May 8, 2024 • 19 mins
Many athletes have a ritual they perform before competition. But why is that? In this episode of If I’m Honest, Julia Landauer explores why pre-competition rituals are so important for performance. Julia shares research from the University of Toronto that explains the effects rituals have on brain activity, she hypothesizes what happens if we don’t perform our rituals, and describes her own pre-race rituals. Julia also reached out to some of her racer friends to hear their pre-race rituals, which they generously shared via voice recordings.
NASCAR crew member pre-race ritual TikTok referenced: https://www.tiktok.com/@nascar/video/7350349479742164267?lang=en
University of Toronto study referenced: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5452956/
Thank you to the drivers who shared their pre-race rituals:
Katherine Legge: https://www.instagram.com/katherineracing/
John Edwards: https://www.instagram.com/_john.eddy/
Zach Herrin: https://www.instagram.com/zach.herrin/
Rajah Caruth: https://www.instagram.com/rajahcaruth_/
Learn more about Julia Landauer at https://julialandauer.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If
I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I hope you are doing well.
I've been good. I've been busy. I've been ramping up
at work. I've been trying to get enough of Vitamin
D and be outside. It's been really cool. I'm really
feeling satisfied with the amount of stuff that's going on,
(00:24):
so that's awesome. Today I want to talk about pre
competition rituals because they've come up in a few different scenarios.
So we were having a brainstorming session as to what
kind of content to put out from the NASCAR channels,
and we asked the crew members of various teams what
(00:45):
their pre race rituals were, which was super cool. I
highly recommend checking out that TikTok. I'll link it in
the description. I also hosted a panel with a few
racers and we were talking about pre race tradition, and
so I wanted to dive into that a little bit
more because I also definitely had pre race traditions that
(01:06):
I did for the entirety of my twenty one year
racing career, but I never really thought much more about
the science or the psychology or why we do that.
So that's what I wanted to jump into today. Before
I get started on some of the things that I
read about and researched that I thought were particularly interesting.
I did want to note that rituals are considered to
(01:29):
be distinct from traditional preparatory routines and habits. Rituals are
more rigid and more formal, and there are fixed steps,
and I think the key thing is that there's no
real direct function or result of doing a ritual. It
is something that is personalized. It is something that is
(01:51):
kind of separate from the actual activity that you were
going into, whereas a preparatory routine or habit is something
you do for warming up your muscles or getting in
the right mindset. Or we'll see racers who do little
activities with their physios before racist so that they're priming
their body to be ready to make quick decisions. So
rituals are distinct from habits and pre competition routines. With
(02:15):
that context, I want to first talk about a study
from the University of Toronto and how they learned that
rituals can actually help performance, and then I want to
jump into more of the subjective observations that I've read
about from different people in different sources that explain why
pre competition rituals might be really beneficial. So from the
(02:38):
University of Toronto, as I said, they learned that rituals
can help performance, specifically by regulating the brain's response to
personal or performance failure. And the way they discovered this
was that they conducted a study that observed brain activity
and measured brain activity during a series of challenging tasks
where participants sometimes did a ritual before these tasks and
(03:02):
then sometimes they didn't, and the task was intended to
be extremely challenging so that everyone would fail at some point.
And what they found was that the people who did
the rituals had less brain activity and less brain reactivity
after failing than the people who hadn't done a ritual beforehand.
(03:22):
So this supported their hypothesis that having rituals desensitizes the
brain's anxiety related reaction to an error. And if you
think about how this helps with competition, if you're able
to stay calm, cool and collected after making a mistake,
you're that much more likely to recover and rebound quickly
(03:43):
and get back on track. The racing example would be.
Let's say you get oversteer or you're loose, and so
the car turns more than you're expecting it to. If
you freak out, you might not be able to get
the car back on track quickly. Or if you go
off track or if you spin, and the quicker you're
able to get back going again, the better your results
(04:04):
going to be. And so what they found is that
people who did rituals regularly before these tasks were more
likely to be able to recover. I think that's interesting
because that was something we also actively trained for with
Pitfit in the motorsports training that I was working on,
because they really emphasized when we were training if we
dropped a ball during an exercise or if we somehow
(04:26):
made a mistake or didn't do as well. I remember
that I would give commentary or make fun of myself,
and my trainer was very rigid, like, no, just get
back into it, get your brain back into it. Don't
dwell on what you did wrong, Like get back into it.
