Dan trackside, watchin his athletes chase the dream at the Runaway
Bay Junior National Series, 2010
outcome of the race may have nothing to do with your approach to it. You wouldn’t want to abandon a race plan or race preparation routine unless it the preparations plan itself was flawed. Carefully look at the reasons for your losses and address those specifically. Don’t change for the sake of change, especially if your approach includes any of the principles listed below:
1. DO MORE This can be quite a dangerous approach, especially in individual sports. If you focus your attention on the person you train beside instead of yourself you won’t be doing your job as well as you could be. Breakdowns in execution will then occur. Identify what your job is and do that to the best of your ability. 12
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2. POINT THE FINGER AT YOUR COACH It is much easier to see to shift the blame onto someone else. Focusing on your mistakes and blaming others takes the pressure off of you and protects your ego. It also brings down others around you, undermines team confidence and erodes team chemistry and the chemistry between you and your coach. All this will contribute to a losing streak! When things go bad, step up and take responsibility for your role in the loss and work hard to correct it. Being accountable to those that support you may inspire your coach to do the same and unite the ‘team’ toward a common goal of excellence in both training and racing.