Mental toughness goes hand-in-hand with all sports.
Coaches of all levels across the country praise being mentally strong, preaching a specific mindset heading into practices or competitions in hopes of tapping into an athlete’s full potential. For most sports, relying on physical talent and ability is the top priority, while mentality is just one piece of the puzzle.
For all athletes in the sport of running, mental toughness is the single-most important battle. When hitting the wall multiple miles into a race, finding the grit to fight against the warning signals from the mind boils down to the determination in a runner’s brain. Through the endless pain and discomfort, all runners can relate to the inner conflict between slowing down or stopping until the bitter end of a race.
Springfield College senior Harry Yablon of the men’s cross country team recognizes the importance of being mentally prepared for an upcoming race, having a routine of how he gets in the right mindset to perform at his highest abilities.
“I usually like to think about my race the night before,” Yablon explained. “Some of the things I usually say, and that I like to preach to my teammates, is that we need to stay focused. I got this from Coach (Charlie) Sullivan of the men’s volleyball team, and his definition of focus is being positive and connected. If you don’t have your vision in sight, then what’s the positivity for? If you’re not focused on the positivity of it, then you’re not going to perform to your best ability.”
Planning and strategizing beforehand is crucial to a successful race. However, when that plan goes astray, and the race unfolds in a different way than expected, it is easy to panic and lose the biggest weapon that runners have: their mentality. Yablon notes that staying calm and controlling the controllables are ways to regain focus in the middle of a meet.
“Running is a really unique sport in that you can think about things as they are happening,” Yablon said. “This gives you some degree of control over it as it’s happening through the race. There’s going to be times where you feel you went out too hard or not hard enough, or other crazy things may happen. It’s still keeping that goal in mind, but it’s realizing I have to keep pushing throughout.”
For Yablon, having a strong mentality can be the deciding factor between two runners of similar abilities. Knowing the advantages of this, the senior runner has become a vocal leader for a young cross country team, mentoring the younger athletes on how to flip their mindset and use it as a strength.
“Sharing with the team is less about what I can do, and more about trying to give them the toolkit to further develop themselves and keep pushing themselves further in their careers,” Yablon said. “Telling them that it’s okay to hurt. It’s okay to have to work hard, because that’s the whole point.”
Now, as the cross country team shifts their focus into postseason meets with the upcoming NEWMAC Championship and NCAA Mideast Regional Championships, the mentality can vastly change heading into the most important races of the season. Runners are no longer focused on running to improve their own times, but instead on giving their all, fighting for every position so the entire team can succeed.
“There’s definitely a shift,” Yablon said. “This past weekend, we had a bit of a taste of that championship season with our race at Harkness Park that is always a high-caliber meet. Getting that feel was really good, especially for people who haven’t been in that championship mode yet. By the time we get to our conference and regional meets, everyone knows what they have to do. The difference goes from it being a very individual sport to quickly becoming some of the most team-centric races, and the mentality has to shift with that.”
As the runners on the team begin to dial into their championship mentality, Yablon had a message for the team going into their final regular-season meet of the season, getting everyone psyched for one final push to close out the season.
“You’ve got to love competing,” Yablon said. “I told them, ‘If you’re not fired up, do you even have a pulse?’”