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The Olympic Games, which are being broadcast from Paris from now until August 11, raise many questions about how ordinary viewers at home can emulate the spectacular performances of professional athletes, including how they eat, how they sleep and how they train.
How do Olympians use their focus to achieve their goals?
According to John Heil, there are two mindsets an Olympic fencer switches between: One is staying focused and reacting to your opponent, and the other is completely focused on what you’re doing “between the touches,” when your weapons are down. Heil, a clinical and sports psychologist, has worked with USA Fencing Olympians at three separate competitions, dating back to Atlanta in 1996. While the mental reset from “doable” to “analytical” is important for fencers, it may not be all that different from the task shift that our notification-laden daily environments require.
“There are surprises that come our way, and we have to go from one mindset to another,” Heil said. “You have to adapt.”
Olympians may be known for their physical prowess, but being a top athlete depends largely on mental prowess and the ability to focus in a split second. In the run-up to the 2024 summer Olympics, CNET spoke with four psychologists with experience working with professional athletes and understanding the minds of Olympians.
Here’s what they have to say and what tips they give for applying the Olympic-focused focus in everyday life.
Practice mindfulness for one minute every day
“I believe focus is the most important mental skill for athletes and artists,” Mark Aoyagi said in an email. Aoyagi is co-director of Sports and performance psychology and professor at the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the University of Denver. He has worked with professional and Olympic teams, but says focus is essential for everyone, no matter the size of the stage they are standing on. The best way to start learning focus, Aoyagi said, is to practice mindfulness.
“As cliché as it has become, mindfulness meditation is an excellent tool for learning focus because it does three things at once,” he said. The first is that it trains “meta-attention,” or the ability to pay attention to your attention. The second is that it trains narrow focus, which is what we typically think of when we focus our attention on one thing. And the third thing that mindfulness does is train vigilance, or “attentional power,” which Aoyagi describes as the ability to stay focused for an extended period of time.
This lays the foundation for a mental routine, which Aoyagi describes as “the best way to create a competition mentality.”
So how can you experience the mindful magic? Aoyagi recommends starting with the “smallest amount of time” you can spare each day, even if it’s just a minute.
“It’s much more effective to do a little workout every day than to try to do longer workouts but less often,” he said.
For tips on how to get started with mindfulness, read CNET’s beginner’s guide or try an app.
The iPhone trick that can boost concentration at Olympic level
At CNET, we talk a lot about smartphones. What if we told you that simply opening your phone is the easiest way to train your focus like a professional athlete?
Ross Flowers is a clinical, sport and performance psychologist who served as a senior sports psychologist for the U.S. Olympic Committee from 2008 to 2012. He has also worked with professional sports teams including the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Lakers, Rams, and Clippers.
When asked about a hack anyone can do to start practicing focus like a professional athlete, Flowers said a “quick and easy one that anyone can do” is to build attention. To start, he says, pick up your phone and stare at the grid of apps in front of you.
“Give yourself 10 seconds” to remember as many apps on the screen as possible, Flowers said. “Write them down,” he said, as a test for yourself to see how many you can remember. And once you’ve got them down, move on to another screen or “go to something bigger.”
This is a play on a similar basketball drill Flowers taught. A player can pick up a basketball and remember all the details about it: its color, the pattern of the lines, the name on the ball, its smell, and more. It’s a good mindfulness exercise, but it also helps you focus on what you want to focus on.
“It helps you focus on what you’re committed to,” Flowers said.
Identify one (or two) specific skills you need right now
Flowers, who ran hurdles at the postgraduate level before becoming a psychologist, said you should focus specifically on the skills that will be useful at that moment.
For himself in a hurdle race an example might be to focus on “exploding” when he hears the gun. For someone in a team sport it might be to focus specifically on your role.
While what this will look like in your life will vary depending on the event or discipline, the basic idea is to have a general sense of what you need to achieve your goal. Then simplify it for yourself.
Don’t forget to breathe and connect with your body
When it comes to mind and body, “there’s more overlap than we think,” Heil said. By manipulating our bodies and their position, including our line of sight, we can shift our focus and mental state.
For example, when a football player becomes stressed while playing, Heil advises him to follow the ball with his eyes.
“Your mind usually follows what your eyes are looking at in an active environment,” Heil said.
While this advice is more for athletes, you can also try it outside of the sports arena, at your desk. If something is causing you stress and you find yourself hunched over your screen, try improving your posture and look out the window. Make a mental note of what you see.
An age-old trick to calming the nerves, according to the experts we spoke to, is breathing. Taking deep breaths and focusing on the breath in your body is a great way to steady yourself and connect with the moment. Check out our beginner’s guide on how to breathe to relieve stress.
Make time every day for one thing around the house that you hate doing
Cody Commander is a clinical and sports psychologist who was the Olympic Mental Health Officer for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. A major difference between people who reach the top in terms of athletic performance (or any other type of performance) is simply their discipline in effect doing what needs to be done to achieve their goal, by following the tips and using the tricks, according to Commander.
“I think a lot of people have a misconception that for high performers, there are these groundbreaking techniques that people use that set them apart from the rest,” Commander said. “And it’s not so much that the techniques are new or innovative, it’s just that they’re actually doing them.”
Commander added that one of the biggest differences he sees in people who achieve great success in any field is that they choose to do something they don’t want to do, but know they have to do to achieve their goal.
One exercise he’s given people to practice is to pick a chore around the house every day that you really don’t like to do and just do it. This way, you get in the habit of making time for less enjoyable activities. (Who knows, maybe your judgment or dislike for the task will melt away as the chore becomes part of a new routine or your perspective changes.)
Always keep in mind exactly what you want
Flowers has an email signature that says, “Greatness is an appreciation for maximizing the details. So make sure you know how.”
When I asked him what that original quote meant, he said it boils down to “controlling what you want: what decisions you’re going to make and how much energy and effort you’re going to put into them.”
We’ve written about why it’s important to decide what you want (not what your parents want, or what your boss wants, or what you want). think you should want, based on your life trajectory thus far), but the same thread turns out to be crucial to professional athletic performance as well. Performance in every other area of life, it seems.
In other words, what sets your soul on fire?
“You have to know what you’re actually working towards,” Flowers said.
