Shannon Miller, an Olympic Gold Medalist in gymnastics, agrees that mental preparation is key to success\u2014and she says she couldn\u2019t have gotten to the Olympics on physical ability alone. \u201cThe physical aspect of the sport can only take you so far. The mental aspect has to kick in, especially when you\u2019re talking about the best of the best,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the Olympic games, everyone is talented. Everyone trains hard. Everyone does the work. What separates the gold medalists from the silver medalists is simply the mental game.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cWhen you are an elite athlete, one of the best in the world, the physical differences between you and your peers are very, very small.\u201d says Scott Grafton, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Dana Foundation grantee, who studies action representation, or how the brain organizes movement into a goal-oriented action. \u201cSo what really determines success? The way athletes are approaching their sport at the cognitive level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leading up to the 1996 Olympic Games, Miller and \u201cMagnificent Seven\u201d teammate Dominique Moceanu practiced six to eight hours a day, six days a week. Even on days of competition, Miller says she would practice her routines up to ten times before performing for the judges. \u201cWe did a lot of repetitions. It was important to help perfect your routines, of course. But it also helped with the mental game,\u201d she says. \u201cWith that much practice, you knew when you got into a competition situation, and you were a little bit nervous, you wouldn\u2019t blank. You could count on your muscle memory taking over simply because you had done the routine so many times.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, according to Moceanu, not overthinking things is important. \u201cRight before I would go up on any apparatus, I would just say a little prayer and then let it all go,\u201d she says. \u201cI let it go to autopilot and let my training take over. Because if you try to think too much, you overwhelm yourself and end up making uncharacteristic mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, Moceanu says that her mental game has been very beneficial to the rest of her life. \u201cSport is a model for life and it\u2019s helped me with my entire life, with my focus, discipline, and reaching my goals,\u201d she says. \u201cYou learn how to budget your time, to work hard, and to balance things. It\u2019s invaluable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moceanu agrees. \u201cI\u2019ve seen so many gifted athletes not make it because they couldn\u2019t handle the sport mentally. It\u2019s such a huge part of gymnastics\u2014really any sport once you get to a certain level. Only those with a strong mind are going to compete at a high level. Only those with a strong mind are going to win.\u201d
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Another link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Annika is now competing in gymnastics at level 7; there are a number of new and difficult moves she now has to perfect. One of these, as an example, is the back hand spring on the beam. Annika is at the point where she can successfully do it, but only when her coach is spotting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeofannika.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeofannika.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeofannika.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeofannika.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeofannika.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeofannika.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeofannika.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeofannika.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeofannika.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeofannika.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}