The angle of approach

This blog is a reflection on my approach to competitions and training. Right now I'm training hard, enjoying training and improving in training. They say that a competition is just a marker of how your training is going. If you relax and let your training come out, the result takes care of itself. Lance Armstrong said that his confidence came from approaching the start line knowing he'd had trained harder than everyone else there.

I've had a strange approach to competitions through my time in fencing. The first angle was when I first started competitions. I liked not knowing what round I was in, who I was about to fence or where I was ranked. I then enjoyed surprising myself when I was told where I'd come (or easily forgetting my result when I didn't like the answer). I just enjoyed beating the person in front of me. And it was with this light hearted approach that I climbed up the junior, then senior and finally world rankings. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't light hearted towards training and fighting, but the results and rankings were less important to me.

This is a fine attitude to have as you're making progress and improving all the time. It had been enjoyable exceeding expectations and the pressure was minimal. My motivation to continue to train was almost entirely intrinsic. But once reaching high up into the rankings the approach took a very different angle. Suddenly the results were everything to me. They were so much to me that I didn't dare take any risks, and I never let my training come out. As you'd expect my results stopped improving and instead, worsened. Training and competitions were fuelled by extrinsic motivation. And I slowly built up an almost phobia of competitions, international and domestic.

Then, last weekend, something interesting happened; I'd applied to a relatively local, relatively small open in Hereford and Worcester. But, very unprofessionally of me, I got the days mixed up and missed it. I would have almost expected a sense of relief that I didn't have to put myself through the harrowing experience that I find competitions, but instead I felt a definite sense of disappointment. Thus, perhaps my self image of someone terrified of competitions is incorrect. And instead, I hope I have managed to grasp a more relaxed but excited approach to competitions once more. More perceptive than I originally was, but more relaxed than my recent approach. Somewhere in between my two previous angles.

I have the national championships tomorrow. There would have been times throughout this year, that I'd have made myself ill with worry. But now, instead I have nerves of anticipation and excitement. And I feel confident in myself that I'll let my training come out and, more importantly, enjoy the challenge.