Itused to be that an athlete who won gold at the Olympics would thank his coach, his athletic trainer, his teammates, the Federation, his family, and his girlfriend or boyfriend. For the past few years you also happen to hear them thanking a figure that has become increasingly important in sports preparation: the mental coach.
It also happened to Marcell Jacobs, triumphant in the 100-meter and 400-meter relay in Tokyo, who, after his golden victory, did not hesitate to thank you specifically: Nicoletta Romanazzi, his mental coach (who follows not only Jacobs but also other Italian athletes and, in her profession, industrial and professional athletes).
We have been telling you for some time that mental training is just as crucial as (if not more so) physical training. The reason is quickly stated: the body cannot sustain athletic performance taken to the limit (both in terms of speed and duration) based on its state of fitness alone. The mental component is the foundation of motivation and persuasion to continue enduring, even when the body sends signals of failure. And not only that, energy management is an expression of the intelligence and wisdom with which energies are consumed, and in this context the role of the mind is crucial.
“I don’t run, I gave everything.”
Hosted by Linus on DJ Chiama Italia, Romanazzi shared some background on that remarkable victory, including a detail that very few would have guessed, namely that before the final Jacobs feared he had reached his limit and had nothing more to give. He had told them clearly, “I do not run, I have given everything, I have nothing left to give.” Romanazzi had him lie on the floor and do breathing exercises, a central technique for bringing the mind back into control. One of the most important aspects in building athletes’ mental stamina,” she explains, “is the ability to maintain control of our emotions and especially our reactions to external stimuli.
“We have the choice of either surrendering our personal power to the outside world or keeping it for ourselves. Every time our state of mind changes because that person said something, we are in check, because our well-being no longer depends on us.”
Controlling one’s own mind is thus the outcome of real training that is based on controlling one’s emotions and understanding that it is the individual who has the power over his or her own emotions and that by allowing himself or herself to be influenced by external factors or the judgment of others he or she is only weakening himself or herself and surrendering his or her power to someone or something that is beyond his or her control.
Untapped potential
Before she became her mental coach, Jacobs was the typical athlete with great potential who yielded a great deal in training and then succumbed in competition, evidently to the pressure of the event and expectations (perhaps more those of others than his own, or his own reflected on what he expected others to expect of him).
What does the mental coach also do? It identifies the source of disturbance and teaches how to handle it: if it is beyond the individual’s control, one can only ignore it, focusing only on the purest and most extreme expression of one’s potential, regardless of external factors.
And not only that: having regained self-control, one must manage it wisely, focusing on the goal. In other words, you have to be present, literally: living in the present by not letting the past (and its mistakes) or the future (projections of any failures) disturb your mind. To accomplish this, breathing is crucial to re-centering the athlete in himself: the breathing techniques she routinely uses are precisely to bring the mind back into control of such a simple and vital activity as breathing, to recalibrate it to control its own emotionality, the only one to which we all have access.
This is nothing transcendental or new age: if you think about it, breathing is the absolute most natural act we perform, even though we often, unfortunately, don’t know how to do it well.
Having regained inner calm, one can begin to fortify our mind, making it impervious to outside influences and leaving it freer to focus only on managing energy, fatigue and pressure to release all potential.
And in some cases even to win an Olympic gold medal.
(From Radio Deejay – Cover from Nicoletta Romanazzi’s Facebook profile)