Learning how to Talk to Yourself for Performance

Your mental game doesn’t start on race day—it starts with how you talk to yourself on a Tuesday during tempo work, what you say to yourself in your work meeting on Wednesday, and what you tell yourself when you forget about your kid’s Doctor’s appointment on Friday.

One of the most powerful tools we have for life and athletics is our self-narrative. We are all constantly talking to ourselves and unfortunately, research has shown that for most of us we talk in a primarily negative way and we repeat these negative thoughts on a regular basis. Getting into the weeds of negative self talk is a post for another time, and one I will definitely come back to, but today I want to give you tools by outlining 4 intentional ways you can integrate self talk to improve your running performance. 

1.Instructional Self-Talk: Guide the Movement

Instructional self-talk, is pretty self-explanatory, it is telling yourself what to do. It is specific and uses technical cues. The language is most often focused on form, mechanics, or a skill you are working on- like dialing in your posture during a climb or smoothing out your stride on a runnable section. 

Think:

“Relax your shoulders”

“Drive through the glutes”

“Quick, fast feet”

This way of talking increases body awareness and reminds you how to move when fatigue or terrain start to chip away at your rhythm. I often recommend this for runners when tackling technical trail descents or late in an ultra when fatigue sets in- places when anxiety or fatigue are present and simple, actional cues can anchor you back into your body. 

2. Motivational Self-Talk: Fuel the Effort

Motivational self talk is meant to be an encouragement when things get gritty. It is meant to fuel your mental fire and keep you moving forward. The best motivational self-talk is encouraging, energizing, and confidence boosting. 

Think:

“You’re strong.”

 “You’ve done harder.”

 “Keep pushing. You’re almost there.”

Motivational self-talk has been shown to reduce perceived effort and increase time to exhaustion in endurance efforts. This type of self-talk is most often used when digging deep on race day or when you’re trying to finish your interval workout with focus.

3 & 4. Organic vs Strategic Self-Talk

Now let’s zoom out and revisit the broader idea of self-talk I mentioned at the beginning. Your self-talk doesn’t just happen during a hard rep or a messy hill. It runs like background music all the time in running and life. That brings us to our last two forms of self-talk:

• Organic self-talk is the voice that naturally arises without thinking—formed by years of habits, life experiences, and your default mindset. I find it always interesting to compare and contrast life and running organic self-talk (this is an activity I give all my athletes to complete). Identifying your organic self-talk is important because it is the primary way that you talk to yourself.
  

• Strategic self-talk is intentional, rehearsed, and purposeful. You build it before you need it and deploy it when you need it. This is created and planned for, think mantras that you create and practice before your race. 

You need both organic and strategic self-talk. Strategic self-talk is the way that we shape and rewire organic thoughts and is one of most commonly used skills in mental health counseling and sports psychology. Strategic self-talk helps you rewrite your internal narrative to be stronger and clearer and more aligned with the runner and person you want to be.

Today’s Mental Skills Practice

1. Break down your workout into sections.
   What part of the session requires instructional self-talk? Cue up a few form-based reminders now.

2. Identify the grind points.
   Where do you anticipate doubt, fatigue, or frustration? Prepare motivational phrases you can lean on.

3. Notice your organic self-talk.
   What shows up without trying? Is it helpful or hindering?

4. Layer in strategy.
   Use the power of strategic self-talk to redirect, reframe, and refocus when your natural voice isn't serving you.

Remember to take 5-10min to journal through these points before and after your run and to keep practicing! These are skills that take time to develop and also require refinement to figure out what phrases work best for you. There are no right or wrong answers, just different ways of talking to yourself.