You are what you practise.

Most athletes have a set of default states they practise without knowing it. Rushed warm-ups. Internal chatter at the first sign of effort. A particular way of holding the shoulders when tired. All of it rehearsed over months, and all of it showing up when the stakes are high.

We pay very close attention to our physical patterns while the mind runs scripts that are decades old, mostly unconsciously. Those scripts come out to play exactly when you least want them to.

It cuts both ways. If you practise giving up, giving up is what you will do. Don’t train your brain to make permanent habits out of temporary states.

A successful performance is simply a whole bunch of present moments stitched together. If you can stay with the process in training, the same will appear on race day. If your head is all over the place, past and future, in training, that is where it will be when it counts.

Ticking sessions off does not build anything. Being present with them does.

That doesn’t mean you stop logging speeds or measuring the work. It means you stop labelling and judging it while you are in it. Measure afterwards. During, stay in the body.

Most of the time a session mimics the energy you bring into it. So set your intention before each one. Feel it, set it, then pay attention to it.

I know, just another thing to do. But this habit matters more than the physical session itself. Skip it, and you drag yourself through one unconscious session after another, then carry that same state of mind into your race.

Make the check a ritual, and keep it simple. Bring a yes to each session. Then the sessions become a yes to the week, the weeks a yes to the months, and the habit brings a yes to the years.

If you can’t regulate your emotions in training, you won’t regulate them when it matters most. Spit the dummy when a session goes wrong and you are training yourself to spit the dummy when the race goes wrong. That is a losing habit.

Between what happens and what you do about it there is a space, and in that space you get to choose. Let the impulse to react be there without acting on it. Practise that often enough and you will race without reacting.

So invite a little discomfort in training. It is how you learn to respond to what happens, rather than react to what you don’t want.

Start by watching, impartially, like an observer. Be curious. Why do I have this thought? Where does it come from? When did it start? You don’t have to get rid of it. Once you see it, you get to choose whether you follow it.

• Watch your words. Never speak against yourself, not even as a joke. The unconscious records it.
• Rehearse the race in a quiet space, the way you want it to feel: strong, moving with flow.
• Repeat the new pattern as patiently as you would a new stroke. A lifetime of thinking does not change in a few sessions.

I have a mind, but I am not the mind. That is where the change starts.

Champions race on instinct because the work is already in them. That is the whole point of rehearsing well: on the day, you get to stop thinking and let it run.

Many people start events lost. There is no trust, because they never set any markers to trust in training. The race becomes the same unknown they trained with.

Four questions to take into your next session:

• What am I actually practising?
• Am I present, or just ticking it off?
• What would a better rehearsal look like?
• Do I trust the work enough to let it run?