Identifying Your Focus Style
Are you an athlete who needs to keep your mind constantly on your sport in order for you to perform well? Or are you someone who thinks too much and needs to keep your mind off of your sport until it’s time to perform?
Understanding your style is essential for you to be able to manage it effectively (this is part of the awareness stage). This process involves knowing how you focus best and actively practicing that way during training. This ability to know and manage your focus is most important in pressure situations.
Two Major Focus Styles: Which is your preferred and dominant?
You have an ideal focus style that impacts all aspects of your performance. The 2 major types of performance focus styles are internal and external.
1. Internal Focus Style
Athletes with an internal focus style perform best when they’re totally and consistently focused on their sport during a practice session or a competition (Ian from this video is this type of athlete). They need to keep their focus narrow, thinking only about their sport. If they broaden their focus, for example, if they talk about non-sport topics during warm-up, they’ll become distracted and will have trouble refocusing and performance will suffer.
2. External Focus Style
Athletes with an external focus style perform best when they only focus on their sport when they’re about to begin a competition. At all other times, it is best for them to broaden their focus and take their mind off their sport. These athletes have a tendency to think too much, become negative and critical, and experience ‘workout anxiety’. For these athletes, it’s essential that they take their focus away from their sport when they’re not actually performing.
Many coaches think that if athletes are not totally focused on their sport, then they’re not serious about it and they won’t perform their best. Yet, for athletes with an external focus style, they don’t want to think too much or be too serious because this causes them to lose confidence and become anxious.
Tips on Focus Styles
- Focus is the ability to attend to internal & external cues in your attentional field
- 2 Types of Harmful Cues are Interfering Cues (negative talk, concern over what place you will finish) & Irrelevant Cues (Thoughts about work or what you are eating for dinner)
- To avoid focusing on harmful cues, try replacing your thoughts with; rep count, breath count, key words for each movement (shrug, hips, etc), positive words (just go, one at a time), etc.
- Keep from looking at the clock, a competitor or your surroundings for between movements, sets or designated breaks in WODs
- Check out my series of VIDEOS on Focus for CrossFit HERE
If you are interested in competing in ANY CrossFit Competition & would like all the mental tools and tips to Perform Your Best – CLICK HERE to check out the Downloadable Guide
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