The Racing Mind

an article by Tony Moore
The Racing Mind Some of the best improvements in your sailing will come from using your mind in the best way, this is easier if you know what it is doing. The Subconscious Try to think back to when you were learning to drive, you had to use all your concentration, steering, changing gear, braking, the road, other traffic. Now the first three of these come without thinking, they are done subconsciously, leaving the rest of your concentration on the road and traffic. You must do the same for your sailing, how can you compete with someone who has sailed for years more than you when all they are thinking about is what are the current, wind and other boats doing, while you are thinking about those things but also how much to ease the sail to keep the boat flat, is the boat on the wind, why did I have such a bad start etc.
In this context, the subconscious is actually neural pathways that have been programmed into the brain to perform routine tasks without needing conscious input. When you first start performing a manoeuvre you will be stumbling about, dropping the tiller or getting tangled up in ropes, the brain is trying many different pathways in order to perform the task. As the manoeuvre becomes smoother the brain has narrowed down the best pathways needed for the move and is reinforcing them. It will take a few hundred repetitions of the correctly performed manoeuvre for the pathway to become permanently programmed. In a race, with so much going on, you will not always be correctly performing the manoeuvre and will not be programming the correct pathway (possibly even programming the wrong pathway causing bad habits). For this reason practice is the best way to program your brain. Go out and try tacks for 20 minutes, then try gybes, then mark rounding or starting. This will allow you to compare one with the next, you will begin to generate a feel for when the boat came out of a tack quickly and slowly and what you did right or wrong to produce that effect.
On a day when it is windy enough to plane some of the time, put the boat on a reach and adjust your heading to the wind and try to get a feel for when and how the boat moves on to the plane. If you can find a system that gets the boat planning you will be able to use it on the marginal planning races to get ahead of your competitors. Once you can perform a manoeuvre smoothly this will not be something you will think about when it needs to be done in a hurry. For example someone calls starboard, you will know you can just do it, so you will be just have to concentrate on whether you should tack or bear away behind them. Mental Attitude Sailing is not an explosive sport like sprinting you will gain nothing by being hyped up before a race, the duration of the race is too long. A calm relaxed mind is what is needed (but not too relaxed). Keeping calm after a mistake is what I find the hardest (I am inclined to whinge about things), but I am getting better at just ignoring it for the rest of the race. If you hit a mark, get clear do your turn and get on with race, after the race is finished you can analyse why you hit the mark to ensure it doesn’t happen next time. The winner of a race is often not the person with the fastest boat, but the one who made the fewest mistakes. If you are worrying about your last mistake you are not avoiding the next one. You should try to concentrate only on the race, don’t think about what’s happened at work during the day or what you’re doing this weekend. Physical distractions must also be reduced, that bit of rope that always snags when you tack, the centreboard that lifts as the boat speed increases. Try to fix them as soon as possible. You should also think about how you approach each race, it should be with a positive attitude. The lightweight crew will probably not beat the heavyweights to the windward mark, but on the next reach, every gust that comes should get the lightweights boat planning first, and they will drop off the plane last. In the light winds it can be a bit of a lottery, if the heavyweight crew are in the right place to get what wind there is, they can leave the lightweights far behind. Look for the positive side of the conditions, not the negative. Racing Targets You must set yourself useful targets during the races, don’t limit your targets to beating the boats you normally compete with, aim for the group of boats in front of them (don’t set your sights too high though, you don’t want to get discouraged, be realistic). If confronted with a front runner (if they have had a bad start or you have had a good one), don’t be intimidated by their reputation – consider the best options for your boat (if luffing them will maintain your position do it, but if it will lead to both of you being passed by 3 boats then let them pass and concentrate on the other boats). In order to get good results consistency is the key, not individual great or poor performances. Consistency means that you are beginning to remove the luck from your racing, bad starts and mistakes are being recovered from, and good starts and positions at the early marks are being maintained. Fear Strong winds bring out the fear in sailors, but it is all in their heads, on Monday 20^th May we had a windy night, and towards the end of the night a squall came through with pouring rain, most of the fleet capsized. The following Thursday, the wind was the same as it had been on the Monday but with sunny skies, no prospect of any squall but half of the fleet didn’t want to race, this fear was not based on how they had raced for the most of the race on Monday but on the squall. In order to try and overcome this fear, take a race night when the wind is stronger than that you would race in and go out - don’t race, practice, the rescue cover is there in case anything goes wrong. See how the boat feels as you adjust the rig, move your weight around the boat and adjust the amount of heel, practice tacking, gybing and if you’re brave - spinnaker hoists. Without the racing pressure to tack for marks or other boats you can concentrate on keeping the boat flat (and upright).