Faster by Michael Hutchinson

Author:Michael Hutchinson [Hutchinson, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408843741
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

CHAPTER 5

A rider like a robot:

the psychology of an athlete

I had such high hopes for sports psychology. Long ago, prompted by the confident assertion of a top professional (I forget which one) that ‘90% of time trial ability is in the mind’, I decided to train my brain. It was probably raining outside.

From the perspective of the present, the statement has all the plausibility of a claim that 90% of chess-playing is in the pancreas. It was at best stupidity, at worst an attempt to deflect attention from all the other things going on in the late 1990s that might more realistically have been reckoned to constitute 90% of time trial ability.

In my defence, everyone thought then that psychology was the key to all the riches sport had to offer. The talk was of little else, and there was a perception among those of us who knew nothing about it that it was the shortest of shortcuts. In much the same way as I always buy the second cheapest bottle of wine, I bought the book with the jacket blurb that promised the second-most extravagant results, because I didn’t want to be unrealistic.

On a warm, summer afternoon, I lay down on my back in a darkened bedroom, as instructed, wearing loose clothing, my arms beside me, palms downward, eyes closed, and I ‘visualised’. I summoned up on a flickering screen in my head the forthcoming Commonwealth Games, an event that was clearly going to be a critical moment in my career. I knew it mattered more than everything I’d done up to that point.

The book had told me that the more detail I could include, the more effective the mental training would be, so I took in getting to the venue on the Games bus and getting changed in a tent. Since the Games were in Manchester, I visualised lashing rain. This is not a joke. I went through my warm-up at about half-speed, the better to absorb the nuances. I rolled to the start ramp, seeing every face in the expectant crowd. And then I rode the race, right there in the gloom of my bedroom.

The idea was that by rehearsing the actions – I’m afraid I’m quoting from memory here – you ‘fire all the neurons involved in the action itself! This means your nervous system will already be highly trained before you even attempt the actions for real!’ In other words, just add muscle.

After a bit of practice, I got pretty good. My heart rate elevated a little, my breathing got faster. It felt real. When I switched my attentions to track racing, I found that if I tried a similar exercise with a stopwatch in my hand, I could time the four-and-a-half minutes of a pursuit race almost perfectly. Had I been a bit more astute, I’d have found it significant that the time I always got on the stopwatch was the time I could already do, not the one I needed.

It didn’t ultimately make me a better bike rider.

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