#bymacarena

G O A L S

Not often thought of as a powerful mental tool but it is. Everywhere you look on social media right now goals is sort of a new catchphrase and everything is “goals”. You can have goals about pretty much anything from relationship goals to body goals to brunch goals (yea... that’s a thing). But I’m talking about a slightly different type of goals.

Remember SMART?

S= Specific

M= Measurable

A= Attainable

R= Realistic

T= Time frame

Yea, I hated it too. Ever since it got introduced to me at school and then again at uni, I hate it. It may work for some, but for me it was just a pain (sorry, coach!). I have a different mindset when it comes to goals. I always hated writing them down. To me, writing them down didn’t really help define them because that piece of paper was thrown away and never looked at again. Just because you wrote them down doesn’t mean you feel it in your soul. I always defined them in my head because I found that to be so much more powerful and personal to me. So here’s how I set goals:

1. Have a clear vision (kind of like my version of a long term goal)

I may not know what I wanna do with my life but I always know where I want to get to with skating. Your vision may not necessarily be results based (eg getting first at Nationals) or even performance based. It can simply be a feeling. If you’re an overly anxious person at competitions, your vision for skating may be to enjoy competitions. If you hate trainings but love competitions, your goal may be to simply enjoy every aspect of skating. Defining your vision may take some soul searching so I’ve written a few key questions to ask yourself that may  help you get in touch with what you want.

- Why do you skate?

- Who do you skate for? If it’s anyone other than yourself, why not yourself?

- What would make you the happiest in general?

- What do you hope to gain from your skating?

Yea, that got deep and meaningful pretty fast (sorrynotsorry).

2. What are you going to do to make that happen?

It really is that simple. You want to win at Nationals? Then what do you need to work on to get there? You want to stop being anxious before competitions? What needs to be done to get you there? You want to learn to do an axel? Great! What do you need to do?

But it’s not just about what you’re going to do but also the who, where, when and how.

Who is going to help you make your vision a reality, how are they going to help you, who will support you, where can you find the support you need, when will you practise more, how will you get stronger, where will you find people or resources to help you get there...

3. What are you going to do today to make your goal a reality?

This is the most important. “Today” does not have to be just the day. It can be this month, this training session, this next hour, this minute, this second... The beauty of this method of thinking about goals is it’s PROACTIVE and unique to YOU. You decide how little or how big of a chunk out of your goal you want to take. It might be that today, you’re not even training but doing that piece of homework will mean that tomorrow you can go to training worry free. It might be that you’re at work with nothing to eat but you know you’ll have a crap rest of the day if you don’t get something nutritious to fill you up. 

For me, I deal with lots of things in my head. My head is an interesting place. Sometimes it can get quite hostile. I have to constantly remind myself to take everything in small steps. So for me, it will always be this one question:

What can I do in this next hour that will get me closer to where I want to be tomorrow?

4. Celebrate each and every step. No matter how big or how small

Everyone thinks medals are the reward. That standing on the podium is somehow representative of how much work you put in. The reality is, only you know how much work you have put in. Of course medals and trophies are amazing. But they’re the icing on the cake. The cake is the blood sweat and tears that got you there. So why would you wait until months from now to celebrate your hard work?

You learned your straight line? Have a dance party! You learned how to three turn? Post it on social media! You managed to get through the day without breaking down? Eat some chocolate! You managed to make a healthy eating choice? Reward yourself with new clothes!

I hate the saying “don’t sweat the small stuff” because it’s the positive small stuff that counts! Everyone forgets that in order to build a freedance or to learn a jump you first had to learn each section of the jump or dance. So don’t forget to give yourself a break and truly celebrate every step of the way.

5. Your goal will look 100% different to everyone else’s.

For this section, I’m going to leave you with this quote:

Why quinoa? 

It is a low fat, high carb, high protein gluten free grain. Perfect for those vegetarians worried about their protein intake or those meat eaters worried about their cholesterol. It is low in the glycemic index which means it is high energy but releases it slowly to keep you going for longer and doesn't produce a blood sugar spike. The high protein content also keeps you fuller for longer. The quinoa grain is a great substitute for rice or pasta. It has a bit of a nutty flavour (in my opinion). 

