How to Become an Olympic Athlete

How to Train Effectively

Athletes need to learn how to train not only often, but well. Instead of “practice makes perfect,” I had a teacher in middle school who used to say “practice makes permanent.”  What you teach yourself to do over and over in training surfaces whenever you step into the competition arena.

Novice athletes talk about ‘practicing’ their sport. Serious athletes talk about training. What you do in training dictates what you do in competition. You are training yourself to perform at a specific level. What you have to do over years of training is perfect your technique so carefully that it becomes an automatic, instinctive response whenever you get into competition. 

You will have to teach yourself to ignore all distractions: flashbulbs, the roar of the crowd, the footsteps gaining on you as you approach the finish line. This is where your level of discipline in training will determine your success as an athlete. 

“I try to train every day with the same intensity that I need for a match. I expect the same things in practice as I do in a match. That means that even in training, I expect to shoot 20 tens in a row.” 
   – Beki Snyder, U.S. Olympic Shooter

“It’s more important in [weightlifting] to be very efficient and get the most out of a workout. You try to make all of your lifts the first time. If you can’t make a weight, find out why you can’t make it; if necessary, lessen the weight and make the reps.”
     – Wes Barnett, U.S. Olympic Weightlifter

One successful training technique is to introduce distractions into your training regimen. Don’t go to the gym, practice field or range when it’s completely empty. It’s easy to focus when there’s no one there but you and your inner thoughts. Pick the time of day for your training sessions when the most people are using the facility. Go to your place of training even when you have a cold or the flu (I promise you, you will be sick during one of your competitions) or go when you’ve only had three hours of sleep. 

You will be forced to raise your level of concentration to where it needs to be during competition; otherwise, you’ll be dissatisfied with your practice results. Remember, this is your career, and it requires a certain level of commitment. That means working out even when it isn’t in your ideal environment or when you’re not feeling up to it.

One of the reasons that our resident athlete pistol program in Colorado Springs is successful is that we all have to train with each other at the same time every day. It’s therefore a given that, each day, some people will be more focused than others. There’s always a lot of gossip and shooting the breeze going on—before you know it, you’ve wasted an entire morning. Each of us has developed the mental discipline to tune out what’s going on around us and devote our time to our training. As a result, when we get to a high-level competition, the comparative lack of distractions is refreshing, and for the most part we perform at a very high level.

Mock Competitions

You also have to work on ways to introduce pressure situations into your training. Since all pressure is self-induced, you can practice dealing with that pressure on a daily basis. The earlier in your career that you realize this fact, the more quickly you will progress. 

To mimic competitive pressure, it helps to hold mock competitions on a regular basis with your training partners. Depending on what point of the competitive season it is, you can hold these competitions on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis.

During these competitions, act exactly as you would in your biggest competition of the year. Tell yourself that there’s as much at stake in this competition as there will be at the Olympic trials or the Olympics themselves, and see how you react to that pressure. Then, when the competition is over, evaluate your performance and establish a plan for fixing the problems you encountered in dealing with the pressure.

It’s also helpful to identify the types of pressure you respond favorably to. Every person responds differently to different motivating factors, negative and positive. When the winner gets rewarded (e.g., cash) that’s positive motivation. If the loser gets punished, that’s negative motivation. Ask yourself what motivates you to perform then find a way to work that into your mock competitions. 

If you perform best when money is at stake, have every one of your training partners throw $5 into a pot, and let the winner take all. Perhaps you perform best when it’s a matter of pride. In that case, you can make the last-place person do the winner’s laundry or wash their car.

This article is an excerpt from the fabjob.com How to Become an Olympic Athlete. Visit www.fabjob.com for information.