Readers Question: Confidence and Plateauing

So this is my first answer to a topic request by a reader and it's a good one but, too long to answer everything in one post. The first focus of the question from the reader was on mental strategy and overcoming plateau's. Now after clarifying some of these topics with him the question evolved to this:
Question - "I would say my plateau would be my age now. But in my younger days it was turning from intermediate to pro. It sometimes is hard to have the confidence that you can actually go that fast. Injuries mostly held me back. The mental part was hard to overcome after being injured. I see lots of trainers focusing on the physical side, but not the mental aspect. Which to me it is kind of like golf. Sometimes it is harder to focus than other days. I now am like vet intermediate at 43 I still compete in over 30 from time to time."

Answer: So first off YES age can be a real plateau for many reasons. Typically it's because you've realized that your bones will break and that it all adds up to some giant hospital bills. I think truly in this sport physical abuse from injury and a change in mental state from that abuse, leads to the end of a persons career. A now friend of mine Dwayne De Rosario, a 35 year old professional soccer player who is 6th overall leading goal scorer in MLS history, eludes to a couple more seasons still left in him. The true expected peak of a professional soccer player is in their late 20's and early 30's. Just considering that alone, leads me to feel even more confident of abuse from major injuries and shift in mental focus being the main culprit in stepping down from ones position in the sport. If you don't buy into that, just think of our very own 31 year old legend Chad Reed. He is truly competitive regardless of this past season and he still thinks the risk is worth the reward.

Secondly, a plateau in ability from intermediate to pro is most likely from a lack in change of training stimulus; based on my opinion. I wasn't there for your training and to deal with everything as a whole and resultantly, my answer would be lack of change in training. The best analogy I can come up with for this is something that I think most of us can relate to, hitting a plateau when lifting weights. Most of us have been there and gone through that experience.

So you're lifting weights and your not getting any stronger or making any progress forward. You start asking people about it and you get the following answer most of the time; change your training. So what do you end up doing? Maybe you switch to lighter weight and go for time instead of reps, you increase the overall volume or you drop the reps and start increasing the weight. These are all simple logical explanations for how you break through that physical plateau. Respectfully, you always will hit a slight plateau and then have to adjust. This is why most models of physical performance follow an near staircase effect, like the one below. Specific things to help you break that plateau are all situation specific and depend upon what you are or aren't doing. In terms of motocross specific, it comes down to creating some kind of new training stimulus and that is something I am working on developing. My next post will actually be entirely focused on one major idea for accomplishing this.

Your question about mental strategy I guess really has more to do about overcoming lack of confidence as a result of frequent and devastating injury; I assume. One of the most encompassing models to evaluate this situation is from Brewer (1994), Cognitive Appraisal Model of Psychological Adjustment to Athletic Injury:

This chart is an adapted version applied to dance. We will re-write this with a motocross focus. What happens here is that you crash and you break your leg. Then you have you have both personal and situation factors that impact the future progression of your injury. Personal factors are related to how well you cope with the situation, how this impacts your self identity, how well you take care of yourself previously and individual stress's that you encounter daily. Situation factors can be how well you're supported by others, how quickly your sponsors will forget about you, what kind of treatment is possible for you and other things more outside of your control. These all come together to create an interpretation in your mind, of how this injury will impact you. Then following is the flood of emotions like anger, depression and disbelief. This comes to a final impact on your behavioral response to treatment and rehabilitation. Rather long winded but, it all comes together to impact your performance in the future.

Say you had a negative response to all of this. Now when you come back your always thinking about this. It plagues your mind and slowly eats away at your confidence. Your response to the situation is to not do your rehab exercises all of the time and rebuild everything as a whole. It's not just the injury but, everything as one that develops your confidence. The smartest thing I've ever heard from Tony Alessi was when Mike re-injured his knee at Thunder Valley a few years back. He said you now have to rebuild the entire rider. Your fitness, your nutrition, your discipline, your preparation, your training, how you talk to yourself; everything here impacts your confidence level. If you install an electrical circuit in a house and are missing one little piece, the lights don't turn on. Your performance is the same.

Mental training and strategy is important, especially after injury. Without making this post any longer what I can tell you is this; I do have several posts coming up about these topics specifically. Methods and strategies for improving mental performance encompasses a lot of things that need to be broken apart and hit in depth. These things will come soon, but the best answer for now is to look up Positive Self Talk. Talking to yourself the right way can have a huge impact on your performance.