Confidence Boosting 101.

It turns out there is a lot of stuff out there to read about sports psychology and how the mind affects the body's performance. I know, totally surprised right??
So the first thing I had to do was narrow down the aspect of my mental game that I most needed to work on first...which mind muscle was going to get the workout.  This was an easy decision for me - CONFIDENCE...it's by far my weakest point.
The psychology behind sports confidence is actually pretty solid and defined as two specific types of confidence.
The first is Trait Sports Confidence.  This is most easily described as confidence that is a personality trait of the athlete. These are the people who are so naturally confident in their ability that no matter how badly they perform nothing can sway them from this belief.  As long as they are careful not to veer off into arrogance, people with high trait confidence usually do well it sport, they refuse to give up and see themselves as able to achieve at the highest level.  
The bad news is that the research shows there is not much you can do to increase trait confidence....you either have it or you don't.  I don't think it's too wild a guess to say that many of us in the derby world don't have an abundant supply of trait sports confidence.  Many of you, like me, were the last to get picked in the school teams and are only now, as adults, appreciating the joy of being active and athletic.  The fact that I have shyed away from trying most sports in itself probably indicates that I have low trait sports confidence, I never believed I would or could be good at them.
So now for the good news - trait confidence is not the most important type of confidence when it comes to performing well in sport.
That job belongs to State Sports Confidence and there is plenty that you can do to beef up that muscle.   State confidence is your belief in your ability to perform in a particular given situation.  On the track, at the jammer line, against that massive hardhitting blocker it's your belief in how you can cope with that situation at that moment (state confidence) that matters, not whether you generally think you are the best thing on eight wheels (trait confidence).  The most obvious example of the difference between these two types of confidence is the classic star player who misses the deciding goal.  Even though they may have oodles of trait confidence they don't believe that they can make the all important shot for the team when it's all on the line.
So this is what I need to work on - a bit like a physio does, I have isolated and named the weak and problematic muscle....State Confidence.  I'm sure most of you could do with building up this muscle...even if it's only in one situation or circumstance that you find it wanting.
There is an abundance of exercises and theory on how to best build your state confidence but I'm going to start with positive self-talk.
Now I'm not into any airy-fairy stuff where you look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself how wonderful you are three times a day so this is how I'm going to break it down (just in case you want to give it a go as well)....

1.  List 5 thoughts or situations on the track that make me feel least confident.
Mine are: when I'm against a hard hitting blocker, when I'm on the jammer line, when I fall over alot, when I'm 'the goat', when the jammer skates right past me without me even attempting a hit.

2.  Come up 5 phrases to counter these confidence suckers.
Funny thing is as I look at my list of situations  I definitely already have a phrase for each of them, just not helpful ones - "I'm going to get injured"  "I'm so bad at jamming" "I must look useless falling over this much" "I can't get past"  "I didn't do my job, I've let the team down"...so it's time to find some replacements!
They need to be easy to remember, even in the middle of scrimmage, and they need to be believable.  No good telling myself that I can jam like Suzy Hotrod, I will just laugh myself out of the room.
"I can take big hits" "I can improve my jamming" "I recover so quickly!" "I can make holes" and my favourite borrowed from Lord of the Rings...."You shall not pass!"

3. Write my new ass-kicking statements on two pieces of card (preferably laminated to make it last longer) and attach one to my training bag.  Read them every time I get my gear in and out of my bag - so that's at least twice every training session and once a week when I clean my pads.....because us derby girls always do that weekly!  I will attach the other copy to my wallet or mirror (if I must!) or computer screen so that I see it several times a day.  Every time I see the cards I will read through them - out loud if I'm somewhere that won't be embarrassing - and I will say it like I mean it......until I do!

The good old fake it till you make it.  Heres hoping it works!!

