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Take Charge! Managing Your Emotions

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By Steve Ward

Take Charge! Managing Your Emotions
The Emotional Rollercoaster Of Adventure Racing

Adventure races can be an emotional roller coaster, with many highs and lows. Take a moment to reflect back on one of your recent racing experiences, and think about all of the different feelings and emotions that you experienced from before the race, during it, and after it. You may find it useful to make a note of these before reading any further.

Your emotional state is how you are currently experiencing the world – happiness, sadness, excitement, boredom – and it does not just jump on you. It is the consequence of something you are doing in your mind, and because of this, through mental skills training you can develop the ability to take charge of your emotions, and to experience your desired emotions on cue throughout a race – imagine that!

What emotional states lead to success in your adventure racing? – relaxed, confident, positive, focussed, determined, aggressive - and most importantly, how can you build them?

Getting In A State

There are three factors which influence your emotional state:

• Physiology – posture, breathing, facial expression, muscle tension, heart rate, how you walk, head position, gestures...
• Ideology – what, and how, you imagine and say to yourself.
• Environment – the physical and social environment

To change your emotional state first change your physiology – this is the simplest and most powerful way to effect positive change. How would your posture, breathing and heart rate be in that desired state? What about muscle tension, facial expression? The way you walk? By recreating the physiological aspects you will recreate the emotional state. It is as simple as that! Try it. Pick a desired emotional state. Think back to a time when you were in that state and notice your physiology. Now recreate the same physiology and allow yourself to enter that desired emotional state. A useful way to remember this is to ‘Act as if…’ i.e. to act as if you were in that emotional state.

Secondly, make sure that you are saying and seeing appropriate words and images to connect you to that state. For example, think of a time when you were confident and focussed. What did you say to yourself and imagine internally. What could you say to your self, and imagine, to feel more positive, more relaxed, more confident? Remember, it is not just what you say and see but how. If you want confidence, talk to yourself in a confident and positive way. For all desired states, use images that are big, bright, clear, colourful and where you are seeing things through your eyes. Feel how it feels.

The environment – weather, location, terrain, other competitors, team mates, equipment – are not under your control, unlike physiology and ideology. Environmental influences are often a significant factor in our emotional states. Reflect back to your racing experiences when perhaps the weather was difficult, the terrain was very challenging, there was a team dispute, or equipment problems. Notice how in the past these factors probably affected your state, and recognise that by changing your physiology and ideology you can achieve positive peak performance states regardless of the environment now.

Programming Yourself For Success

1. Make a list of all of your desired states for a race.

Firstly, think about all of the emotional states that you wish to have during a race. To do this it is useful to reflect back on past races and notice the emotional states experienced, and which were helpful, and which were not. (Use a similar chart to the one below to record the information.) Also, take time to think about specific situations that may occur during an event, and the emotional states that you would want to be in e.g. start of the race, after a navigational error, when leading/performing really well, when feeling tired or struggling, between stages/disciplines etc. It is also helpful to think of times when you may want to boost performance and have states such as ‘power’ and ‘energy’ etc.

2. Recall the desired states, notice key elements, and build cue/words and images to be able to access them.

First recall the desired state and analyse the key components of physiology and ideology. Notice heart rate, breathing, posture, expression, gesture, thoughts, images etc. Then practise recreating them until you can do them automatically. This can be helped by giving each emotional state a cue/key word, and a strong image, as a trigger or reminder for what is required. By practising and developing this technique you can make sure that you are in control of your emotions. Try changing from one state to another by using your cue word/image, and changing physiology/ideology – over time, simply using the word/image will be enough for you to access the desired state.

Taking Charge

You want to recognise the power that taking charge of your emotions gives you, and I really encourage you to spend time practising your emotional state management. How you are feeling at any given time will significantly affect your level of performance. Doing anything in the right emotional state is more productive, and results in higher levels of performance, whether it is adventure racing, working, doing the shopping, or even the washing-up!