Why dates?

They're naturally high in sugar and have a high rating on the glycemic index. 1 date has around 60 calories! But don't freak out! Calories are not the enemy as we've been brought up to believe. A calorie represents how much energy is needed to raise the temperature of water by 1 degree. Just because something is high calorie doesn't mean it's unhealthy and just because something is low calorie doesn't mean it's healthy. It's the quality of the calories that's important. Dates are a great way to add sweetness without using white processed sugar. Another great alternative is coconut sugar or bananas. 

What you'll need (1 serving):

1/2c whole grain oats 

1/4c quinoa cereal 

1c water (use 3/4c if you're skipping quinoa) 

1/4c choice of milk (I use almond and coconut) 

Handful of dates 

Toppings: 

cacao powder for chocolate flavoured oats

banana

nuts and seeds

cinnamon 

Method 

1. Add oats, quinoa, dates and liquid to a pot on the stove top 

2. Boil over a medium heat 

3. Just wait for the liquid to evaporate until they’re at your preferred consistency. I like mine quite thick. 

4. Mash the dates into it and top with whatever you want 

Strength phase 

At the moment, I'm concentrating a lot on building strength. I'm doing hardly any cardio (hiit maybe once or twice a week. Check previous post on how to do this), I'm skating twice or 3 times a week and I'm trying to lift heavy at least 4 times a week. My goal for the next little while is to get strong (for example, I really want to hit 80kg back squat by the end of the year. I'm at 60kg at the moment). It is the same goal I have after every competition. This is the time to settle into new dances, make up new style/free dances and nail the new steps. It's kind of the "building blocks phase" with not much emphasis on aerobic fitness. 

General aerobic fitness +strength 

The next phase is where I build general aerobic fitness. I will probably be skating more by the time I hit this phase. This is the time where you've finished your programmes, you're starting to get confident in your new content but you feel like you're struggling when you get near the end of the programmes. After focusing for so long on strength, you get aerobically unfit pretty fast! What I like to do is start off with a few weeks of steady state cardio (no more than 20min on the bike 2-3 times a week + skating training) and then move on to some interval based training. Remember that when you're on skates, this counts as interval training (as long as you don't sit around doing nothing for too long) so you can't follow usual guidelines of trying to do hiit 3 times a week if you're also skating 3 times a week. If you're still going to do strength training during this time (which I do) that would leave you absolutely exhausted and do the opposite of helping your skating. Remember, the gym/off skate training is there to enhance your skating. Not make it worse. I would aim to do 3-4 interval sessions total (including your skating) plus 3-4 strength training sessions concentrating on all major body groups and maintaining/building on the strength you built before this. This phase is just to prepare you for what comes next... Which is the hardest stage of training (in my opinion) 

Power + specific sport related exercise 

This is where I do my plyometric work to develop power. For this you need strength and anaerobic fitness (interval training-start stop type stuff). This is the phase where you get fast and jump higher. It is the most specific to skating. This involves jump lunges, sprints, box jumps, squat jumps, plyo push ups, off skate jumps (although you can be doing these right from the start if you're a free skater- give the other gym goers a show) or lifting lighter than usual weights at a faster pace. It is important that prior to this type of training that you build a base of strength and anaerobic fitness in order to get through power workouts. 

Taper phase 

People often forget this even though it's the most important! 2-3 weeks prior to competition you should reduce the VOLUME of your training (less training sessions) but keep the intensity as high as your last phase. So if you followed this type of programme, you would keep doing power/plyo training and back to back routines but maybe skate only 2-3 times a week. Keep the intensity high, for less amount of time. I like to take 2-3 days completely off before travelling to competition and concentrate on stretching and breathing/mental practise. 

