I haven’t posted for so long. I guess I had a bit of a year off last year. I had a few injuries so my training was pretty limited, and the year just flew by without much happening. It’s worked out well anyway, this year I’m so keen to get back into everything. Having a break isn’t all bad.

I was speaking tonight to a coach who is training some Olympic hopefuls. He was talking about the stages athletes go through, from the initial technique gathering, to the point where they are technically good but don’t believe in themselves, and eventually getting to the stage where they have the skills, and are confident enough in themselves that they can just go out and perform at their best.

How many people ever get to that third stage? There must be lots of people who have the technical ability, but never quite develop the confidence.

It’s so easy to believe that you’re not as good as anyone else. In my one and only experience of international competition, I couldn’t believe that I’d been selected for the National team. So I didn’t take it that seriously, and expected to fail. I treated it like a paid holiday.

Stupid me. When I got to the competition I discovered that everyone else was about the same level as us. I finished mid-field. If I’d put any serious effort into training it’s very likely that I could have got a medal. But instead I just let down myself, my team, and our sponsors.

Lesson 1: There is nothing special about your opponents. They struggle with the same things you do. You have the same chance as them. The winner will probably be the one who wants it more!

A few years ago, I decided to enter a power breaking competition at our National Taekwondo competition. I’d never done power breaking before. It involves stacking up some 20mm boards with 10mm spacers between them and seeing how many you can punch through. I searched online and couldn’t find much information about how to do it, so I just went to the hardware shop and bought some wood and gave it a go.

On my very first attempt, knowing nothing about what I was doing, I broke 8 boards. So I thought I’d improve over time, and nominated 12 boards for the competition, which was three weeks later.

At the competition how many did I break? Seven. After three weeks of training, I broke one less than I’d done on my first try. Why was that? Because I was thinking too much. I’d studied and practised technique, so on the day I had all this information swirling around in my head, and ended up mucking it up.

Lesson 2: Trust yourself. The time for thinking is in practice, or at the pub talking over how things could have been better. Once you’re on the mat, don’t think! You know what you’re doing. You’ve done the practice. Don’t think any more. Just get out there and do it!

So hopefully that will be my year. Be confident in what I do, and don’t think too much!