The Power of Positive Self-Talk

The idea of speaking kindly to yourself isn’t anything new, but it’s worth revisiting now and again to remind us of how we complete training and racing successfully.?

Endurance events are pretty unique and they get more unique the longer they go on. Most amateur athletes will essentially be against themselves and their own weight of expectation – developed through training and their perception of what makes an event a success.?

As a result, the way we talk to ourselves during a race is very important.?

What is self-talk??

Self-talk is defined as ‘what people say to themselves either silently in their head or aloud, automatically or strategically, to stimulate, direct, react, and evaluate events and actions’ (Hatzigeorgiadis, Zourbanos, Latinjak, & Theodorakis, 2014).

What are the effects of positive self-talk??

Research has shown self-talk to be an effective tool to enhance performance through rewiring the brain – effectively replacing potential negative talk with positive talk.

A group of recreational cyclists who improved their cycling time to exhaustion by 18% when they were coached to use positive self-talk (Blanchfield, Hardy, de Morree, Staiano, & Marcora, 2014).

Put into practice, it could be as simple as replacing “my legs are really hurting” with “you’re almost there”.?

There are a lot more intricacies of this which I won’t go into, however the results of positive self-talk have generally been shown to improve endurance performance.?

How do you implement positive self-talk?

There are many tactics of retraining your internal monologue with positives over negatives and creating mantras to race by. This usually creates awareness around the strength of positivity and using our internal chatter to our advantage.

My personal theory on positive self-talk: it’s more than just the race

I think it all starts with training. Anxiety, expectation and potential negativity builds up from here and is waiting as soon as we enter the training block or start the race.?

If we look at the purpose of the training as a means to an end, i.e. hitting your personal best, then we create a bar at which we feel we have to meet. We allow no place for our bar to move, therefore the pressure builds. It doesn’t allow for life events, illness or things beyond our control to be accounted for.?

If we take the training seriously, which we should, but accept that it’s the best we can do ‘in that moment’ – then we automatically create a positive situation around exercise and the results become a by-product.?

This positive self-talk for me doesn’t apply to a single race or training session, it’s the approach, kindness and awareness of one’s self during the whole journey.

Final thoughts

The next time you go into a training session and don’t hit the perfect pace, or if you replace a hard run with a shake out because half way into the warm up you feel terrible, don’t be hard on yourself – instead, be kind and reflect kindly. Carry the positives and any numerical misfires become possibilities and not limitations.

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