Psychology in Sport.  We’ve all read or heard about it, even if we don’t know it.  Any time you read an interview with an athlete and they talk about what they thought when they were performing.  Be it Jonny Wilkinson’s all most faultless kicking game in rugby or the approach to a game by a premier league footballer it’s a constant part of performance.  That’s psychology, so needless to say it plays a huge part in a lot of sports.  It was this time last year when as part of my Psychology degree I decided to investigate what role it played in our humble sport.  The results could be surprising to some, read on.

When you think about what we actually do out on the hills or mountains when we’re racing or even just riding with friends it seems obvious, to me at least that our psychology or our mental state should play a significant role in what we do and how we do it.  If we look at the top racers, they’re all massively talented so what splits them?  It was, and still is a theory of mine that downhill racing is primarily a head game that is to say a psychological battle.

Before I started I had a hunch about what I’d find.  Some based on common sense having ridden Downhill for years and some were based on what I’d been taught in lecture theatres.  So what was it exactly that I was looking for?  In basic terms I was interested as to whether a racers mindset and mindset alone could influence their performance.

This has been discussed a bit on the forum before so some of you might have your own opinions, I know I had mine.  But as my tutor went to great lengths to explain to me, opinions alone are not enough in what is essentially a science.  So in the middle of January 2009 I set about to find out some facts at a very cold Aston Hill.

When it comes to influencing performance there are a lot of different techniques that coaches and sport psychologists can use to help the athlete to focus and hopefully improve.  I’ll concentrate on Imagery in this article.  Imagery can be used to help athletes in several different ways, for my study I concentrated on using it to improve confidence purely because it was the most obvious option.  But in later articles I’ll explain some other methods and how you can use them if you want to give it a try in your own time.

Imagery, or visualisation is put simply a way of using your own imagination to create an image in your head which can then be related to your own performance.  It was this that I coached my participants in for my study primarily because it is widely regarded to be the most effective in a limited time-scale.  So here’s how it works (in theory) First of all the riders spent a few hours practicing the track that we’d be testing on so that they knew it well, similar to a race day.  I created a “script” which was given to each of the riders.  This basically consisted of a scenario that they should imagine, they were given two different scripts which each consisted of the rider imagining their “perfect run”.  In one they visualised it from a first person perspective, and the other in the third person as though they were watching themselves on TV.

Each rider read the script and was then given two minutes to spend in silence focussing on the scenario and visualising it as best they could (Fabian Barel shows a good example of this in at least one racing film, turning imaginary bars with his eyes closed)  then they went.  Three times runs, one as they would normally then one using each of the techniques.  That just left me with some times to analyse.

Fabian Barel - Screen shot from 3Focus

I gave each of the riders a questionnaire before and after each run to get an idea of what they thought about what I’d asked them to do.  Not scientific but if they don’t like it, they won’t do it.  This was my first surprise, I had reports of riders feeling more confident, having more fun, being more aggressive and generally feeling faster.

It was great to see some positive response from most of the riders, after all downhillers seem to be an exceptionally sceptical bunch, but what I was really interested in was whether or not the numbers backed up general feeling.

So did they?  Well, on the whole the answer is yes.  Times were generally faster when the riders used imagery compared to when they didn’t (there was one exception when a rider crashed).  The time differences weren’t big enough to be “scientifically significant” which basically means I need to do more research, but from a racers point of view with a biggest improvement of 22seconds, and a smallest of 0.31 seconds in a sport where we say every second counts it definitely looks to be something worth considering if you take your racing seriously.

Obviously a study like this doesn’t take in to account things like rider error or weather conditions, that’s something that needs a longer more detailed study (watch this space) but it certainly does give riders a potential extra training element to consider.
In the next article I’ll go in to a bit more depth about what “psychology” actually is in a sporting context, and hopefully how you can incorporate it in to training or even in to “normal” riding.  If you’ve got any feedback or any questions send me an email to – This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Pictures by Dave Franciosy