PAYR released a podcast on Race Day Pressure (Episode 1). Today, Bryan writes a companion piece in our series – Letting it Ride.
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In ‘Letting it Ride’, we discuss one or a couple of points that we believe are important takeaways for our audience. Whether as a reader, you agree with the content of each piece or not, we believe these are important issues to address in our community.
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The pressure that comes with competition and race day is often contingent upon the narrative that athletes tell themselves. Are you underdogs that often deflect pressure, stating that the pressure is on Goliath, for they are expected to win? While I do not believe that there is necessarily a right or wrong way to look at pressure, there is a right and wrong type of pressure to have. Therefore, an important point of contention is what does an athlete do to assure that it comes from a right place? As a paddler, asking yourself why that other team is better, and what are they doing differently, are important, yet secondary questions to ask. They are also often followed with the misplaced afterthought: how can you improve to beat the other team. It was evident in the podcast, that many (of at least our) athlete’s pressures come from these overly consuming fears of needing to show the other teams that we are deserving of being classified amongst the best in the Bay, and fears of what other paddlers from other teams may think.
You should never ask yourself the question, “How can I improve to beat the other team”. You can not control what other teams think, or how other teams perform, and you can not control any other external factor for that matter. The danger of following this treacherous tightrope is the danger of falling in the abyss of “What did they do to beat us that race”, as opposed to forging your own path and knowing that you are not only capable of finding your best, but also capable of punching through those thresholds and becoming the best. In addition to the added pressure that you invite from focusing on external factors, you lose focus and sight of your own team and internal heartbeat/goals. Every second deposited into thinking about what the other team did, is a second of effort and thought withdrawn from your own team that could have been better spent focusing on your next race and areas to improve on in the future. It is never acceptable to keep anything but your team and their stroke at the center of your heart and focus.
A more germane and appropriate thought for an athlete to have should be: “I do not care where we place right now, nor how we fared compared to the other teams, so much as I do care if I had dug from within and performed at my current best. Thus, I am on the way to becoming the best”. It isn’t until you learn to supplant the pressure from within and let go of any external motivations that you can achieve goals that you only dreamed to be possible. If you never push from within, you will always chase other’s results and compare your success to theirs. How one deals with the internal pressure, rid of external burdens, is another matter entirely – but at least by this point, the pressure and drive to perform is guaranteed to come from within. And still, while I suspect that many will disagree with my philosophy that it is better to have performed focusing on my own efforts, and finishing wherever that may be, rather than it is to have won 1st and have no idea how – the pressure on the latter athlete will be on figuring out how to sustain his allegate success while deflecting and concerning themselves with other’s attempts to overtake them, while the former will already be happy and on the way to sustained success.
The results will often take care of themselves if the right type of pressure – the type revolving around internal demons, not external, is found. How one chooses to deal with it from there depends greatly on the individual athlete.
Signing off & Letting it ride,
Bryan
Paddlers, Are You Ready... ? 