With training year-round, a long season and academics on top of everything, coaches at Keene State College have their own methods to keep their student-athletes mentally strong when it comes to game day.
“You have to keep your focus, it’s easy to daydream and slow down and not stay on task,” Cross Country coach Peter Thomas said.
Training to run at least five kilometers at a fast pace for cross country meets is a demanding and tedious task.
Then once race day arrives, maintaining that focus and drive to succeed is something Thomas said is imperative.
Chris Palermo / File Photo: Coach Thomas understands the importance of holding his team’s expectations at bay.
“The transition from practice to competition is learning and developing the ability to continually push themselves and not let them slow down,” Thomas said.
Athletes can develop performance anxiety when there is a big race on the line or a big game coming up. Players can succumb to the pressures of performing when it’s time to give 100 percent.
“Different parts of a workout are like different parts of a race that it’s easy in the beginning because they’re fresh, they have to stay focused in the middle and at the end they really need to concentrate and bring it home,” Thomas said.
“Lots of kids can do the training, it’s getting it out of them on race day is really what it comes down to, the kids really need to find it in themselves to perform,” Thomas said.
Waking up for a 5:45 a.m. swim practice before school is hard enough, but then having to jump in a cold pool where water is much more resistant than air and swim vigorously for a couple hours seems insane.
However, swimming coach Jack Fabian knows it’s all a part of the process.
“There’s a lot of mental challenges for the athletes and number one is that they have to jump in the water,” Fabian said.
Fabian also uses restrictive breathing techniques on his swimmers to simulate racing conditions and get their heart rates up without too much metabolic stress on their bodies.
“When swimming you can’t breathe at will, you breathe in a pattern and our more experienced swimmers encourage those who are really struggling with breath control,” Fabian said.
Fabian uses “pure coaching” where techniques get passed on through generations, and this technique allows his swimmers to help each other, like on kicking sets, for example.
“If kids don’t make a certain time we’ll do it all over again, and they’ll talk to each other and say ‘I’ll make it if you make it,’ ” Fabian said. “We use data, film, past times, we really try to have a read on what that swimmer can do.”
Fabian understands how important the relationship is with his swimmers because he knows how far he can push in order for them to succeed.
“Random swimming will give you random results,” Fabian said.
“Mind set is a huge thing in swimming; just looking at their face you can tell where they are. A championship match isn’t really forgiving if your mind set isn’t where it needs to be.”
In his 15th year at KSC, men’s basketball coach Rob Colbert’s approach is getting his players to think clearer and learning from experiences on the court to make them better athletes.
“Think differently, prioritize things, there is some conceptualization but it’s just a clarity of thinking.”
Coach Colbert will sometimes act differently towards his team than he’s feeling in order to improve their mental psyche when prepping for the next game or reviewing a previous match-up.
“We try not to worry so much of the result as much as the process. When you worry about the outcomes you’re going to get really high and really low; we want to stay even- keeled.”
“If I’m nervous that’ll get related to the kids, to some extent they’ll take cues from me and [that] will influence how they feel,” Colbert said. “We allow kids to think about a previous game until midnight and when the clock turns to the next day we move on.”
Coaches getting their athletes mentally confident will not only help them perform better presently, it will also carry on with them after college and will help them in the real world.
“Sometimes you get through to them and sometimes you don’t and sometimes they come back after they graduate and say “I’m so much better mentally; I wish I could’ve done this in college,’” Thomas said.
Stephen Aruilio can be contacted at saruilio@keene-equinox.com