Two Innate Motivators Athletes Need When Facing Performance Plateaus
All athletes on a journey to dominate their sport at some point hit a performance plateau.
Performance plateaus are those days, weeks, or even months where the momentum once driving continuous improvement fades away. This can happen after winning a big event, after an extended rest period, or after coming back from an injury.
It’s very frustrating for athletes with the drive to compete on an elite level to face a performance plateau. As a result, this frustration can often exacerbate the problem by driving the athlete to overtrain. To put it differently, the athlete is working harder but not smarter to get their mojo back.
Work Smarter to Overcome a Performance Plateau
When an athlete is in this situation, working harder is not usually the answer. Athletes who aspire to compete on an elite level are already driven to give their best effort. However, in the midst of a performance plateau the problem is that their best effort isn’t getting it done. Therefore, doing more of the same with higher intensity and longer hours isn’t the answer.
The answer comes from tapping into two innate motivators that universally drive athletic growth.
- Developing new competencies
- Demonstrating those new competencies
Nearly all athletes are wired to be motivated by developing and demonstrating competence. What’s more, when facing a performance plateau it’s very likely that the routine that got the athlete to where they are, will no longer be enough to get them where they need to go. In other words, the athlete’s routine has become stale.
Given that, performance plateaus are the perfect time to work on developing skills that may have been neglected over the years.
For most elite athletes, neglected technical skills are hard to uncover. Conversely, the softer mental skills are likely the area most ripe for an athlete to develop new competencies within. Good areas to investigate include skills such as:
- Visualization,
- Imagery,
- Meditation,
- Self-talk, and
- The four domains of emotional intelligence
In short, developing and demonstrating new competencies in one or more of these areas typically is exactly what an athlete needs to push past a performance plateau.