So here's a summary of what a programme would include (I have the luxury of a long break so I can come back stronger than ever. Time lines are only a rough guide): 

Strength training phase 3-4+ months prior to competition 

4-5times a week 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps You should fail on the last rep 

1-3 cardio sessions including skating 

 General aerobic fitness +strength 2-3 months prior 

3-4 sets of 8-12 reps Weight should make you fail on the last rep 

Add in 2-3 extra general cardio sessions on top of skating 

1-2 hiit sessions (on or off skates) 

  Power + specific sport related exercise 1-2 months prior 

2-3 power/plyo sessions a week 

1-2 strength sessions a week 

3-4 skating sessions 

Taper (depends on what you built up to in previous phase. weights should stay the same. Don’t start anything new)

1-2 power/plyo 

1-2 cardio 

2-3 skating sessions (high intensity) 

 As you can see, most of the work is happening 2-3 months prior to competitions. This is the ideal but not always possible. There are a million ways to structure programmes. This is the way I've chose to structure mine this time because of all the time I have on my hands. This doesn't mean you can't do it any other way. Different trainers will have different techniques/philosophies/experiences. Trainers learn through trial and error. I haven't always kept to this because sometimes life happens and this isn't realistic. Sometimes I skip phases or I don't even have phases and just do whatever. Sometimes I only skate and that's it! 

What I'm trying to say is this is only 1 way out of a million ways to train for skating. Maybe this isn't even the best but this is what I'm going to follow for now based on what I've learnt from ice skating books, my sport science degree and my own experience. 

I think it’s important that we as coaches educate ourselves in mental techniques to help our athletes over come their own mental struggles and teach the skater to talk to themselves in a positive and encouraging way. No matter what you say to your athlete, it means nothing if they don’t actually believe you. You can be saying the best things in the world but if they are going to talk to themselves negatively before a competition, they won’t perform their best. Often it feels like there’s nothing you can do as a coach and a skater. You begin to feel like the skater is doing it to themselves but a negative head space is not something you can simply “snap out of”. Anxiety and stress have very real mental and physical consequences and it is important to understand this as a skater and a coach. I have been there both as a skater and as a coach. Some times I have let my head run away with me and allowed it to ruin my competition. But I have also been there and over come these thoughts as a skater and helped my skaters over come them as well. Skaters: It is not as hopeless as you may think. A negative head space is just that, a head space.You got yourself into it and you are capable of getting yourself out with the right tools. You do not have to suffer and succumb to your negative thoughts. You don’t have to accept them as fact. They are just thoughts.  And coaches, just because you watch a skater “self destruct” before a competition, does not mean this has to be the reality forever. Not all is lost. I have never known of a skater who puts themselves down on purpose. They just need your help to learn how to regain control over their own head. It is possible with time and effort to turn it around. It won’t happen overnight but with perseverance, it is possible. I am here to educate you on how to get yourself (or your skater) out of it and hopefully convince you that it is worth learning about.

Just to back up my point of view, we’ve been over this in one of my neuroscience classes (shoutout to sportsci 305). One study stood out to me and really illustrated what I already knew to be true. I’ll quickly summarise it here so you don’t have to read boring articles. They gathered people who had never played the piano before and were asked to play a piece. Then they were given time to physically practise, mentally practise or not practise at all. They were tested before and after and the number of errors were counted. Obviously, the group who didn’t practise did the worst and the group that physically practised did the best. However the mental practise group still improved even though they’d done no physical training. So mental practise is beneficial but not the absolute best by itself. The best part of this study was that they didn’t stop there. They then combined physical and mental practise and the group that did both made even fewer errors and performed better than the physical practise group! When they said this I was sitting in class like duh! Of course it worked! I do this every day! But now I know I’m not just some hippie with this weird idea because it’s been scientifically proven. 

Just to quickly explain how, when you do a movement and you practise, your brain gets more efficient and your nerves will “fire” faster and quicker the next time you do it until it becomes so fast that you stop thinking about it. This is what’s happening when you feel something becomes easier (and the reason why you must practise), your brain is becoming more efficient at performing the skill. It’s essentially building a “map” of how to do the skill. With mental practise, it is sort of like you’re preparing (priming) your map of the skill without even doing it physically. So when you go to practise, your brain already has a map of which pathways and nerves it wants to activate in order to perform the skill. If you were to look at brain activity during mental practise and physical practise, the same pathways and areas of the brain woul light up because they follow the same map. (Message me if you want more info cos this could get really sciencey really quickly)

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, I want to bring up an example of how I use this mysterious mental practise to make myself and my athletes mentally stronger and therefore better performers. Today I just want to focus on why I think this is important and give you the evidence to convince you that this is worth spending time on to develop your skating. Later on I’ll go more into the “how”.

