Bouncing back
Trained for 12 months, overcome injuries and illnesses fronted for the big race and fallen well short of your ambitions?
It feels anywhere from disappointing to devastating doesn’t it? Failure can be due to a poor judgement call whether it be a
technique breakdown under pressure, poor choice of nutrition on the day or a tactical misread of pace; there are many
nuances of implementing your race plan that may bring you undone. Failure may also simply be due to falling short, despite
every preparation and every effort on race day; you simply do not get the time or place you had worked for; this hurts, yet
this type of failure should scream to you that you are just a step away from succeeding.
Deciding what effect failure has on you is entirely in your hands. So, what do you do to bounce back?
Keeping a perspective
As corny and cliche as it may sound, the path you took to the start line is what should allow you to draw strength; it is
the preparation, the application, the problem solving and persistence that you have acquired in getting ready to race that
will have underpinned your physical and mental reserves you can now draw upon.
You have experienced a setback; not a failure, so get it through your head and repeat it in front of the mirror. You have
been knocked back, not knocked down. Has anybody died as a resut of you not landing a PB or a medal? Probably not; so keep
it in perspective.
Get over it
This catchcry is often bellowed at you from those paid up members of the Chopper Reed Glee Club as part of the harden the
f*ck up school of persistence. Yet it is true; you do need to put the failure to one side before it owns you but the time
needed and the approach taken ( a break from training; a change of coach; new gear; cross training; a months massage ) will
vary from athlete to athlete.
We are all too quick to remmeber the gold medal moments at Olympics and not the athlete’s preceding history of injury,
failure and meltdown. Success is literally a flash in the pan, a fleck of gold momentarily seeing the light of day amidst a
mountain of dross.
Get up
You can walk away; many do. You can take up golf, restrict yourself to jogging around the park. If you want to make failure
permanent;quit.
It’s important to solicit some dispassionate yet positive and constructive advice on your failure. An arms length forensic
analysis of what went wrong and why helps not only keep things in perspective and reducing emotional fallout, it gives the
foundations of a blueprint for resetting goals and adjusting programs.
Get going
Before getting too gung-ho, make sure you have paid heed to optimal physical recovery strategies so you are in the right
health and fitness state to address the resetting of goals and can provide the energy to bounce back from failure.
Reset goals
Having taken on board some qualified and dispassionate advice, recovered physically and assimilated the lessons of failure
to emerge with a new steely resolve, it is time to set new goals.
Do not set goals without an agile plan to reach them; a plan that takes into account previous training regimes, available
time, new knowledge and available resources (equipment, training paths,support). You need to accept that patience is as
critical as persistence and you will need smaller short term goals as well as the ultimate goal itself; this provides
positive reinforcement through regular accomplishment.
You also need to be totally honest with youtself and those that matter most to you as to why you have set these new goals’
what is motivating you? Positive motivators are almost always a far more sustainable source of goal pursuit than negative,
angry, resentful motivators. It’s crucial your goals align with your value set; else the dissonance will be a source of
potential failure and dissatisfaction.
Be sure to lock in on a small goal set; if you try to aim too high, or too far out or aim for too many targets, you will
dilute your energy base and fall short; again. Focus,as tabloid as it sounds is absolutely essential to achieving your
goal, just don’t try to do it all alone. You will need the support, encouragement, knowledge and skills of others so learn
to cooperate and empathasise.
People bounce back from failure all the time but the difference between those who recover and manage, and those who recover
and succeed, lies in the individual’s ability to recover quickly. The pain and disappointment of coming up short may send
you into an emotional spiral filled with questions, doubts, and promises to yourself to never try again, but those normal
reactions to failure usually subside. And when they do, your reaction to that failure will determine if you succeed.
Having a ‘failure (or reset) plan’ and the skills, knowledge and support to implement it will help give you the confidence
to bounce back sharper, smarter and happier than the competition.
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