Confidence in Running

When we first start to run, hopefully we go back to basics of learning the correct movement patterns and running techniques needed that enable us to build solid and strong physical foundations. 

A - Agility

B - Balance

C - Coordination

And just like physical foundations, strong psychological foundations are just as important but often overlooked.

Acknowledging that there is a powerful, intimate connection between the mind and the body whilst understanding that equally, both need nurturing, support and training, can lead you fully reach your potential.

Think about it, when we don’t train our bodies, we are not surprised when we get out of breath running for a bus, it is universally accepted that unless you train/exercise you will be unfit. However, we repeatedly seem surprised when we become overwhelmed by longer working hours, more caring responsibilities, more emails, or a stagnation in our performance on race day, even though physically, the training has gone well. 

It doesn’t occur to us that our mind could be out of shape, and we often blame our physical fitness because it is just assumed our mind should be able to handle it all, that our physical training, that should be fined tuned by race, is going to magically carry us throughout the race. That how we are feeling when the race gets tough, when the self-talk turns nasty, or a comment from another runner knocks our confidence, is going to have no impact on how we perform.  We shouldn’t be surprised if we haven’t spent any time building our mind’s foundation.

In psychology and education, scaffolding is a well-known concept of how individuals learn, if we think of scaffolding on a building site, it is used to reach the next level of a building project.  This temporary structure allows builders to take the necessary steps to complete a project, without scaffolding, they would only be able to finish tasks on ground level.

If we relate this to building mental skills foundations, a good place to start would be confidence. If your confidence is low, you’re highly unlikely to achieve as your thoughts on yourself impact how you behave, so you end up stuck on ground level, never really getting further on with your “project” or in our case develop as a runner. 

By putting some scaffolding in place, for example setting small achievable goals combined with reflecting and writing down past, sometimes, non-running related experiences, confidence can build with a little support in place.