• Being mentally-prepared is equally important as to getting your body ready for obstacle course racing.
• Fostering the right attitude can help you psych yourself up for race day and be better prepared for the obstacles, including the ones that you find the most challenging and intimidating.
• You should also use your smarts for better planning and problem solving in reaching the finish line—not just in OCR training, but also in real life.

• Obstacle Course Training Guide for All Levels

“Mind must be the master of the body.” Consider this quote in training for an obstacle course race because it is indeed not just a head-to-toe affair. It’s a combination of both body and brain. You definitely need a solid foundation of strength and endurance training to finish a race, but don’t disregard the power of mind-setting. There are a variety of ways to do this. And once you incorporate them in your training, you’ll surely have an edge over other participants. Here are some of the ways you can train your mind to winning your next obstacle course race:

Do mental rehearsal 

Mental rehearsal is more than just imagining yourself doing a task. Neuroscience researcher and author Andréa Morris says that the "secret sauce" of mental rehearsal is motor preparation. Imagine yourself approaching the challenge calmly. You need to clearly picture yourself doing the obstacles—especially the ones that make you nervous. Identify the factors that make the obstacles difficult for you. Then think of specific techniques that will help you overcome them. When you do this, you’re making “mental pathways”. So instead of associating these obstacles with fear or worry, you face them confidently because you know exactly what to do when you encounter them.

Aside from improving confidence and lessening anxiety, mental rehearsal also enhances your concentration. It's a good practice in OCR training and in any sports or tasks that intimidate you. If you're aiming to overcome obstacles strategically, try doing a quick mental rehearsal before going for it. To help calm frayed nerves, you can start mental rehearsals way before you get to the event.

Practice selective attention

Using selective attention means focusing only on the task at hand, blocking out anything in your mind and within your environment that might distract you from finishing the task. Whether it's the other teams, factors like the weather and noises around you, or just intrusive thoughts that you might mess something up, nothing can sidetrack you if you've trained your selective attention properly.

The concept of selective attention comes from a psychological theory thought up by Michael Posner and some of his peers called "spotlight theory". Posner compares selective attention to the beam of a bright flashlight that you can train yourself to adjust at will. For example, when you're face to face with the eight-foot wall, you shine your "flashlight" on it and put all your mental—and physical—energy into getting up and over it. Selective attention comes in handy in real life too, particularly when you're on the grind and have multiple deadlines coming up soon.

Think positively 

To think positively is a good life advice all the way around, but it's not the easiest thing to do especially when you're physically exhausted. However, as the old saying goes, “Believe and you’re halfway there.”

Sometimes, convincing yourself that you're ready and able is half of the battle. You just have to consistently believe you can until you finish the course. Thinking positively also means having confidence that you will do well and silencing any contradictory thoughts that might pop up in your brain.

When your head is in the game and you're thinking positively, you might experience the psychological state called "flow". Flow happens when you're at the height of your performance. You do well and you feel great about it. You can achieve flow while working, playing games, dancing, or doing an obstacle course race. Flow doesn't have to look cool or glamorous. You can experience it even when you're crawling through mud, as long as you do it with skill and joy.

How do you get into the state of flow? One proven way to do it is by making a habit of positive self-talk. Train your mind to remove negative thoughts and instead just cheer and remind yourself of how well-prepared you are to get to the finish line.

Don't be afraid of discomfort

OCR events are often lovingly referred to by fans as "suffer fests"—and it's indeed an appropriate name for them! Races are a lot of fun, but they are also tiring to the point of causing body pains. There’s a chance you'll emerge with some bruises here and there. You need to have a high threshold for pain if you want to go far in OCR. But that doesn't mean that you need to literally submerge yourself in a tub of ice or drag yourself through a pit of mud. You just need to train regularly.

According to Ryan Atkins, seasoned ultra-OCR enthusiast, "You don't need to go out and try to make yourself uncomfortable. If you are training consistently, those harsher weather conditions will find you and you don’t have to search them out or conduct specialized training sessions." So as long as you're taking your training seriously and not begging off because of some light rain or extra humidity, you should be fine. Many OCR enthusiasts say that they have learned to embrace the pain and draw satisfaction from it, to the extent where they don't even want to avoid it by any means.

Break down big problems into manageable issues 

• Obstacle Course Training Guide for All Levels

Without a doubt, you will encounter a lot of challenges in OCR—ones that will test not just your physical strength but also your determination and strategy skills. These challenges can be overwhelming. But in order to solve them, you need to be able to break them down into small manageable issues.

Evan Perperis, sponsored athlete and author of Strength & Speed's Guide to Elite Obstacle Course Racing, makes an example of his past problems with foot and hand care which affected his grip and general performance. According to him, "If I can solve each of those small problems and make them less significant, when they are all added up it will have a smaller effect on my overall issues."

To take better care of his hands, Evan committed to always wearing gloves except on heavy grip strength obstacles. This may sound weird, but it helped him train his grip without suffering open wounds on his hands. He sometimes goes the extra mile and applies tape to his hands before putting the gloves on.

For his feet, he needed a way to reduce blistering and soreness after a long-way run and climb. He used knee-high socks so that he wouldn't get rope burns on his legs and upgraded his shoes to something more suited for running trails.

By making minimal but significant changes to improve comfort and efficiency, you can overcome difficult challenges in OCR that you initially thought were hopeless and unsolvable.

Set long-term goals

Mental preparation isn't only useful for one obstacle or one race. It can benefit you in the long run too. No fitness goal is unattainable, provided that you have a plan that makes sense and suits you well. This plan might span over a course of a month, or even a few years. Once you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve in the long term, it becomes easier to formulate a plan to get there.

On the way to your one big goal, you can set smaller short-term goals that will put you on the right path. It might feel like these baby steps don't have that much impact, but remember that they're all building towards your long-term goal. Every step counts, no matter how small. This is how progressive training works. If you come across some bumps in the road, don't stress about it too much. Long-term plans can easily be adjusted without losing sight of your goal.

Mental preparation is just as important as physical preparation when you have an obstacle course racing event in the near future. It pays off big time to develop good habits around your thinking and attitude. This applies on the actual race day and in the time leading up to it. When you combine endurance training, strength training, and mental training, you set yourself up to win.