Top 3 Mindset Tips
To help you ride and live with greater confidence.
I was recently asked to talk about my top 3 mindset tips on Ask a MTB Coach hosted by Joanna Yates. Joanna is a friend, inspiration, and phenomenal coach who lives in Sedona, AZ. It was a fun experience and I want to share my top 3 tips with you too!
I start all my adult private lessons and clinics with a brief chat about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. The book Mindset, by Carol Dweck from Stanford University demonstrates, through research, that people who have more of a growth mindset tend to be more successful than people with a fixed mindset. If you have more of a fixed mindset you believe your abilities are set in stone, failure is a direct reflection on your self worth, and you shy away from challenges. If you have more of a growth mindset you believe your abilities are malleable, that failure is an opportunity to learn, and you seek out and look forward to challenges. It’s important to note that mindset is a spectrum. You can move between growth and fixed and may find you have more of a fixed mindset in certain areas of your life and more of a growth mindset in others. For example, I have a heavy growth mindset when it comes to anything athletic. I happily mess up in order to improve. But put me in the classroom and it’s a completely different story where low test scores have plagued my entire life and my inner dialogue is very much that of a fixed mindset and sounds like, “I suck at math.” Take a moment to think about where you may already have a growth mindset, and where you have more of a fixed mindset. Just as our non dominant side can learn from our dominant side, I like to have my growth mindset brain coach my fixed mindset brain.
After reading books such as Mindset by Carol Dweck, A Beginner’s Mind by Yoyo Ma, and The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman I have hones in on the following 3 top mindset tips.
Ability is Malleable
Your abilities are not set in stone. You can improve. But you must prioritize the area in which you want to improve! In accademia we call this “deliberate practice.” In mountain biking, we call it “sessioning.” Pay attention to your inner dialogue. People with a fixed mindset speak in finite terms such as “I am terrible at drops,” or, I suck at switchbacks” When you believe your abilities are malleable your inner dialogue sounds like, “I haven’t figured out how to ride drops yet,” or, “I could use some help on my switchback technique.” Simply thinking about the skill you want to improve upon is not enough, you must get out and practice!
On the bike, a growth mindset can look like this:
Start with an open mind and don’t let previous experiences influence future actions or thoughts. For example, a client recently told me they “suck at drops.” Immediately, I encouraged my client to rephrase that statement to, “I want to get better at drops!” I always try to frame everything in the positive and this reframe gave us a target to focus on rather than an action to shy away from. We then started small, honed the basics, and slowly increased the drop size to build confidence!”
Abilities are malleable but you must set intention and focus to improve your skills or things will stay the same. Think of a skill you want to improve, then make a plan to practice your skill, or hire a coach!
2. Failure is part of the Process
When trying to improve, expect to mess up and expect to make mistakes. On the bike, this means expect to put a foot down, to crash, or retry (session) a section of trail multiple times before you nail it. I’ve made it a point in my kid programs to dissuade the word “easy.” If a feature is easy, what can we learn from it? It’s a rhetorical question because we learn when we struggle, not when things are easy.
If you show up to a jump clinic and expect to be throwing whips and tables within the hour you’re going to be disappointed and frustrated. But if you show up to the same jump clinic and expect to learn the skill of jumping, to struggle with it, and receive feedback, you will leave your clinic with a full cup and a clear path forwards. Expect to put in hours, possibly hundreds or thousands of hours, to practice, struggle, and ultimately improve. Think of a recent failure where the knowledge you gained was a greater benefit than the failure.
3. Where You Look is Where you Go
One of my top ride tips is, “where you look is where you go.” I learned this early on as an athlete on the lacrosse and soccer field when it came to shooting. You always want to look at the open sections of the net because if you look straight at the goalie that’s where the ball will go. While this is a physical skill - setting your eyes on an object or section of trail you want to move towards, it’s a mindset skill as well. Where you set your focus is where your focus will set. If you fixate on the negative aspects of your life, the workload, the lack of time, the chores you “have to do,” you will stay in a negative headspace. Try to switch your focus to the positive. The work you “get to do”, the time you have available, and look in the direction you want to go rather than the direction you want to avoid. I was working with a client last weekend on switchbacks and the moment he picked his eyes up and he set his gaze farther down the trail he felt his whole body rotate and the bike whipped around the corner! “Damn that was smooth!” he exclaimed. Practice this skill both on and off the trail. Where you look is where you go. Where are you looking?