The skill of competition

A random reflection piece 23/11/20

The primary objective in training, for most, is acquiring a set of skills useful in a competitive environment. The skills involved in clearing the blocks; attacking the jump board; of projecting horizontally and accelerating; of relaxing and floating through air at max velocity; of manoeuvring oneself over a hurdle are all trained week after week after week throughout the year. In learning these skills, there is likely a periodised approach. This acquisition of skill should be addressed with ascending difficulty; and ascending transfer to the competitive environment. This is known as technical periodisation.

To plan the physical and technical development, there should be an idea as to what the final product should be. What are the qualities you need (speed, body composition, technique, strength, whatever)? Once there is a clear idea, what are the best training modalities to accomplish these goals and in what time frame do you wish to accomplish them in? What is your end point and how can you reverse engineer it? It’s probably not crystal clear. It’s more likely turbid, but turbid enough to be able to see what the bottom of the barrel looks like.

Now, I think this reverse engineering approach to structuring training makes sense in a utopia. If competition was a completely transparent reflection of what has been accomplished in training. But, as all coaches and athletes understand and have experienced, there is a great deal of variability between the qualities trained and the way they’re expressed in a competitive environment.

Considerations for the periodisation of a competitive environment could be applicable to you. Where do you begin to introduce competition? I think that once the athlete and the coach are satisfied with the technical proficiency of the skill/skillset, competition against peers is a good place to start. Even if you are going against your teammates, technical proficiency, instead of whether an athlete comes 1st, 2nd, 3rd in any given rep, should be emphasised. These are the early stages of learning how to experience your own race in the presence of others (and in reaction to a starting stimulus).

Competition with athletes that aren’t in your squad is when things become interesting. For your first race, do you enter your seed time as your PB? Your last season’s SB? The time you want to run? The time you expect to run? The estimated 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th heat? Personally, it’s not ever something I’ve contemplated myself. I just put down my PB regardless of whether I am in shape to run it or not, because truthfully, I don’t mind who I’m running against. However, I’m slow; and if I’m honest with myself, because I’m not all that fast, the stakes and expectations for myself are minuscule compared to those with genuine talent.

How do those who know of their own talent deal with low stakes competition? If they're of the personality type to be excited regardless of competitive circumstance, minimisation of anxiety and stress in these competitions should be a priority. You’re looking to string together weeks of training together during early stages of competition, and the last thing you really want is a monstrous build up of nerves, a big emotional spike and a massive comedown over the course of a week. Anecdotally, recovering from this is difficult. Keep things cool and make things comfortable as the results of the early stages of competition, in the long run, do not matter as much as they’re felt in the moment by the athlete. On top of that, these types of people probably need to learn the art of calming down more than ramping up.

Are you more likely to shit the bed from being over or under-stimulated? Usain Bolt never really looked too overwhelmed. He’d fist bump the young girl or boy carrying his gear, or dance, or strike a pose. Shelly-Anne always has the warmest smile on the start line. No-one overwhelmed with nerves could possibly look so in control of her emotions and the moment. Famously the All-Blacks conduct team-breathing prior, and sometimes throughout moments of the game. The outcomes desired from breathing, relaxing or smiling isn’t to lose focus or become a sack of soft potatoes. No one would say that the All-Blacks were unfocused or soft. It’s to assist in gaining control of your body so you can execute the task at hand, and to express yourself to its fullest potential. I’ve sometimes tried to heighten and experience more for the competition moment. I’d increase the caffeine, increase the hype and time after time, I found myself unable to really reflect what I’m capable of. Is more stimulation always better? In my own experience, no. I couldn’t be myself. I should’ve just trusted the experience of competition, that it’d raise me to a state of readiness and optimal arousal which would allow me to express myself to my potential.

Athletes who are comfortable in their own skin are easy to recognise in a competitive environment. It isn’t inherently always smiling, or dancing, or whatever. They’re typically the ones most comfortable in completing their warm-up, nailing their daily routine and performing on any given day. The ones who do not question the process of competing. Repetitions upon repetitions of competition are required to get to this point, as the trust in the process can only be a byproduct of trial and error, practice and execution in that competitive environment. At that stage, as more repetitions of competition accumulate, an athlete’s comfort in one's own skin allows them to step into increasingly uncomfortable environments and to flourish in those environments. Through recognising the emotional needs of the athlete, you’ve periodised their competitive skill beyond just going through club meets into a nationals. There may be more to it than that (and there may be less).

To get to that point of comfort, I’d consider some of the following options.

• Compete outside of your favourite event. If you identify with being a 100m sprinter, you have the most amount of investment in it. Consider running a 200m, 300m, 400m.

• Relays are a fantastic way to enter competition. Athletes have ego, and often equate self-worth with the number at the end of the race. Relays reduce the responsibility of performance through sharing it. Anecdotally, I’ve found I always raced better in relays and I think it’s due to my reduced stress in those moments.

• Consider grass-root or inter-squad meets.

• In the end, just putting in a slower time for an event you like is not a bad way to go about it.

Regardless of whatever considerations you’re willing to participate in, I’d still advise to run through the line and compete to your fullest. It allows the coach to make the most informed training considerations; both what should be done in training throughout the week and for the strategy for the next competition.

What underpins this article is the reality that competition should be ‘easier’ at the start of the season than how it ends. Relatively ‘low stress’, whatever form that comes in, building to a finale of ‘extremely high stress’, but you’ve built to that stage and you can handle the moment. It’s not something I’ve considered until this year, when I was actually faced with the reality of talent, and not just myself, and it’s extremely exhilarating to be around.