How Do I Know What’s Physical versus Mental Training?

Q: How do you know whether you need to work on the physical or the mental aspects of performance?

A: That is a good question. There are several parts to the answer.

• Do you trust your training or practice?
• Do you give 100% when you train or practice?
• How long have you been doing what you are doing?
• Have you ever worked on the mental aspect of your performance?
• Is there something behind the manifestation?

The biggest part of the mental training conversation with yourself is being honest. Does training and practicing longer and harder help? I had a strategy session with a golfer yesterday. He’s been playing golf for many years and is around the age of 55. One day he started hitting right, out of bounds with his driver and ever sense can’t hit a good shot with it in a tournament. It sounds like he’s been an excellent golfer. He can hit well with his driver on the driving range but he can’t in a tournament. He said hitting and practicing more doesn’t help. He got honest and realized that it’s mental.

It’s also important to think about and be honest about your training or practice. Do you trust your coach, teacher and what you are doing? Honestly we sometimes don’t think about this. We just do what we think is right or do what we are told but it’s often not right.If you trust your training or practice then chances are whatever is getting in the way of you performing is mental.

Do you give 100%? We get lazy sometimes and we don’t realize it. It’s important to be clear on how much you give to this thing you want to do. If you are not giving, you won’t get. If you aren’t giving 100% is it that you just got a little lazy or is it that you are afraid of giving 100%? Fear is mental.

If you’ve been playing the sax for 25 years, you are probably pretty good at it. You can probably play many common excerpts in your sleep. When you can’t play them in an audition, what’s that’s all about? Anxiety? Doubt? Fear? Lack of confidence?

The golfer from my above example had pretty smooth sailing as a golfer until this past year. He said he’d always been pretty good and had never struggled mentally (I honestly congratulated him because this is not at all common particularly in golf). He had never (never had to) worked on the mental side of his golf game and didn’t have the tools to know what was the situation with his driver. He’s played for many years, he’s been really good at the game and he’s never worked on the mental side of his game.

You’ve probably heard me talk about the ‘manifestation’ of mental challenges. Mental challenges manifest themselves as physical things. It’s what we see and so that’s what we think we need to fix. For example, you practice and have gotten really good at getting quickly out of the blocks in practice but can’t do it in competition. Because you can’t do it in competition you think you need to practice it more often. Not being able to get out of the blocks is the physical manifestation of the problem however that’s not what needs to change. If you can do it at practice but can’t do it in competition it’s probably mental. What’s behind not being able to do it in competition? Anxiety? Doubt? Fear? Lack of confidence?

Figuring out what’s mental and what’s physical isn’t as difficult as it might seem but it does take some reflection on your part!