Mental Games: Dealing with Pressure and Contextualizing Competing

 Mental Games: Dealing with Pressure and Contextualizing Competing 

We are all competitors. We want so badly to win, that sometimes we forget why we started competing. For most of us, it was because we started as typical meatheads who wanted to try and lift awkward things from the floor to platforms and above our heads. 

As we continue to grow, our expectations for ourselves increase significantly. You win your first competition? Now you have to win the next five. If you don’t, it’s perceived as a step backwards. You hit a national record? Now you better go and hit a world record. And if you don’t you perceive yourself as a failure and putting yourself out there to compete gets more and more difficult. 

I’ll give you an example. Two years ago, I won my first National Championship as a u90. Then, I went and hit the United States axle record. I spontaneously signed up for a local show a few weeks later. In that local show, I went in with the expectation that I couldn’t lose a single event. Well, come the second event, I tore my bicep during the tire flip and completely spiraled into self doubt. It was the result of putting too much pressure on myself, and setting unrealistic expectations on my body. 

So what happened post injury? Well, as formerly mentioned, I completely spiraled. I began to doubt whether I belonged in strongman, whether I would be better off in another sport, and started to make plans to shift to physique (YES PHYSIQUE) competitions. 

But why? Why did I spiral so horrifically?

I had set these crazy parameters around what makes an individual successful, and lost sight of that ever so important first piece; why I started competing. I had become so fixated on becoming a picture perfect strongman that I stopped enjoying the journey. 

In many ways this failure stated above was needed. Training and competing was beginning to lose that “fun” factor we all initially start with. Once I tore my bicep and reality set in, I started to train a bit more loosely and focused more on my own goals and less on what other people were doing. My fixation on becoming a destroyer was lessened, and instead rotated to my individual success. 

Feeling the Pressure? What should you do? 

Once I recognized the significant error I was making, I reset. I signed up for three competitions (after I was cleared from the injury) back to back to back. I signed up for Odd Haugen’s show, Power in the Pines, and Arizona’s Strongest Man. I decided to compete in whatever weight class I wanted, with no pressure to win and a focus solely on my own individual performance. 

Just like that, it became fun again. I didn’t get a chance to really train super hard for any of the three shows (besides the Odd) and just went in wanting to do better than what I did in my minimal training. After doing these three shows, I caught the bug again and began to (once more) enjoy the process. 

Take a step back. Remember that there will always be someone more badass than you. It doesn’t mean you should stop chasing them; instead, it means you should focus on your individual growth, and as you continue to grow, you might just make some ground on them.