Train Your Mental Core For Peak Athletic Performance

Core training has been a hot topic for quite awhile now. Professional, amateur, high school, college athletes and weekend warriors understand the importance of a strong core for functional movement and peak athletic performance.

To skinny on the core training is it involves training the muscles that surround the body’s center of mass—the abdominals, lower back, and hip. A strong core is one of the keys to peak performance utilizing effective movement, stability, and balance.

Utilizing of the core comes into play with even the most basic of movements and is certainly essential to more involved movements. For example, performing a squat without activating your abs or lower back muscles, you can’t do it, can you?

While developing your physical core strength is important, there is another “core” that is critical for athletes to train and develop.

That other core is your mind…your mental strength.

The core of your mind is as important, if not more so in some respects, then your physical core. Just as strong physical core is important to effective athletic movement like stability, balance and peak performance.

A strong mental core is crucial to effective mental stability, mental balance and mental strength. A strong, well-developed mind or “mental muscle” is paramount to peak athletic performance.

The mind is activated during every athletic training session and certainly during every athletic performance.  How the mind affects athletic performance is intricately tied to how well the athlete has trained, developed and strengthened their mental muscle.

For example, if you doubt your ability to bench press 240 lbs, do you really think you’ll succeed?

Probably not.

Or let’s say you’ve entered a 5k race.  There you are standing at the starting line and you begin to tell yourself you are not in good enough shape to run sub-20 minutes.  What do you think the chances are that you’ll run it under 20, even if your body has been physically trained correctly?

Chances are slim to none and slim just left town.

Clearly the mental core strength plays a significant part in athletic peak performance.

As you continue your pursuit for peak athletic performance, it’s vital that you take into consideration the development of your “physical core strength” and your “mental core strength.” Sine they are both at the foundation of athletic peak performance.

Here are some tips to keep in mind as you look at developing your mental strength for peak performance:

The Mental Core Strength Can Be Developed

• Through Mental strength Training

Mental strength training relates to the development of mental skills and strategies to help you manage your mind.  That is, to be able to take control of your internal processes, i.e. self-talk, images, that either help or hinder your training and athletic performance.

• Mental strength Skills Are SKILLS

Mental strength skills are equivalent to physical strength skills, in that they are both skills that can be learned and ultimately lead to peak performance. Many times, coaches and athletes approach mental strength skills as something an athlete either has or doesn’t have (i.e., she is confident or she is not confident) instead of something the athlete can learn and develop.

• Mental strength Training Isn’t Easy

You can learn to manage what goes on internally and it takes discipline. Athletes who are unwilling to develop their mental core often demonstrate inconsistent performances due to a weak mental core. Athletes who do make the effort to train the mind discover that it takes time, effort, and persistence, just like physical training. But just as with physical training, the rewards can be great.

• Seek Out Mental strength Resources

Keep on the lookout for resources that can help you build and develop your mental strength. Read books, continue to read these column, find a peak performance coach, talk to athletes that are achieving peak performance

As you develop your mental core strength, your performance and mental focus will become more balanced.

Use the information and skills outlined many post here as well as “Develop the Mental strength of a Warrior”, these will help you create the mental strength need to achieve peak athletic performance.

The core of the body and the core of the mind are always linked; weakness one will show up in the other.  You need both to reach peak performance.