okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Some words from Mats Troeng preparing for the European Champs
Mats Troeng of Sweden wrote a bit about his preparations for next week's European O' Champs in Denmark. Here is a rough translation of some of Troeng's thoughts:
There is a lot of talk about mental preparations nowadays. How does that work in practice? Together with my mental advisor, Thomas Fogdo, I've been working on my mental preparations [note: Troeng calls this "malbildstraning" which would translate literally to something like "goal image training."]. It is about preparing yourself to deal with distractions. I want to have a plan for every distraction that might come up during or before the race in order to react to it rationally. What will happen if I get an early start time for the qualifying race? What will I do if I lose map contact on a leg or boom a control, or maybe more meaningful: how will I put a mistake behind me? What should I do if I'm caught from behind or if I catch someone who started ahead of me? I've thought through these situations. The human brain is built so that it has trouble distinguishing between thoughts and reality. If I imagine a situation, then the brain will feel like it has already been through the situation when it happens in reality. Then I have to just do the same thing again.
posted by Michael |
7:03 PM
