There’s not much for me to say here. The arm chair athlete might have the best strategies and ideas to win, however it’s easy to know what to do when you’re imagining it and not so easy when it’s crunch time.
The only way to get to the top is to get off your bottom: to put yourself in that situation, that moment, under pressure and see what you do. That’s the only way to get better at performing for real, in the game.
Now, people who know me know I am a huge supporter of visualization – and so you might be thinking this Mental Toughness Tip opposes visualization (since you do visualization while sitting on your bottom), and that’s not the case.
Even visualizing is getting off your bottom, in fact it’s getting of your bottom more than most athletes do as most athletes and high performers do not train their mental toughness.
When I say get off your bottom, I mean get in action towards your goals. Whether that action be visualizing, doing your workout for the day, eating according to plan, doing extra technical repetitions, whatever it is for you.
And sometimes you won’t want to – I know I didn’t always want to – and that’s irrelevant. The point is to get off your bottom, do something, get in action, and with each step you’ll get closer to the top.