Sports Psychology Routines

Published September 24, 2008 by Martin Bean

Before you go into any sporting event, it is important to be in the right frame of mind. Before making a vital putt in golf, attempting a tough pot in snooker, coming out of the tunnel to play football or entering the boxing ring, you need to be comfortable, relaxed and confident.

In addition to our previous article on the topic of sports psychology, positive thinking, one way of doing this is routines. You will see many golf players for example go through exactly the same routine before every single shot so they are consistent. Whilst such a routine is easier to incorporate for static sports such as golf or snooker, you can apply the same principles to the sport of boxing.

Rather than having a set routine for every shot, you can adopt a set routine before each bout to ensure that you enter the ring in exactly the right frame of mind. So, what routine should I be adopting I hear you ask—well, it’s all down to your individual preferences and what works for you.

Instead of any ‘trial and error’ on fight night, you should be trying this out before every sparring session until you find a routine you are happy with. Once you’ve found one, keep it up and make it part of your pre-sparring and pre-bout preparations.

So your routine might go something like this:

1. Change into kit and put on bandages
2. 10 minute warm up
3. Stretch out
4. Skip
5. Shadow box
6. Pads

Or you might prefer to change this slightly and try to:

1. Change into kit and put on bandages
2. Skip to warm up
3. Stretch out
4. Pads
5. Shadow Box
6. Visualise the bout

It really is down to you and the above are purely suggestions—it is down to you to find what you feel comfortable with and what helps you to enter the ring feeling sharp and strong.

Listening to music pre-bout can also help and if this is the case, put your earphones in whilst you warm up before sparring. Come fight night, everything that you do should be something that is tried and trusted—not something you only do when you are ready to fight. If it’s not something you’re doing very often, how will you know if it will work for you on fight night?

Covering every detail of your preparation can help you enter the ring without any concerns, leaving you to concentrate solely on the action ahead.

« Back to Training articles

There are currently 0 comments on this article.