally. Growth spurt and hormonal changes in kids make them very vulnerable to negative influences, emotions and beliefs and hence it becomes extremely important to  channelize all the energy  in the right direction. Hence mental training is important for an athlete to becoming  calmer, stronger and tougher  on the match field. Meditation is the simplest and one o...