So I want to talk about my sister Mercedes. I’ve been coaching Mercedes in free skating for a while now and I’ve been mentored by Senior coaches (shout out to Anna, Jacqui and Clare for all their help with Mercedes) in this area because obviously I’m a dance skater (but did you know I started off as a free skater?!). At nationals, I was in the marshalling area before Cadet free skating with Anna and we both knew it just wasn’t going to be a good free skating day. In my opinion, free skating is so temperamental. You’re either on or you’re off. You have to be so mentally strong to pull yourself out of  bad free skating day and into a good one. It takes a lot of mental strength to pull off a perfect routine and I take my hat off to free skaters cos I really don’t know how they hold that amount of concentration for so long.

Anyway, the warm up had not gone well. Being a coach in the marshalling area and watching your skater fall during their warm up and beating themselves up about it, sucks. Lucky for me, Mercedes was the last skater in her group and it was long programme which meant I had 15 minutes to turn it all around. I knew she could do the stuff, all she needed was a new head space. Also lucky for me, Mercedes knows how I am about mental training and trusts that it works because she’s done it a million times. This is another important point. In order for this to work, you also have to work. Don’t think that a few breathing exercises will turn you into a super skater. You have to actively work at this every training session and every competition. You have to build your mind just like you build your body. You don’t just wake up and suddenly you’re mentally strong because you’ve learnt how to breathe. The exercises are easier said than done.They take up concentration, discipline and practise to master.

So here’s what I did. I took Mercedes away from the marshalling into the toilets and played some calming music through headphones and guided her through the following:

- with eyes closed, breathe into your belly through your nose as slowly and deeply as you can, hold for a few seconds then let it out as slowly and lightly as possible through your mouth. Repeat 5 times or more. Concentrate on breathing and nothing else. Forget where you are.

- Come back to normal deep breaths and feel your body on the seat (grounding yourself in the moment). Feel where your body is touching the seat and “scan” your body. Start at the top of your head and work your way down feeling every part of of your body. Notice how it feels but don’t react. There is no right or wrong way to feel. Thoughts will come and go because that’s what brains do but you don’t have to explore any thoughts. You just think. You simply notice the feeling or thought and move on. This takes a lot of practise to master. It is a combination of grounding yourself in the present and mindfulness.

- when she’d scanned her whole body, I got her to go through her routine in her head. This is motor imagery. You have to try and feel every single muscle and really concentrate on every movement. She went through her routine with music as well.

- then I got her to go through her routine off skates with her music but I re-focused her mind. I gave her a character to focus on. Since this is a Frozen routine, I told her that Elsa was going to do her long programme. I told her to let Mercedes worry about her long programme later. “Let Elsa take over and really become the character (Also a trick to making free skating more enjoyable to watch). Mercedes can have a bad free skating day but Elsa is a queen and she’s here to slay this programme.”

This may sound hilarious and almost too far but it works! It takes pressure off “Mercedes” because she’s not the one going out there, it’s Elsa. Your body knows the routine and what to do. You just have to take your mind on a break and let your body do the skating. After all the practise you have done leading up to a competition, your mind can just take a break. Trust your body.

Often what keeps us from enjoying our sport is the fear of letting yourself down. By giving yourself a character, you take that fear away because it’s no longer you that does the routine. I use this trick all the time when I’m feeling anxious.

And it worked! After falling on almost every element in the warm up, Mercedes managed an almost clean long programme with only 1 fall. It may have worked a little too well though cos she got a little too far into the character and started doing a spin instead of a double loop! (Elsa just wanted to do that spin again cos it worked so well the first time haha!) 

