Success begins and ends in your mind

Whenever I talk to racers, I ask them what aspect of our sport seems to have the greatest impact on how they ski. Almost unanimously they say the mental part. I then ask how much time they devote to their mental preparation and their answer is almost always little or no time.

Despite its obvious importance, the mental side of ski racing is most often neglected, at least until a problem arises. The mistake racers (and parents and coaches) make is that they don’t treat the mental side of ski racing the same way they treat its physical and technical sides. You don’t wait to get injured before you do physical conditioning, do you? You don’t develop a technical flaw before you work on your technique, do you? Of course not. You do physical and technical training to prevent problems from arising. You should approach the mental game in the same way.

Contrary to what you may think, at whatever level in which you’re competing, the technical and physical aspects of ski racing don’t usually determine the winner. Racers who compete at the same level are very similar technically and physically. For example, on the World Cup, is Marcel Hirscher physically stronger than Felix Neureuther? Is Anna Fenninger more technically sound than Laura Gut? In both cases, the answer is likely no. So, on any given day, what separates Ted Ligety from Alex Pinturault or Tina Maze from Tina Weirather? The answer lies in who wins the mental race.

When you ski race, you will, in fact, be competing in three competitions. The obvious competition is the one that occurs against the rest of the field, the goal of which is to get the best result possible. But before you compete against the field, there is another competition you must win, namely, the race against the course, in which it does everything it can (course, snow and course conditions, terrain, weather) to beat you. But even before that, the most important race that you must prevail in is the mental race in which you compete against yourself. Here is a simple reality: If you don’t win the mental race, you won’t win the race against the course or against your competitors.

Want to learn more?

Download my new Prime Ski Racing: Psychology of Championship Skiing e-book. It introduces you to a new way of looking at the mental side of our sport. This e-book is filled with powerful lessons that racers and coaches can benefit from.