Sport, based on a certain level of dedication and competence, becomes an extremely psychological discipline, in addition to physics. Running a marathon, taking on an opponent or joining a group in any sport requires mindset, effort, preparation and training, without these ingredients. , personal success may become unattainable.
Therefore, to achieve our goals, either professionally or to beat our own brands, it is necessary to take care of the mental aspect Concentrate and prepare the head?For the race it is fundamental, especially if the sport is seen as a challenge in whose greatest rival we are ourselves, with our fears and expectations.
- In athletics.
- The marathon is perhaps one of the events where the most weight has the psychological aspect.
- The physical and mental parts are tested in preparation.
- Where the days are full of kilometers traveled and legs with small or large pains that change from an ankle.
- In fact.
- Good marathon runners.
- Those who do a planned preparation for the race.
- Often say that the hardest thing is the preparation.
- Which does not mean that there are no bad times in these 42 km.
Thus, physical training is accompanied by resilience training. There are times when the temptation to give up everything is very great. Moments when you think, “What am I doing here, alone and suffering, when I could be quietly at home reading a book?or, in the case of professionals, do other work?”
Another important psychological factor, in addition to overcoming pain and fatigue, is that of anxiety, the nerve that appears in the days leading up to the race and that contains the pressure of not knowing how the body will react to the training performed. knows that during these last few days, the domino effect will be less.
The physical condition you’ve gained during workouts in the previous months can be lost with a small flu or virus, so in these last few days, when the number of miles of training decreases, sensitivity to any kind of strange sensation increases.
Finally, before entering the psychology of running, it should be noted that the decision to run a marathon should not be an impulse, this must be the end of a long process, in which body and mind gradually adapt with an increasingly heavy training. .
Running this race has a huge impact on an organic level, even for the most prepared athletes, so it is crazy to try to run without taking at least two years to assimilate the training and participate in shorter competitions, that is, to prepare the physical and the psychic. part, before making a specific preparation for the marathon (3-4 months).
Within the competition itself, the psychologist Roco Parrado points out that the marathoner is going through different emotional states, we already know that the body has a physical and mental limit, so, although you train, a sport as difficult as it cannot. be “taken for fun. ” Strengthening the mind is paramount.
In his book “What goes through the spirit of a marathoner?”, Tomus Vich RodrÃguez, says that during the race there are six different stages or phases:
If you can recognize and control the sensations you feel during the marathon, you can make a good run.
So that these emotional events that occur during the race do not dominate you and put an end to your marathon, mentalization is necessary, this prior psychological training must be based on anticipation.
During the preparation, although he has never covered the total distance of the competition, the athlete lives mental situations similar to those of the marathon in the accumulation of training, this is achieved by accumulating training points or very high intensity sustained during a certain time (series).
These series will also help us, with longer workouts, to calculate the pace that we must have during the race, it is precisely the rhythm that serves as an anchor so that the athlete does not run too fast in the first kilometers. After 30 km, this pace tends to be the opposite: it runs faster despite fatigue.
Finally, the importance of internal dialogue must be emphasized. Many athletes fail to generate, respond to and feed self-destructive messages: “You won’t make it,” “So much time to train and now you’re laughing at yourself. “These messages are nothing more than an echo of fatigue in our minds, if our body begins to become painful, defeatist thoughts can also increase throughout the race.