The racing plan: Discipline set us free

Some years ago I read Xesco Espar's book 'Playing with heart' (1), where among other things that made me think, there is one that I thought it was a contradiction at first.

Discipline set us free

After a while I got what he meant with it, its coherence and even its application to some aspects of sports training. I think that high performance is about a perfect mix between art and science, the balance between controlling as many variables as possible and still leave room for creativity. This quote from Xesco's book is a key in managing that balance. In a greater application level, I remembered of the so called 'Race Plan', an sports psychology technique used by Joan Vives (2) in his work with me back on my racing years.

According to him, "the RP is an operative technique where an athlete knows exactly which are the routines that, by doing them before, during and after the race, will lead him to the best mindset for racing". Meaning that the athlete should plan his racing day as much as possible. How these two concepts are related? I always thought that good racing was to be in some kind of state of inspiration, letting my actions happen without even thinking them, and definitely being in the flow. That being said, I always tried to methodize my way to that state. There's the contradiction: "I want to flow, let things happen with no thinking, but I'll give a thought how to get there. WTF?".  

That's where I agree with the sentence "discipline set us free". There is a number of variables that may become constants if I think about it. For example:

• How long do I need to warm up?
• How long or how many times do I need to analyze the course?
• Which spaces am I going to use to warm up/visualize?
• Which are my techniques for activation, visualization?

If I am able to answer the questions above and put them into action, I'm designing my RP, so I won't need to improvise those answers during the D-day. The day where I should focus in racing and being where I want to be, not struggling to answer those questions. After I've done that I can feel free to just being in the moment and follow my plan, because I know it gets me to the state of flow. Of course, it will have to evolve according to the state that I manage to get in every racing start, so I can adjust it for the next race to come. Logically, every race and place will produce slight changes on the RP, and even leave some space to contingencies, as races may have changes on the go and we'll have to adapt to it. The higher the racing level, the more detailed the plan should be. As a great example, Tony Estanguet's race plan for London 2012 (3), as seen in his book:

On the next post, I'll try to do an approach that what could be a proposal for a Race Plan, for who would like to adapt it to their own needs.

(1) Xesco Espar: I met him (and he left a mark on me) as a handball professor in college (Sports sciences). He also coached FC Barcelona and wrote the book  Jugar con el corazón (Playing with heart)

(2) Joan Vives: Sports performance psychologist, he worked with us during the years I raced in slalom. You can visit his Blog, or his book Entrenando al entrenador (Coaching coaches)
(3) Tony Estanguet: Triple olympic champion and a role model in many things. His life in the book  Une histoire d'équilibre (An story about balance)