The return of the "Mental Minute"

In my constant quest to improve in every aspect of what we do, I have reached back to the past to a concept that we utilized with the team quite a while ago. It is my belief that the mental approach to our sport, and mental preparation, is vital to success as a runner. As a coach, I feel that sometimes it can be easy to overlook this. I try to keep it in the forefront of my mind, but sometimes it slips to the background. I guess just the realization that we should work on it more is a good thing. Now, we just have to work on it more.

Anyway, a tangible -- albeit small step -- way that we are working on it is by reintroducing the "Mental Minute." What is the Mental Minute, and where did it come from?

What: Each day before we begin our practice, I ask our athletes to lay on the backs and get into a relaxed state. Then, similar to the start of an interval in a workout, I start my watch and say, quietly, "Go." The only difference is that, instead of running hard on a trail loop, a hill or a track, we are asking our athletes to do the opposite. Stop. Breathe. Close your eyes. Relax. Think. Visualize. Get centered. We do this for a minute, give or take a few seconds. You would be surprised how long a minute is when you slow down the world to a halt.

Where did it come from: This was a concept I had initiated with the team many years ago, I believe back in the mid to late 1990s. In fact, I am pretty certain that Coach Chuck was a runner on our team when we instituted.

What's the point? To work on slowing the body and mind down, and putting ourselves into a relaxed state before a run or a workout. Also, equally important, this is a good exercise in priming the mind for visualization and mental rehearsing that I encourage all our athletes to do in the quiet of their rooms or homes, usually before bedtime. Such visualizations form mental imprints of upcoming efforts, allowing an athlete to have a "been there/done that" feeling in races.

Listen. We are just skimming the surface here. Entire books have been written on the subject. Post-graduate degrees in Sports Psychology focus on some of these very topics.

Just as the long run, the recovery days, the tempo runs, the interval training and the hills train our body, the "Mental Minute" is a 60-second reminder and primer to train our minds as well. Consider it the start to a process of an all-important area of our overall training.