Have you ever really thought about focus? Prime Ski Racing author Jim Taylor, Ph.D., looks at focus from an athlete’s perspective, helping competitor’s concentrate attention in a winning way. He introduces us to the term “attentional field”: The thoughts, emotions, and physical responses within you as well as the outside sights and sounds you focus on. He asks us to think of focus as “the ability to attend to internal and external cues in your attentional field.”

A well-focused athlete knows where to focus her attention for the best results on the playing field. Some people find success through an internal focus style; they concentrate on their sport and technique while training or competing, knowing they can be “easily distracted by activity in the immediate surroundings.” Other competitors do best with an external focus style, focusing on outside sights and sounds right up until the moment of competition or while training, knowing that they over think if they are concentrating on their sport too much.

What type of focus works for you? Dr. Taylor suggests analyzing past races, thinking about the types of focus you used and which type of focus led to good results.

Dr. Taylor has many tips for developing focus. The simplest way to train your focus is to place your eyes where you need to focus. To get rid of external distractions (if this works for you) keep “your eyes down and on the course.” Or, if critical thinking ruins you, look around you and talk to other athletes before competition or during training breaks.

Dr. Taylor also tells us to “focus on what we can control.” We have heard this before and we will hear it again: The only thing under our control is ourselves. Unfortunately, the weather and everything else is just not under our jurisdiction. Dr. Taylor offers us the four P’s to help align our focus on ourselves:

Positive: Avoid negative thinking or replace each negative thought with a positive statement.

Process: “Focus on what you need to do to ski [play] your best,” from training to honing your technique.

Present: The past is over and winning is in the future. What are you doing at this very moment? Focus on the here and now.

Progress: Comparing yourself to others is a no-win situation. “Focus on your own improvement.”

Focus may seem simple, but developing the right type of concentration is vital. A sport psychologist can help you create the focus you need to play your sport at your optimum level.

We bring every past moment to the present moment. This is both good and bad. Thankfully, we carry all of our hard work: Every game we have played and each step of the training and practice. We also take the last mistake we made, such as a swing at a bad pitch or the pass you just dropped. This is why playing in this exact moment is vital. We need to let go of the mistakes while focusing on the positive stuff.

Of course, this isn’t an automatic occurrence, this learning how to be here right now. Luckily, we can learn how to play this way. Authors Ken Ravizza and Tom Hanson give us concrete steps to reach this goal in the book Head-Ups Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time. The first step on this path is self-awareness: “being aware of what is happening and then respond to it.”

Think of this as a traffic light. When your body is in the green, you are playing in the zone. You are playing well with no need to think. When your body is in the yellow, you are starting to have trouble. Maybe you didn’t hit your split time or you saw your girlfriend talking to her ex-boyfriend on the sideline. When your body is in the red, you are struggling: your mind is racing and you are tense, shaken, and completely out of the zone.

Ravizza and Hanson suggest making a chart of how your body reacts to each light. Think about your game and write down several examples of how you act while at each light. Now you know your body’s signals and you can be self-aware during practice and while in competition.

Next, practice gaining self-control when you are experiencing a yellow or red light. Ravizza and Hanson recommend these six techniques:

1. Recognize when you aren’t in control: Just realizing you have lost control can help you regain focus and change to the green light mode.
2. Breathe in and out three times, deeply, to change your mood.
3. Take a minute: If your sport allows it, take a break by doing something as simple as tying your shoelace.
4. Release negativity: Create a routine or gesture to let go of negative thoughts and feelings. Pick up a small stone, place your frustration on that rock, then toss the stone away from you.
5. Find a focal point: Find a spot, from a crack in the wall to the flag blowing in the breeze, and let this be the place you look at to regain focus when you are faltering. By looking here, you are acknowledging all the hard work that got you this far and will carry you to the next good place.
6. Carry yourself to confidence: Change your defeated body posture to a confident stance. “Keep your head up. Lift your sternum. Act like the most confident player you know. Think about your greatest performance and carry yourself the way you did that day.”

These are the first steps in learning how to play in the present moment. A sport psychologist can teach you more techniques for being present on the playing field, which helps us play the best possible game.

It’s not unusual for athletes to train according to the slogan “no pain, no gain.” Indeed, this is a worthy idea, unless it leads to overtraining. Sport Psychologist Kirsten Peterson, Ph.D., addresses overtraining in The Sports Psych Handbook (edited by Shane Murphy). She defines overtraining as an exercise program that leads to “an undesired outcome of fatigue and performance decrements.”

In other words, over-trained athletes are not completely burned out, but their bodies aren’t experiencing enough recovery time. Physical and psychological symptoms, writes Peterson, include (partial list):

• Muscle pain or soreness
• Weight loss
• Gastrointestinal disturbance
• Overuse injuries
• Loss of self-confidence
• Anxiety
• Emotional/motivational changes

The easiest way to see if you are experiencing overtraining is by taking your resting heart rate after you wake up and before you go to bed. Usually, athletes resting heart rates decrease through training, but if your training load is overly intense, your resting heart rate will increase.

Most athletes don’t enjoy (or even feel like themselves) taking days off, they believe it detracts from their ultimate goal. The beauty of recovery, though, is that it can take many forms and giving the body proper time to recover is essential to regenerate emotional and physical energy. Start practicing relaxation techniques such as progressive relaxation, autogenic relaxation, or guided imagery. Think of recovery as reducing stress in all areas of your life. For example, if your work life is too taxing or certain relationships are causing undue stress, try to alleviate those stressors. Peterson writes that recovery has three levels: physical, social, and environmental. Eating right, practicing yoga, or taking a hike on your day off are all physical ways to recover. Social recovery means participating with people you like in “social activities that are relaxing and rejuvenating.” And environmental recovery can be as simple as changing your training locale. A sport psychologist can help monitor training to see if you are overtraining and help you learn and uncover optimal recovery techniques for you.