Chrissie Wellington’s Strategies for Success

• Tweet
• Pin It

Whatever your sporting goal for 2014; whether it’s to complete an Ironman, get a PB in an open water swim or take part in your first ever Cycletta, we’re all in search of the formula that promises to help us become the best that we can be.

So we asked four-time World Ironman Champion Chrissie Wellington to share with us what she likes to call her “silver bullet solution”.

Set a goal

You have to have something to aim for and sometimes that goal means taking a chance; a choice that perhaps could set you up for failure. But it’s so important to make that decision to want to excel in your sport and set a goal to achieve it.

If you never try, you will never know what you could accomplish, and to not even try is the biggest failure of all.

Share the journey

Your life in sport is an individual one, even if you are a part of a team, and this invariably means being at that start line alone, but chances are you didn’t get there on your own.

Share your aspirations, your experiences and your journey with your friends, your family, your coach or your club. This is vital in helping to keep you motivated.

The other advantage with sharing your journey, especially with like-minded people, is that you can amass as much information as possible from talking to others. Take on board what they know and use it to help improve your own performance.

Have a plan

It’s really not enough to just have a goal and some general information about the sport, and then expect to succeed. You need a clear plan that will get you from A to B, with mini targets set in between to help you stay motivated and ultimately lead you to the end result.

But remember your plan has to be individual; it has to be tailored to fit only you. We are all different, with different commitments, preferences and biomechanics, so it is essential that your plan suits you and your lifestyle if you are to stick to it.

Be kind to yourself

On your journey make sure that you don’t beat yourself up when life throws itself your way. You need to be flexible, sometimes you’re just unable to go out and train, life is like that, and for most of us our sport is just a part of a much bigger picture. At times other things are inevitably going to take priority and that’s OK, just focus on what you can do rather than what you can’t.

Just remember to be the best that you can be in the context of your life. Be kind to yourself.

Sport is like a cake

It really is. It requires so many more ingredients than we often think, and if we just put in the bare minimum it will undoubtedly flop! Remember that whatever our passion, whatever journey we choose to take, it is all a learning curve.

The vast majority of us aren’t going to nail it first, second or even third time when it comes to race day. Our training plans will need altering, what we decide to wear, what types of food and the amount that we consume all need to be tried and tested over and over before we know how to reach our optimum level.

Learn from what happened last time and aim to improve it for the next. It took me six years to realise what works best for my food consumption on race day; now that’s a lot of trial and error!

Find your passion

And finally, you’ve got to find your true passion, whatever that may be. Some of us go through our lives not ever discovering what it is that we love, but it’s essential that we find it. And don’t worry if you take up a number of sports before you find the one that you love.

Everybody is passionate about something if they ask themselves honestly and hard enough, and once we’ve found it we’re more likely to put everything we have into becoming the best that we can be.

Lizzie Flint, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine

• Tweet
• Pin It

You may like

• 

  Give your workout a 90s edge
  Give your workout a 90s edge
• 

  Pacing tips for first time triathletes
  Pacing tips for first time triathletes
• 

  Running advice: Coming Back From Injury
  Running advice: Coming Back From Injury

You must be logged in to post a comment Login