Confidence in Numbers

Tomorrow will be exactly one year since the last Swiss Championships. It will be exactly one year since I threw my best result of 2010: 66.03 meters. With a season’s best of 65.61 meters this year, my position right now is not that far off of last year.

But if you have been following this site, you know that I want more this year. Matching last year’s performance is not enough. With two meets left in the season, I feel like I’m ready for a breakthrough. I had some big fouls in June and threw nearly 66 meters at last week’s meet despite completely training through the competition. It feels there.

But I’m a numbers guy. Feelings don’t normally do it for me. But, as the cliché goes, numbers don’t lie. I keep records of all my training sessions and went back and compared this summer to last summer. Last summer I was averaging around 63 meters in training. I a few really good training sessions including three over 65 meters and one over 66 meters. My last meet practice before the Swiss Championships was 63.75 meters, so you can see that I am the type of thrower that can add several meters in a competition.

My next competition will be the EA Classic meeting in Luzern on Thursday.

This summer reads like an entirely new story. Over the last 20 training sessions, I have had three competitions under 65 meters. In total, I have broken 65 meters nearly 30 times and 66 meters six times.

Sometimes it can be easy to get lost in numbers. At the end of the day all they tell you is how well training is going. It is going well, but I knew that already. With a few changes to my training program last week, it should also continue to go well for the final three weeks of the season leading into the Swiss Championships. This I know with or without numbers. What the numbers really give me is confidence. Knowing that a bad day will still be better than last year is a great feeling. If I start out poorly in a competition, this confidence gives me a little fight when I might otherwise back down. Numbers are the reassuring safety net.

I always say good training is the best sports psychologist. If you are training well, then you will have the confidence to compete well. The better the numbers, the higher the confidence. And the real numbers that matter are at competitions. I have a chance to measure those on Thursday at the elite Spitzen Leichtathletik meeting in Luzern. And then I will give it one last whirl in Basel at the Swiss Championships.