The Olympic Games, streaming from Paris now until Aug. 11, bring on a lot of questions on how regular folk watching from home can emulate the spectacular performances of professional athletes, from how they eat, how they sleep and how they train.
How do Olympians harness focus to accomplish their goals in the first place?
According to John Heil, there are two mindsets an Olympic fencer toggles between: One is staying focused and reacting to your opponent, and the other is all about what you’re doing “between touches,” when weapons are down. Heil, a clinical and sports psychologist, has worked with USA Fencing Olympians during three separate games going back to Atlanta in 1996. While the mental reset from “actionable” to “analytic” is important for fencers, it may not be so different from the task-switching our every day, notification-bombarded environment requires.
“Surprises come our way, and we have to move from one mindset to another,” Heil said. “You need to adjust.”
Olympians are renowned for their physical performance, but much of being a top-tier athlete hinges on mental performance, and the ability to harness focus in a split second. Just ahead of the summer 2024 Olympic Games, CNET spoke with four psychologists who’ve had experience working with professional athletes and getting into the minds of Olympians.
Here’s what they have to say, and the tips they offer for bringing Olympian-level focus into everyday living.
Practice a minute of mindfulness each day
“I believe focus is the most important mental skill for athletes and performers,” Mark Aoyagi said in an email. Aoyagi is co-director of Sport & Performance Psychology and a professor in the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the University of Denver. He’s worked with professional and Olympic teams but says that focus is key for everyone, no matter the size of the stage they’re on. The best way to start learning focus, Aoyagi said, is to practice mindfulness.
“As cliche as it has almost become, mindfulness meditation is an excellent tool for teaching focus, as it does three things simultaneously,” he said. The first is that it trains “meta-attention,” or the ability to pay attention to your attention. The second is that it trains narrow focus, which is what we typically think of when we’re centering our attention on one thing. And the third thing mindfulness does is train vigilance or “attentional endurance,” which Aoyagi describes as the ability to stay focused over time.
This lays the bricks for having a mental routine, which Aoyagi describes as the “best way to establish a game day mindset.”
So, how can you dip into the mindful magic? Aoyagi recommends starting with the “smallest amount of time” you can commit to daily, even if it’s just a single minute.
“It is much more effective to practice small training daily than to try to do longer training but less frequently,” he said.
For tips on getting started with mindfulness, you can read CNET’s guide for beginners, or try an app.
The iPhone trick that could spark Olympian-level focus
At CNET, we talk a lot about smartphones. What if we told you that simply opening up your phone could be the easiest way to train your focus like a professional athlete?
Ross Flowers is a clinical, sport and performance psychologist who served as a senior sport psychologist for the US Olympic Committee from 2008 to 2012. He’s also worked with professional sports teams, including the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Lakers, Rams and Clippers.
When asked for a hack anyone can do to start harnessing focus like a professional athlete, Flowers said a “quick and easy one that everyone can do” is to build up attention. To get started, he says, pick up your phone and stare at the grid of apps before you.
“Give yourself 10 seconds” to memorize as many apps as you can on the screen, Flowers said. “Write them down,” he said, as a test for yourself to see how many you can remember. Then, once you get good at remembering them, move to a different screen or “go to something larger.”
This is a play on a similar basketball exercise Flowers gave. A player could pick up a basketball and memorize any and all details about it: the color, the pattern of the lines, the name on the ball, the way it smells and more. It’s a good exercise in attention, but it also helps you narrow in on what you say you want to focus on.
“It helps you lock in the moment to what you say you’re committed to,” Flowers said.
Identify one (or two) specific skills you need in the moment
Flowers, who ran hurdles at the post-collegiate level before becoming a psychologist, said to focus specifically on what skills serve the moment.
For himself in a hurdles race, one example might be focusing on “exploding” when he hears the gun. For someone in a team sport, it might be focusing on your role specifically.
Although what this will look like in your life varies depending on the event or discipline, the basic idea is to have a general awareness of what you require to achieve your goal. Then, simplify it for yourself.
Remember to breathe and connect to your body
When it comes to mind and body, “there’s more of an overlap than we think,” Heil said. By manipulating our body and its position, including our line of sight, we can shift our focus and mental state.
When a soccer player is stressed out while playing, for example, Heil advises them to follow the ball with their eyes.
“Your thinking tends to follow what your eyes are looking at in an action environment,” Heil said.
Although this advice is more for athletes, you can try it outside the sports arena, at your desk. If something is causing you stress and you notice yourself hunched over and staring at your screen, try straightening your posture and looking out the window. Make a mental note of what you see.
An age-old trick to calm the nerves, according to the experts we spoke with, is breathing. Taking deep breaths and focusing on the breath in your body is a great way to steady yourself and connect to the moment. Check out our beginning guide on how to breathe to relieve stress.
Make time each day for one thing around the house you don’t like doing
Cody Commander is a clinical and sports psychologist who was the Olympic mental health officer for the 2020 Tokyo Games. One major difference between people who make it to the top in terms of athletic performance (or any other type of performance) is simply their discipline in actually doing what needs to be done to meet their goal, in following the tips and using the tricks, according to Commander.
“I think a misperception a lot of people have is that for high performers, there are groundbreaking techniques that people are using that separates them from everyone else,” Commander said. “And it’s not really that the techniques are novel or new, it’s just that they actually do them.”
Commander added that one of the biggest differences he sees in people who achieve a lot of success in any field is their choice to do something they don’t want to do but know they need to do to accomplish their goal.
An exercise he’s given people to practice is to pick a chore each day around the house that you really don’t like doing and just do it. This will get you in the habit of making time for less-than-pleasurable activities. (Who knows, maybe your judgment or your distaste for the task will melt away as the chore becomes part of a new routine or your perspective shifts.)
Keep exactly what you want in mind — always
Flowers has an email signature that says, “Greatness is an appreciation for maximizing the details. So make sure you know how.”
When I asked him what that original quote means, he said it boils down to “verifying what you want — what decisions will you make and the energy and effort you’re going to put toward that.”
We’ve written about why it’s important to identify your want (not your parents’ want, or your boss’ want, or what you think you should want, based on your life trajectory so far), but the same thread proves to be crucial to professional athletic performance, too. Performance in any other realm of life, it seems.
In other words: What’s setting your soul on fire?
“You have to know what you’re actually working toward,” Flowers said.
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