Nike Abiodun and Tyra Boug are two of the top hurdlers in Canada. With their veteran experience in an event where so much can go wrong, they share some choice advice on how to get over a bad competition.
Nike’s Advice
Learning how to get over a bad race is something i think i’ll be working on for the rest of my athletic career, I think it’s really easy to get into a bad headspace and to dwell on things about your performance, but the mental aspect of track and field in my opinion is just as important as the physical aspect so I think it’s really important to take some time and master it.
On our team we talk a lot about process goals versus performance goals. For example a process goal would be to have a powerful first step outside of your blocks, whereas a performance goal is to run an 8.40 in your hurdle race. But let’s say you ran an 8.45 and so you’re not happy because you fell short of your goal, well you can still break it up. You say, well it was my goal to run an 8.40 but it was also to have a powerful first step and if you did have a powerful first step and something happened later in the race you can separate the two. Just say OK, I did one thing that was right, and I also did something that wasn’t right. But breaking it up for yourself instead of just deciding something is a failure is important.
I think there’s good and bad in every single race. Just because you didn’t have a powerful first step doesn’t mean the rest of the race wasn’t good or vice versa, it’s also important to not dwell on things that you’re not happy about. I think it’s very important to feel the way that you’re feeling and allow yourself to have your moment and get your emotions out, but I definitely don’t think you should take that to bed. I don’t think you should go to sleep angry about your performance, just take what was good and what was bad, learn something from it and then apply it forward for next time.
I think it’s also important that you recognize that you’re working with yourself instead of working against yourself. If it’s not going to prove to be beneficial to just be upset about your performance and dwelling on it, then don’t. Don’t just beat yourself up when you can instead take that mistake and apply it to your next performance and make sure that you don’t make the same mistakes.
Tyra’s Advice
Coming from a very technical event I’ve learned that even though there’s so many things for me to focus on and so many things that I’m trying to get better at, they all progress differently. I’m trying to work on my block starts but at the same time I need to work on my hurdle form. There’s so many elements to both of those, the more I hyperfixate on any single of those things when I’m going to be racing, the worse my race goes. Sometimes you just need to let go and let yourself just perform, and it’s hard to do that when I’m hyperfixating on certain technical elements. But that can be frustrating because I want to fix one element, but the harder I try to fix it, the slower I run or the poorer my performance is. I’ve learned that there are always good and bad parts to every race and every performance and those are all just pieces of a puzzle. Maybe in one race a certain part really clicked but something else didn’t, those are all valuable and they’re all tools in your tool kit. You’re building those pieces together so then once that race comes where it all comes together, it’s going to be great.
If it’s not a physical take away it can be a mental thing you can learn from as well. Ive had races where I really underperformed but even though I might not have felt like there were any physical takeaways I had from that race, there were mental takeaways. I;ve dealt with extreme stress and nervousness and anxiety going to the race and a lot of self doubt, but I got through it anyways. There’s races where I didn’t perform physically but I proved to myself that I can do it mentally. One race does not define you, you really can’t take it personally.
There’s hills and valleys through every season and honestly, we have some long seasons where it’s really difficult to be on your A game on every race. That is so hard and really unrealistic, so you have to recognize that and realize that maybe this weekend didn’t go well but there is another one coming up. There are so many instances where somebody has a race that doesn’t go well, but the next meet they completely blow everything out of the water and it goes awesome. One race does not predict the next and you just have to focus on what’s next up.