From Triple E to Triple Clean
From Triple E to Triple Clean
Tales from the Trenches of Tryouts
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There’s nothing quite like the pressure cooker of Team USA’s European Open Team Tryouts. It’s held at one of the nicest indoor venues in the country, in a huge ring with fabulous turf, with the top teams traveling from across the USA to lay it all out on the line. The atmosphere is electric! People are pushing for thousandths of a second, going for broke and testing their skills. There are the cheers of the crowd, the collective sigh as a dog runs by the last jump, dogs barking as the wait their turn for 60 seconds on the green carpet. You’ve got just four runs to make it count. To make an impression. To show the coaches, the world, and yourself that you belong there.
It’s a lot to say the least. And if you’re anything like me, the downtime between runs can give you more than enough time to overthink. It’s easy to get sucked into analyzing just what each run could mean. What’s on the line and why you’re there. To start playing out the scenarios and trying to strategize what it will take to make the team, or to prove to the world that you’re “good enough”. As those thoughts start to creep in, I can feel my heart rate climb. My chest starts to constrict and all my muscles lock into place. I’ll start to feel tingling in my fingers, and get light headed if I stand up too quickly. My breathing becomes shallow and rapid, and I lose sense of where I am, my world narrowing to a pinpoint, with my eyes barely registering what is going on around me.
I can’t walk into the ring in this state, and my results from Day 1 of tryouts show exactly what happens if I do. Three eliminations on the same course. But not three eliminations with just one minor mistake….3 eliminations where I felt completely lost. Where I forgot my handling plan. Where I struggled to get out of my own way and execute the skills I am capable of. All because I was too high; because I was not able to control my mindset, and through that control my own nervous system. The results from the first day were incredibly disappointing, because I know what I am capable of, and I walked away knowing I did not uphold my end of the team.
So I went home that night and in the comfort of my AirBNB, snuggled in next to the cozy fireplace, I thought about what I could do to make Day 2 a new day. What strategies could I put in place? How could I regain control of my focus, flip the narrative from something that was beyond my control to something that is 100% within my control? How could I better regulate my autonomic nervous system? In short, how could I walk into the ring with the same confidence, and unequivocal belief in myself that I bring to any other weekend?
And I did. I walked off the turf on Saturday after 6 runs, with 3 clean runs, and no Eliminations. With one of the best, most efficient, and smoothest runs with my wolf, that resulted in an 8th place finish. With a smoking fast run on Ember, that but for a bar would have put her on the podium. But more importantly than the paper results, I felt so much more settled. I trusted in the skills I know we can do, I was confident in my handling plans, and I just went out and let my passion for this sport flow out of me.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: mindset can’t make up for poor training, but when the training is there, mindset can be all the difference in the results, both on paper and off. This is the theme of this month’s coaching call in the Competition Mindset Mastery for Agility group, and I’ll be walking through the practical tools I actually used to help overcome my mindset challenges at tryouts. So if you’d like to hear some real tips from someone who has actually been where you’ve been…and been there like last weekend (lol!) come join us!