Breakfast: too cold for a green smoothie so oats again. Yes I'm obsessed. No I'm not going to stop. 1/2c oats with dates and 2 kiwi fruit and coffee. 

Snack: cashews almonds and dates in marshalling with Mercedes between her solo dance skates. 

 Snack 2: 2 mandarins and more dates

 Lunch: guacamole on ryvita crackers. We found a lemon tree in our motel so you'll be seeing a lot of this. 1 1/2 avos, juice from 1 lemon, salt and pepper topped with spinach leaves. Mercedes had some as well and she also had brown rice and ravioli that was leftover from last night's dinner 

 Snack 3: green smoothie with 2 1/2 bananas, spinach leaves, coconut almond milk, water, peanut butter. Some more dates and mandarins too. 

 Dinner: Mum found some spelt flour pasta at the supermarket so had that with veges, tomato pasta sauce and lentils 

 Snack 4: chocolate after freedance competition! 

Breakfast: A bit of a fail since I thought I was having green tea but was actually chamomile and I ended up all sleepy for training. Oops! Still had 1/2c oats cooked in water with dates and topped with banana. Dates are a great snack I have all the time! Full of energy and are super sweet. Mercedes had the peanut butter on gluten free toast with a banana and a hot chocolate. 

Post training snack: coffee with almond and coconut milk (cos I feel so asleep after chamomile tea), a kumara cookie, 2 mandarins and a handful of cashew nuts (more than pictured.. Started eating them before I took a photo).

Post freedance training snack: provided by Anna Harris: I had a fig and cacao bliss ball. Absolutely delicious and just the right amount of energy needed for after training. I'm going to get Anna to give us the recipe so keep a look out for that! 

Lunch after second training: Pumpkin and feta spinach pasta salad from new world deli. I give it a 3/10. I don't really like cheese and this was very cheesy so I had to pick it out... But if you like cheese, have this! They have lots of other quick healthy-ish options at the new world too! Mercedes had the same but there's lasagne and spaghetti bolognese too!

Another snack: I brought our new blender with us so I can have some yum smoothies! Green smoothie with 2 1/2 bananas, spinach leaves, 1tbsp peanut butter, almond and coconut milk and water. Big handful of dates dipped in peanut butter. 

Dinner: Thanks to mum for providing the goods! She had time to go shopping today so she cooked up a stir fry and brown rice. The veges come already cut up in a bag and even have their own sauces! The brown rice also comes pre cooked in those sachets so it just goes in the microwave. So mum cooked this before we left for opening and then I had it after my competition! 

Another snack: Avocado on a ryvita cracker, green tea and a square of lindt almond chocolate.

Breakfast: This is a favourite of mine! You'll be seeing a lot more oat combinations throughout the week. Oats cooked on stove top (1/2c oats, 1c liquid-water and/or milk, frozen berries, 5 dates, 1/2 banana) and coffee (cacao powder, coffee and coconut almond milk) 

  Snack: banana and 2 kumara cookies. (Recipe is in a previous post) delicious and the perfect combination of bitter and sweet. Shout out to Mercedes for making it happen so we have snacks for the week!

Lunch: On the way down, we stopped at a cafe and they had nothing I wanted to eat. So had to wait a bit but then we stopped at the next cafe and found this roast vege salad! I don't really like real salads so disguising them as a roast is the perfect compromise for me. Look at how colourful it is! Mercedes got the same thing but in a wrap and with pesto. 

Snack: another cookie, another banana and shared a wrap that was leftover from lunch with Mercedes. Same filling as my salad above but with pesto. 

Dinner: burger fuel! Yes I eat fast food but I make it as healthy as possible! I had a v dub vege burger (which has pumpkin, carrot and ginger as a patty) without cheese and without aioli. I added avocado and left the rest as is! Burger fuel is a great option when you don't have time to go to the supermarket during a competition and need something quick. Their ingredients are of higher quality than normal fast food places. Other good fast options are salads from cafes or deli supermarkets, sushi, smoothies (but watch the ingredients). All it takes is a little mindful eating and trying to make the best choice out of the things available.