 Rider: Jeremy Hand Photo: Zachary C. Bako Joel YounkinsHigh Performance Coach When it comes to winning races and championships, being clueless might be your greatest asset. For all of the riders who "know what they're doing," are often the ones who are falling short of their potential. In a world where information, tips, and advice is spreading like wildfire, everyone is now an expert by regurgitating other peoples content and information. And for the riders who stay humble and wise enough to realize they don't have it all figured out, and adopt that "white belt mentality," well that just might be their secret weapon.
What is a white belt mentality? According to Google... "The "white belt mentality" in a martial arts context, and by extension in other areas of life, is a mindset of beginner's openness to learning and growth, characterized by humility, curiosity, and a willingness to be wrong. It's about recognizing that there's always more to learn and being receptive to feedback and new perspectives, even after accumulating knowledge and experience." This blog is about opening your mind up to a reality that you don't have everything figured out. The only people who think this way are the ones who have nothing figured out and have very little to show for it. But you are reading this, and I have a feeling that you're on a specific journey and that you're looking to squeeze the most out of it. The higher you climb the mountain in this sport, the more you need to open your mind back up as a beginner. Most racers make it to a certain point and then old habits die hard. They're not willing to adapt, evolve, listen, and take action on how to find another 1% of performance. And when you're in a class where competition is sky high and everyone wants it as bad as you do, 1% is game changing! Paralysis by Analysis When you're left to your own problem solving and thinking, it can very easily leave you in a state of inaction. You do so much thinking and analyzing about said thing, that it can leave you in your head more than being an athlete in your body. The best performing athletes in the world are not out there in their sport thinking. They're just out there, relaxed, and letting their training and preparation unfold. Many call this the flow state where you're dialed in and you're focused as things are naturally happening; not thinking, calculating, and analyzing. What most athletes need, is for someone that they trust to say, "just go do this." Because a true white belt, will be open for direction to help move forward. Performance, whether on the track or the program, won't get the best result when the athlete/racer is more engaged with the problem solving than the execution. Outside advice on complicated problems, are all best solved with simple solutions. Simple solutions means it's easy to take action on and to go execute it. Ignorance is Bliss Have you ever had a friend that you couldn't ever fully trust? They would tell you this cool story, but you knew that there was a 50% chance that it never really even happened. But that 50% doubt, really kills the excitement of the story. If you could just believe them with 100% certainty, you could just sit back and fully enjoy the story. This is what can happen when athletes start with an open mind to learn, but then they get into deep water and don't know how to interpret all of the information they come across. A lot of advice can stem into different variations, it can be conflicting, and the economy of it all can be hard to put together. This leaves many riders (and everyday people) feeling challenged on what and how to process all this information. I know we said a White Belt Mentality is about being open to learning, but it's also about being open to all possibilities and knowing enough that you don't know everything...And that can be really freeing once you give up that responsibility. Missing Your Blind Spots Whether you're a World Champ, a National Champ, or you're a C Class Rider, you have blind spots in your game and in your program. It's something that's completely unavoidable. When you lose that White Belt Mentality and if you get a ahead of yourself with the "I know what I'm doing" or the "I've done my research" attitude, it's super easy to miss things that are right in front of your face or things that will come back to bite you in the future. You see, you yourself, you're too close to YOU. When you're too close, you can't see well. It's like reading this article right now, your eyes probably aren't 2 inches away from the screen. If you were that close, it would be really hard to see the whole page moving forward. When you zoom out, you can start to see things more clearly and have a broader view of what's coming. A White Belt allows for others to view their performance, they want to know what others see so that they can make the proper adjustments needed reach that next level. We're Only Human You're only human, and as humans we're flawed individuals. We make biased emotional decisions daily. We lie to ourselves about how awesome we are and we also do a good job of giving ourselves less credit than we deserve. In my line of work, I've realized that the more I know, the more I realize I don't know. There's opportunity for improvements all around us, we're in this game of never ending inches of improvement that can be made. Things are changing around us constantly and things within us are changing too. As soon as you think you got it all figured out, is the exact moment you stop improving. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, as long as you're committed to your own path to greatness, it is a never ending grind and problem solving mission in this thing we do for fun, called racing.
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