You Can Be ‘In The Zone’ If Mentally Fit

It’s called the zone.

You’ve been there.

Time seems to slow and every move feels right. You’re an artist, and your canvas is the basketball court … or the golf course … or the tennis court … or the office.

Every shot finds the bottom of the net. Each putt rolls home. Your forehand finds the baseline time and again. Your sales pitch topples one protest after another like a row of dominoes.

Unfortunately for most of us, “the zone” comes and goes. The last time you were in it may have been last week - or the last year of high school.

Elite athletes, however, are able to summon the zone on demand. Sports consultants and psychologists say you can too if you’re mentally fit - in high-pressure situations that have nothing to do with sports.

Jack Groppel, executive vice president of LGE Sport Science Inc. in Orlando, Fla., teaches both top athletes and business people ways to gain a mental edge over opponents. He and partner Jim Loehr, a performance psychologist, lead “Mentally Tough” workshops to help people harness the stress inherent in everyday living so they are ready, both mentally and physically, to achieve peak performance on demand.

“Corporate America has been sold a bill of goods with stress management,” said Groppel, an exercise physiologist. “Everyone has been told you need to reduce the stress in your life when, in fact, stress is necessary for life.”

If fact, Groppel and Loehr urge you not just to deal with stress but to seek it out, because stress helps make you stronger and tougher. The key to a healthy, happy and productive life is to live it in “waves,” with periods of stress followed by periods of recovery.

There are three kinds of stress - physical, mental and emotional, they say. All are closely intertwined. Being able to handle physical stress makes it easier to handle mental and even emotional stress.

He recommends daily stretching plus three to five days a week of aerobic interval training and strength exercises. He ranks cardio-respiratory fitness as the second most important physical priority. No. 1 in their book is strong stomach muscles, because they are the key to all other exercise.

On the recovery side, sleep is the most important factor, with nutrition a close second. During periods of high stress they advise more sleep, not less, including afternoon naps, if possible. As for nutrition, they suggest eating four to six small meals a day rather than two or three big ones. Not surprisingly, they want us to eat more complex carbohydrates and fewer fats.

Their recommendations for exercise, sleep and nutrition come from their sports backgrounds. So do many of their suggested strategies for dealing with real-world stressful situations.So how do you succeed in a business meeting or an important presentation? According to Groppel and Loehr, just like a top athlete in a big game or match: You approach it with great confidence. You love what you do and show it. You employ acting skills to control your emotions. And you visualize beforehand what you’re going to do.

Diane Davis Ashe, an Orlando sports psychology consultant, believes strongly in the power of visualization. She’ll ask clients to form visual images of successful performances from the past, encouraging them to visualize everything - in the case of an athlete, the sound of the cheers and jeers, the feel of the ball and the sight of the basket.

“The more detail, the better,” Ashe said. “If they can convince themselves they are there, then maybe they can go back to a good performance and re-create it - a performance that gives them confidence.”

Daniel Gerdes, a sports psychologist with Mental Advantage Inc. in Lawrence, Kan., said in addition to visualization, simply identifying your strengths and reviewing them before a performance can give you an edge.

Gerdes said that thoughts influence feelings - and subsequent actions. What that means when preparing for an important business presentation, for example, is not to dwell on the things that could go wrong. Instead, imagine the best possible outcome and focus on the positive ways of getting there.

Groppel and Loehr, who led a recent all-day “Mentally Tough” workshop at a Disney World hotel, focused more on the building blocks for peak performance rather than specifically how to attain it. Three dozen mostly middle- and upperlevel sales managers who participated in the $250-per-person session did more than just listen to lectures.

They did at-the-desk aerobic and strength exercises, on-the-floor relaxation to New Age music and took “humor breaks” in which comedy videotapes were played and they were “required” to laugh loud and hard.

Work needs to be fun, both men said, and a way to make that difficult concept come true is to be performance oriented, not results oriented. Loehr cited one of his most famous clients, speed skater Dan Jansen, who finally won an Olympic event by focusing not on winning but on enjoying the experience.

The lesson Loehr takes from Jansen’s Olympic triumph is one he thinks everyone should learn: “If you want to move to a higher level of peak performance, you have to increase your health and happiness.”