I've lost my mojo......

and I'm really not sure how to get it back again.
I know why I've lost it.  A bad combination of things including 2 weeks school holidays (all you mums out there know how much mojo that can suck out of you) and a flu/cold that just won't go away.   Also, I think I've just started my first natural plateau in training.
So here I am tired, snuffly, and just a little unmotivated.  I had been warned about the plateaus - when suddenly you don't seem to be improving anymore despite doing the same amount of training you always have.  And I know that that's when you need to push it up a notch - train that little bit harder to push through.  Instead with the other things going on I have had to take it down a few notches and it is incredibly frustrating.
And rotten timing.
We have our next interleague scrimmage on Wednesday and after my mental game putting me in a spin last time I was determined to be in a better place mentally and physically for this next one.  Instead it will be marginal whether I'm actually well enough to scrimmage and if I am I will be taking it easy...not exactly the killer mental space I'd hoped for.
And the calendar is racing towards my first Allstars game in May...I was hoping to lift my game so much before then.  Now I'll be struggling to get back to where I was a fortnight ago.
But for now I need a plan.  A plan to get back my mojo as fast as possible.
Starting with getting better.  I need to eat and sleep well, take my vitamins, stretch lots and listen to my body.  If I can't handle training then I need to stop.  It's one thing to push yourself when you are well but when your body is fighting a bug it's just stupid.  It will not be the end of the world if I miss a week of training, I will miss far more if this flu lingers around for another month.
I can also use the time to work on my mental game.  I've been looking into sports psychology for a few weeks now and I"ve finally made my way through the trashy pages wanting to sell me something to find some really useful stuff.  I've realised that my first issue to deal with is self-confidence...I don't really have any and I rely on my team-mates confidence in me instead.  So I will be working that confidence muscle over the next few weeks to see if I can get it to start working properly.
Hopefully these steps will see me get my mojo back and start to push through that plateau quickly enough that I can still bring my best to the game in May. Any other tips???

Divide and Conquer (or tips for the 25)

Watching the new freshmeat last night trying to break the 25 laps in 5 minutes was a big old trip down memory lane.  

Even though it was only a few months back, it feels so long ago that I was desperately willing my legs to keep doing crossovers properly even though they had turned to jelly.  Collapsing at the end of the 25 laps, gasping for air, gutted that I hadn't made it again and no idea where I could possibly find the extra go to shave those last 15 seconds off.  I remember searching online for some tips, anything, that could help me get there.  Finding bits of advice here and there, listening to my coaches (yes it does help!!) and perserverance got me there in the end.  

I thought I'd pay it forward and put it all together for those dedicated and frustrated freshies coming through behind me. 

So here it is....my collection of tips (mostly learnt the hard way!) on how to break the 25 in 5.....

1.  Moving your feet faster will not make you skate faster!  It will just make you exhausted and more likely to fall over.  Long, strong strides...pushing down and through.  And big, deep crossovers. If you need to rest - glide the straights but always, ALWAYS skate the corners and do the crossovers.

2.  Skate the diamond.

 Hopefully you can see past my bad drawing skills - the green dots are where you have to do crossovers.

3.  Breathe. 

4.  Use your arms.  Moving my arms like a runner - cutting the air in front of me, really helped me with the rest of my skating form.  I think it mostly just gave me a rhythm and something easy to focus on.

5.  Grab a buddy.  One of the things I like about roller derby is that it's a team sport.  Where does it say in the skills testing rulebook that you have to tackle the 25 laps without help??  Find a sympathetic old meat and ask them to skate in front of you so that you can mimic their form around the track and know what kind of pace you need to aim for.

6.  Keep breathing.

7.  Break it down.  It occured to me after my 2nd failed attempt that I had to be able to skate 5 laps in a minute before I was ever going to conquer the 25 in 5.  So I tried it and sure enough it took me 1 minute and 5 seconds.  This made it clear that my form and technique weren't good enough yet - I needed to focus on that and get that right first.

8.  Be stubborn.  Honestly I think this was the one thing that helped me most in the end.  Just being good-old-fashioned-hard-headed about it.  I decided I would do it, no matter how many attempts it took.  I practiced every chance I could.  During warm up and cool down laps at training I was working on one of the points listed above.  Every time I was circling the track it was a chance to improve something that would help me get there.  I'm sure I drove the coaches crazy with my constant requests to time me doing this or that, or 'could I please have another go at the 25 while the oldmeat were taking their gear off and stretching??'  In retrospect I probably should have remembered occasionally that it wasn't all about me....but it did help me get there in the end!!

It was tough getting there but it was one of favourite derby moments so far....

Lying on the ground completely spent....smile so big it made my face hurt.....trying to high five from the floor when the others came over to congratulate me....knowing that I had finally done it.