The most important aspect when preparing for a competition is the mental attitude. Even surpassing the opponent by a head, you can lose, "burned out" or showing excessive excitement.
Any athlete trains, improves his skills in order to win the competition. Often showing excellent results in the training process, he literally "fails" at the most crucial moment when it is necessary to show the result.
This may be due to deficiencies in two main aspects of training: psychological and functional.
Psychological attitude
To prepare for the competition, it is extremely important to get in the right mindset emotionally and mentally. Do not worry too much before the start or the match for the final result. We must try to aim at getting pleasure from the process itself. It is believed that in life it is not the moment of achieving the goal that is interesting, but the path traveled to it. Understanding this, you can discard unnecessary emotions and just do your job.
If we are talking about a race or a football match, you need to try the night before to imagine yourself directly in the competition, to feel how the muscles start to work, the heart rate increases. This approach will help to somewhat reduce the excitement in reality, which is important.
Some coaches of football and hockey teams go with their players to the mountains or forests before important matches in order to completely disconnect from reality. Such mental and emotional switching allows you to relieve tension, to look at everything from the outside.
You can resort to this on your own by walking for a couple of hours in the forest, visiting the cinema. The main thing is that there is a switch. Computer games, surfing the Internet will not help, since in this case physical activity is necessary.
If we are talking, for example, about a fighting duel, you can prepare in advance several days and weeks in advance. In this case, it is important to gradually disconnect from the surrounding reality, during each training to experience emotions close to real combat. Then the fight itself will not cause much stress for the psyche.
Functional readiness
There is a wonderful saying: "It is hard in training - easy in battle." This means that the more intense the training, the easier it will be during the competition, since physical superiority will help to make a spurt, strike, overtake an opponent, and so on at the right time.
They prepare for competitions ahead of time, regardless of the sport. For example, preparation for a three-kilometer race is carried out for several weeks - the load is constantly increasing, endurance increases. But for long-term cup competitions, as, for example, in biathlon, it is customary to prepare for about six months, since they last five months. If something is missed during a long training, the athlete will fall into the "functional pit", which does not allow him to show good results for several starts.
