Optimist, Open Skiff, Youth & Olympic Sailing Blog

Performance of 3 Jet Lagged Canadian sailors at the 2018 Optimist Worlds during 3 First Days of Racing Canada had 5 sailors at the recent Optimist Worlds in Limassol, Cyprus. But Team Canada was split. 2 sailors arrived in Limassol about a week in advance and prepared on site for the competition. That’s the approach that was adopted by the vast majority of sailors from over 50 represented countries. Many of them participated in the pre-worlds - the mediterranean regatta - which attracted some 132 participants in its Open/Cadet fleet. Others trained on site. Some sailors had actually arrived in Cyprus as early as mid-July to train for the championship. Why did those 3 Canadian sailors arrive so late in Cyprus? Because the Canadian Optimist Dinghy Association (CODA) had decided to run its qualifiers for the 2019 Worlds on August 19-23 in Squamish, British Columbia, just before the 2018 Worlds. In Canada, the national championship serves as qualifier for all international IODA event...

"Mental skills are not the elements to work on last. They are the pieces of the puzzle that fit in every step of the way! Mental skills that I commonly work on with athletes include the “Dirty Dozen”: 1) Knowing your Values 2) Understanding your Motivation 3) Engaging SMART Process focused goal-setting 4) Building Self-Talk Habits 5) Developing Routines for Mindful Attention 6) Utilizing Mental Imagery 7) Practicing Self-Attunement 8) Hanging in there with Anxiety Tolerance 9) Getting your needs met through Assertive Communication 10) Channeling your (negative) Emotions into positive effort 11) Staying the course with Energy Management 12) Using Anxiety Reduction (because you can, not because you have to)"  Check the full article by Tim Herzog   http://ussailing.blog/mental-training/