Professional Mountain Biker Haley Smith races for Norco, and has had some seriously amazing results on the World Cup circuit in recent years. She came on Shred Girls author Molly Hurford's podcast, The Consummate Athlete, to talk about how she got into MTB, her best tips for beginners, why yoga matters for athletes, and how a confidence journal changed her life.
You can listen to the episode below, or head to iTunes to listen there!
Maybe you currently keep a gratitude journal, but have you considered a confidence journal? We recently had mountain biker Haley Smith on the podcast, and I loved talking to her about her mental routines and rituals. As one of the top mountain bikers in the world right now, she’s dealt with a lot of confidence issues and mental hurdles getting to this point. And as most readers know, I love a good conversation about journaling, so when Haley mentioned she has a couple of journaling routines, I had to hear about them:
“I have a couple different kinds. I have what I call just like the word vomit journal, and that’s just freeform. Sometimes I’ll use prompts, but mostly just freeform, whatever I want to write about. And then I have a little confidence journal. It’s this little black moleskin book that every page has something in it that would be confidence-inspiring that I did. So like, one page might have, like a PB during a set of intervals, the next page might have a conflict that I successfully resolved … just something that I should be confident about, or that should help instill confidence in myself. And then I have a third type of journal, which is a one line a day kind of thing. In that journal, I have just what I did that day for training, because I don’t trust Training Peaks not to at some point erase all my data because I’m skeptical of technology. And it’s nice to have it written out to look back on!”
Since hearing that, I’ve tacked on the idea of a confidence journal to my gratitude journaling/quick morning journal practice and I freaking love being able to look back at everything I’ve written. It’s a great confidence boost when I need it!
