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Two powerful cues for peak performance | Plus: new merch and online coaching!
Published 4 months ago • 5 min read
Hi Thinking-Doing Crew!
Something I’ve been buzzing about lately is hearing from people doing the "Mastering Cues for Riding Well Under Pressure" online course about a) what they’ve been getting out of the course (a total joy for any course creator to hear, I imagine) and b) the cues that they draw on for moving well when it counts.
Cues are words, phrases, images, sensations and sounds that help to prompt our long-term memory, sharpen our focus, or a coordinate complex series of body movements during a challenging task. They're an incredibly efficient way of focusing on one very small thing that enables us to do a much bigger thing.
Looking at a specific point on a mountain bike trail helps you know where to pilot your bike without having to re-look at the whole obstacle, choose your line and guide every aspect of your body position. “Reaching through your fingertips” or “softening your elbow” might be a helpful, and surprisingly transformative, cue in a yoga or physio context.
Cues help us learn new techniques and to regain our skills when they've gone AWOL. Cues also come into their own as a way of keeping your mind where it matters when things don't go to plan - like when the whole track turned into a slippery, muddy mess at the 2024 Australian MTB Champs. Photo: Kath Bicknell
Two powerful cues for peak performance
In printing a new batch of thanks-for-doing-the-course-or-buying-some-sweet-new-merch stickers last week, I found myself reflecting on what two of my favourite, multi-scenario cues are. The winners were: “Focus on the process” and “Be your own cheerleader.” (More on our 2025 tees and hoodies below or jump straight to the webpage here.)
“Focus on the process” is one most people quickly relate to as helping them get back in the present moment rather than stuck in the past or worrying about the future. It keeps us tuned into the intrinsic rewards of the thing we’re doing, as we’re doing it. Focusing on the outcome, by comparison, is a textbook flow killer. A small irony is that if you want an outcome like winning or a PB performance, it’s focusing on the process that will help you get there!
“I often think about tennis players, and how a tennis player celebrates every point, every game, every set and bringing that kind of attitude to your riding,” Imogen said. “So, celebrate every corner you get right, instead of punishing yourself for a corner you’ve got wrong. And if you’re doing a race, breaking it up into segments and celebrating each part of that.”
Imogen Smith has represented Australia in marathon and Olympic distance cross-country mountain biking. As an accomplished writer, lecturer, coach, researcher and cheerleeder-for-many, she has oodles of experience to offer! Photo: Mike Blewitt
Whether it’s riding, racing, running, swimming or powering through a long and difficult work task, the good feelings from celebrating the tiniest of wins add up, the bad ones remain in the past, and flow starts to return, if it wasn’t there already.
I think about this cue from Imogen often. Not only is it a valuable reset cue, it’s another way of bringing your focus back to the process but with an extra dopamine lift.
The cue also resonates in today’s hyper-critical, improvement- and approval-oriented world. Whether you’re posting on social media, reviewing the data from your latest workout, advocating for your needs in just about any situation, or just wanting someone to tell you you’ve done something well, it certainly doesn’t hurt to congratulate yourself now and then: feel motivation, satisfaction and validation from that self-recognition, rather than wait for someone else to do it for you.
Something else remarkable about these two cues is they work in so many situations and are especially handy for turning a funk state into a flow state. They are small enough to fit on a sticker, yet just took a whole newsletter to explain! Try them out (with or without a sticker as cue of it's own!) and see whether, how, and when they work for you. Keep them in your mental toolkit as something to draw on when you need to overcome some inertia or turn an average day into a good one.
If you have other favourite wide-reaching cues, I’d love to hear what they are too! If you want to dive further into riding cues, there’s an online course and newly launched online coaching sessions for that too!
The Logo Tee and the Believe and Achieve Tee are new for 2025. And by popular demand, the 6 Pack Tee is back for another run in its original colourways plus a limited edition pink.
The new Light-Up-My-Winter hoodie design has reflective vinyl print. Partly because pretending you can shoot lasers from your wrist brightens any winter day, partly a tribute to cyclists everywhere and partly because a little bit of post-performance reflection is guaranteed to take you to new heights whatever your passion.
$25 from each item goes directly to creating digital resources on mind skills and resilience, including this monthly newsletter, new courses and workshops, social media content and behind-the-scenes running costs.
Every item is also an entry to win a free online course or coaching session! Hooray! (But mostly of all: thanks so incredibly much for your support!)
This one's just soft launched for now, in response to requests from people who've wanted to delve deeper into Intelligent Action training and resilience topics covered in the Cues Course Live Lesson, other digital media and activities, or want to learn more about a topic of interest without doing the course.
What you’ll gain:
An expanded toolkit for approaching mind-body challenges or supporting others with theirs.
Increased capacity for training, performance and resilience in times of stress or pressure, in sport and life outside of sport.
A deeper understanding of how to build on your exisiting expertise for solving future problems.
Any followup resources we chat about in the session.
I take a supportive, collaborative approach to coaching, building on your strengths to develop personalised strategies for ongoing skill development and performance under pressure.
New terrain for your brain, from Dr Kath Bicknell at Intelligent Action
Join our newsletter for tips, tricks, news and offers delivered straight to your inbox once or twice a month. Look forward to a mix of research-backed bike wisdom that translates to life wisdom (or work/sport/insert-other-magnificent-skill-here wisdom) and vice versa.
