Mindset of a Champion

The Mindset of a Champion

What makes a champion?   We all admire and celebrate winners at competitions.  But why do they win?  How do they do it?   What makes these individuals different that allows them to be the best?   What we should be admiring instead is the process and mindset that they cultivate to win over many years.   A winning mindset is what we teach athletes on the Tahoe Yacht Club Race Team. 

Following are the top mental attributes of champions.   People are not born with these attributes, they think about them and cultivate them over time often with the support and guidance of a coach and other mentors in the sport.

1.  They love what they are doing.  Top athletes can’t wait to do their sport and view competition with excitement.   Every race/game is a mystery, like opening a present on Christmas.   What is going to happen?   One of the great things about sailing is that everyone can feel what it’s like to win.  Sometimes big surprises happen on the race course and the unlikely underdogs at the end of the fleet pull out a victory and this keeps them coming back for more.   Winning is  really fun and feels great.   This is a big motivator.

1. They have a strong will to win.  At the end of the day, Champions have the highest desire to win and will do everything in their power to make that happen.  They will train harder, eliminate weaknesses, seek out challenging training partners, and they will stick to a plan with discipline year in and year out.

1. They develop confidence and courage.   Champions have an unusually high level of confidence and courage which they develop through experience.  What is experience?  It’s failing over and over again, learning from mistakes.  Champions are not afraid to dream big and stick with that dream no matter what people around them think.  When the world tells them its not possible, they dig in further, say “wrong!” and channel that into motivation.   Confidence happens when they see positive outcomes through effort making incremental gains each season.

1. They dream and think about their sport.  Sports psychologists refer to this as “visualization” but champions do it it in a different way than you might think.  Most athletes visualize the medal around their neck, the applause of the crowd, the end result.  Champions visualize their processes during a race:  Accelerating in the last 5 seconds of the start, studying the course and the wind, gybing with speed down a wave to overtake a boat.  They don’t think about the end result.  They visualize going faster pulling ahead, they remember the race where they felt like they were in perfect control and the joy of performing well.

1. They love their competitors.  Champions understand that without other competing athletes there is no mystery or excitement.   They admire their competitors and can’t wait to line up with them at every event.   Competitors become friends.   Often life long friends.  Without other competitors there is no race.  Champions applaud when other athletes make a break through and they celebrate other competitors successes.

1. They are resilient.  Champions understand that winning is a long term process and that setbacks are inevitable.  When the chips are down, champions never quit and this is evident over and over again in sailing.   How many times have we seen regatta winners get the worst start and then dig in to pull out a top 3 finish?  It happens all the time. 

1. They are calm under pressure.  Champions have incredible focus on the “here and now”.  They are not thinking about winning.  They are focused with laser precision on the steps of a race and the order of actions needed to win.  When they make a mistake in a race, which they all do, they don’t mentally collapse or get upset.  They forget about the mistake and keep pushing hard with a quiet mindset.  Its often observed that champions have a cold calculating disposition and nothing rattles them.  Nothing rattles them because they know they are prepared.  They’ve put in the time, they’ve seen all the situations and they know what do do.

At the end of the day, Champions are made, not born.  They are influenced by coaches and mentors to cultivate a winning mindset.  It’s the combination of dreaming big, consistent effort, resilience, loving what they do and the courage to keep going despite the world telling them “No”.