Here's A Mental Skill Your Runners Must Learn

Published August 21, 2024

Cross country has begun here in Colorado with races starting this week and I'm fired up to be watching one on Saturday!

Just like coaches in Colorado you no doubt have kids who have put in a great summer of training.

Now the questions in mid-August are

1. "Will they be able to race to their fitness level this year?"
2. "Will they run their best 3-4 races in the last 3-4 meets of the year?"

Today let's talk about the mental part of racing and why it's crucial your athletes learn the mental skills necessary to race to their potential.

Here we go!

Responding Effectively

"Responding vs. reacting” was a key point in a conversation I had with one of the best coaches – at any level - in the country.

John O’Malley, the boy’s coach at Sandburg High School (IL), is the only person to have coached two Footlocker Champions.

On the track a young man would have to run under 4:10 in the 1,600m to crack the top 10 all-time list in his program. Wow!

When I asked him what “mental skills” means in his program - here’s what he said...

“Mental skills in our program are the idea of expanding your window or capacity of effective responses to challenging situations. So just expanding one's zone to respond effectively.

We all have a zone of response and you’re trying to widen the zone where you're more likely to have a better response. A response you'd be proud of and a response that you found was effective.  

There's a lot, obviously, that goes into expanding that zone and increasing the likelihood of that positive response.” 

Over the next 58 minutes of the interview John shared with me what his team does to widen this zone.

I think it’s worth highlighting what coach O’Malley expects his athletes to do:

Expand their window or capacity of effective responses to challenging situations. 

This is what coaches to teach their athletes to do if the athletes are going to race to their potential.

Responding vs. Reacting

“You're not really dying when you're hurting in a long run. ‘I feel terrible’ are thoughts we try to eliminate. 

We want to replace them with what we call effective problem solving. Going back to the regulation - the ability to regulate ourselves.  

There's a big difference between responding versus reacting.  

And that's what we talk about all the time - are you just reacting to that feeling and allowing it to control you? Do you have a response?  

The easiest way to kind of get a good response is to preplan it - to know what it's going to feel like.” 

And then he reminded me of a crucial part of our sport that we all take for granted.

“We are in the most predictable sport. 

In football they don't know the play [the other team has] drawn up. Other athletes would love to be in our predictable situation.  

I was talking to the baseball team last year and they're like, ‘Oh yeah - in your sport, you can just try harder and you have a better outcome. That doesn't work for us.’ 

I said, ‘Yes - isn't that great.’  

Even for a sprinter that doesn't work as well. Trying harder in a 100m dash really doesn't work. 

We have this huge, awesome opportunity where we have a lot of control over the outcome of our race and it's very predictable. We know it's going to hurt at various points. 

We know generally what it's going to feel like. You may not know exactly what your competitors are going to do, but you, you have a ballpark.  

Talk to yourself about that beforehand and then be ready for being adaptable. It may look like this, or maybe like this... 

If you're having a terrible day - and we all have 'em - how are you getting ready to respond there?"

“Where Can I Get This Information?”  

This is just a small bit of what John shared in the Mental Skills for High School Runners course.

John’s interview is one of 14 videos in the course. The course also features guided visualizations you can use with your team.

If you have athletes that are anxious before races, and you’re at a loss for how to help them, this course can help both of you.

One coach who invested in the course said,

“I used material with runners who are definitely struggling mentally, and with runners who seemed fine and didn't even realize that they could improve in this area.” 

Another coach said,

“The mental skills course was a game changer for our team this last season.”  

Here's how they used the course with their team...

“Every week we would listen to a segment for 25 minutes (teenage max attention span!) and some weeks we would double up for two days. Kids had the option to take notes to keep in a folder and they wrote a ton!  

There were so many powerful pieces that moved us.” 

The course is for coaches and athletes, with most coaches doing the same thing this coach did – listening to segments of the course throughout the season.

I’ll share more about the course later this month as I know you’re busy with dozens of things as you start the season and the school year.

But now you know that there is a resource you can use this season to help your team be mentally prepared for the championship season...which will be here before you know it.

Let’s go!

Jay

PS - Here's one more from a coach whose team made NXN for the first time in 2023. He used the Mental Skills course with his runners throughout the year.

“I am usually hesitant to purchase coaching education materials online. There is so much out there and often it is just information overload. 

However, when I saw the lineup of coaches/professionals on Jay’s Mental Skills for High School Runners course and listened to a few short clips, I knew this would be well worth the investment. 

As Coach Dan Iverson notes in his section, mental “skills” implies that this is something that can be learned, practiced, and improved over time. 

As a coach, I am guilty of spending too much time worrying about the minutia of workouts and realized I was not doing enough to prepare our runners psychologically and emotionally to be the best racers/competitors they can be. 

Our runners are extremely dedicated, and I need to match that dedication by continuing to learn so I can best help them develop the skills they need to transfer their fitness into racing and put them in the best position possible as competitors. 

Bottom line: Mental Skills are often overlooked and under-coached.  

Coach Jay clearly took time to consider who to interview, what questions to ask, and has a keen insight into what HS coaches need to learn to help their runners.  

This package will help you as a coach to develop the confidence and skills to best help put your runners in positions to succeed as racers. 

Additionally, it will undoubtedly help your runners to feel like they are not on their own when it comes to the mental side of our sport. Just like runners can improve their fitness through the right workouts, they can become better races, especially in the biggest moment, when the right mental practice.” -

Andy Derks, Plainfield North, IL