How to Build Confidence in Your Cycling

Negative thinking, especially during difficult rides, will hurt your cycling confidence and prevent you from riding your best. If you're ascending a long, steep climb and negative thoughts such as "I'm going to bonk" or "I can't hang with this group," pop into your head, chances are you're going to give up. What's worse, if you continue to think negatively when you train or race, it can create bad habits that are hard to break.

Bad habits, as it relates to your confidence, are just like bad technical habits: the more you repeat the behavior, the more ingrained it will become. You'll get better at being negative, and that isn't a good thing.

Fortunately, negative thinking can be retrained with awareness, control and repetition. The goal is to engage in enough confidence-building practice that a new positive-thinking habit replaces your negative thoughts.

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Let's look at several strategies that you can use to build your confidence and engage in positive thinking when cycling becomes difficult.

The Cyclist's Litany

The cyclist's litany is a group of statements that will help you to let go of negative thinking and increase confidence in your ability to ride your best. As with any habit, the only way to correct negative thinking is to practice being positive.

The litany is similar to a practice drill that many cyclists use to learn good technical skills. With repetition, you can retrain negativity and turn it into positive thoughts.

Here's an example of a cycling litany:

1. I love to train and race.
2. I am committed to giving my best effort in everything I do.
3. I think and speak positively on and off my bike.
4. I give 100 percent focus and effort when I train and race.
5. If I focus on riding my best rather than winning or losing, I will succeed.

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It's common when cyclists begin to use a litany such as this one to not really believe what they're saying. It's not a series of statements that you just need to read aloud. It's important to say the statements with energy, enthusiasm and with a sense of belief.

With sufficient repetition, you'll begin to believe what you're saying. This will generate positive emotions and physical feelings that will reinforce a positive message.

You can begin positive self-talk by creating your own litany that's personalized to your needs. Create statements that mean something to you. Say the litany out loud every morning and night, and before you train and race.

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Balance the Scales

The next time you're in a race, record the number of positive and negative thoughts you make. In most cases, the negatives will far outnumber the positives. Some of this is to be expected. Any cyclist who cares about the sport is going to feel and express doubt, frustration and despair.

In order to counter these feelings, it's important to balance the scales. An immediate goal is to increase the positives. This means rewarding yourself when you ride well. If you beat yourself up over a tactical error that causes you to get dropped by the lead group, why shouldn't you pat yourself on the back when you successfully made a difficult breakaway? Pump your fist, slap your leg, and say "yes" when you ride well. It'll psych you up and make you feel more positive about your accomplishments.

Your next goal is to tip the scales in a positive direction by reducing the negatives. Ask yourself, "Why am I so hard on myself when I ride poorly?" The best cyclists in the world have bad days. Why isn't it okay for you to have down periods or bad days as well?

Become aware of your negativity and do things that counter it. For example, after you make a mistake, instead of dropping your head and saying, "I stink," pump your fist and say, "Come on! You can do better!"

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Recent research found that negative experiences, such as negative self-talk, body language and emotions, carry more weight than positive experiences. In fact, 12 positive experiences are equal to one negative experience. This means that for every negative thought you have, whether you say it or not, you'll need to express something positive 12 times to counteract that one slip-up of negativity.

Because this takes so much effort to correct, focus on eliminating negative thoughts and tipping the scales toward positive thinking.

Thought-Stopping

As Earl Nightingale once said, "We become what we think about most of the time." Thought-stopping involves replacing negative self-talk with positive self-talk to become successful.

Start by making a list of the negative statements you commonly say to yourself when you're training and racing. Also make note of when you're more likely to have negative thoughts. Is it at the end of a grueling stage? Or during a tough climb? This will help you to become aware of your behavior so that you can put your focus on replacing these thoughts before they arise.

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For example, after a bad day of training, you might say, "I had a horrible race." Instead, replace that negative statement with something more positive: "I'll work hard and ride better tomorrow."

A thought-stopping sequence in training or competition should go as follows: When you start to think or say something negative, say "stop" or "positive." Then replace that thought with something positive.

Use Negative Thinking Positively

Even though it's important to emphasize being positive all the time, the truth is, you can't. You won't always ride as well as you want to and there are going to be negative thoughts. I became aware of this fact not too long ago while I worked with a group of highly-ranked junior cyclists.

One night at an evening dinner during one of our training camps, several cyclists approached me and said, "Sometimes things just stink and can't be turned into positivity." This got me to thinking. Sometimes, negative thinking can't be avoided, and, it could even be healthy. It means you care about your cycling and you want to do better.

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Negative thinking can also be motivating—if it's used correctly.

There are two types of negative thinking: give-up negative thinking and fired-up negative thinking. Give-up negative thinking involves feelings of loss and despair. "It's over" or "I can't win" are examples of this. You dwell on past mistakes and failures, and it lowers your motivation and your confidence. Your intensity might also drop, because in essence you're surrendering to defeat.

In contrast, fired-up negative thinking involves feelings of anger and energy, and can be used to give your psyche a boost. "I'm having a bad day. I hate riding this way." This will keep you motivated to improve so that it doesn't happen again. Fired-up negative thinking increases your desire to turn things around. Your physical intensity and your energy levels will go up. Your focus turns to being aggressive and separating yourself from the field.

If you can only be negative, choose to be fired-up and use it to your benefit.

Confidence Challenge

How are you going to respond the next time things aren't going your way? I call this the Confidence Challenge. It's easy to be confident when you're riding well, when the conditions are ideal, and when you're competing against a field than you're better than.

What separates the best pro riders, for example, is that the best cyclists in the world are able to maintain their confidence when they're going through a bad patch in their cycling. By maintaining confidence, they can continue to work hard rather than give up. In time, they believe that their cycling will improve.

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The challenge is being able to get through the down periods quickly and without losing your confidence.

To master the Confidence Challenge, there are several things you'll need to do.

• Develop an attitude that challenges should be sought out rather than avoided.
• Believe that experiencing challenges is the only way you can become the best cyclist possible.
• Realize that obstacles are supposed to make you uncomfortable.

It will be difficult and unfamiliar, but in time, you'll gain comfort and become a better cyclist.

Here are a few simple rules to follow to begin your own Confidence Challenge:

1. Seek out every possible challenge you can in training and in competition.
2. Be as prepared as possible to meet these challenges.
3. Stay positive and motivated when faced with difficult circumstances.
4. Focus on what you need to do to overcome these challenges.
5. Accept that you'll make mistakes and that you may not always succeed when you face a challenge.
6. See challenges as experiences that you can learn and improve from.
7. Never give up.

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