And so I thought that was interesting that the study
actually sees that rituals can assist in being able to
get your head back into the competition mode after making
(04:48):
a mistake, and that recovery is critical regardless of if
you're in a sport competition, if you're doing anything performance,
if you're giving a presentation, if you're in the middle
of a really important if you're parenting. I mean, the
ability to recover from a mistake or an error is
so important. So maybe we can also think about how
we can incorporate rituals into our day to day lives
(05:11):
to help us minimize that brain reactivity to making mistakes.
The next thing that was really interesting to read about
when it came to pre competition rituals was the idea
that by having a standard and consistent ritual that you
do before an event, it helps promote familiarity even in
(05:31):
different environments and different situations. And if we're focusing on athletes,
we compete in very different places. Racers go to different racetracks,
the culture is different, the environments different, the people are different,
the food is different. And so if you're able to
find comfort and stability in the familiarity of your routine
and your ritual, that will help you feel more calm
(05:54):
and it will help you stay more comfortable, which then
helps performance. So that's a really interesting thing to think
about again in our day to day lives, if we're
having to perform at a high level in different environments,
perhaps having that ritual will help center us, even if
it's on a more subconscious level. The last more subjective
(06:15):
thing that I read about in different op eds or
that rituals can make you feel lucky and feeling like
you are giving yourself an advantage or feeling like you
are making yourself lucky will boost your confidence and it'll
make you feel just that extra a little bit better.
And so that ties in with the familiarity, it ties
in with the reducing the reactivity to errors. But being
(06:39):
able to do anything to get your confidence up is
critical for any high performance activity. I would then argue
that if you are used to doing a ritual and
for whatever reason, you don't do it ahead of time,
I would assume that that could also make you feel
unlucky or hurt your confidence. And so it's important to
make sure that if we are having these effects rituals,
(07:00):
that we are being consistent in how we're using them
before any competition. As I was reading about rituals and
some of this higher level research that was done on rituals,
it also got me thinking about how, in any given
competitive environment, regardless of what we're doing, if we inadvertently do
(07:21):
something that precedes a win or a strong performance or
anything like that, it might make you more inclined to
repeat that action every time. And it kind of ties
into some superstitions that I know a lot of competitive
athletes feel that they have to do something because they
just feel superstitious about it. This happened to me very
(07:43):
early in my racing career. I clearly remember I had
done my first Skip Barber race when I was thirteen
years old at Limerock. I did terribly. I have another
episode about it where I explained that I was two
laps down at the end of the race. It was awful.
But starting the next season, when I was fourteen, I
was racing in the Skip Barber Series for full time
and our first race was at Virginia International Raceway. We
(08:05):
were racing the full course. I had qualified pole. I
was so excited. I was also so nervous. I didn't
quite know what to do with the incredible turnaround from
the first race of my race car driving career being
too laps down to then qualifying on pole. So it
was just feeling a little uneasy, very nervous. And it
turns out that I was a little late getting to
(08:26):
the grid to get ready to go out and race,
and I had to go to the bathroom. So I
ended up sprinting to the bathroom. I sprinted to my car,
and as I was getting ready and dressed, I realized
I felt a little better. I felt a little calmer.
I felt a little more optimistic and positive. There was
something about that little burst of energy that raised my endorphins,
(08:47):
and endorphins make you happy. And I went out and
I ended up winning the race, and there was something
on a subconscious psychological level that told me that I
need to do that little sprint before or every single race.
I decided to do this partially because it physically made
me feel better and it made me feel less anxious,
and that was a way to treat my symptoms of
(09:09):
fear and nervousness, which I learned. But I'm looking back
and I definitely also just felt superstitious that by doing
the sprint, I want a race, and that I had
to keep doing that, and in that season in particular,
I want twelve of the fourteen races, and so it
clearly worked. I haven't won all my races since then, obviously,
but it's something that I do, and the next time
(09:32):
I'm in a car, I will also do a little sprint.
I don't sprint to the bathroom anymore, but I do
sprint down pit Road, or maybe I'll sprint from the
hall or to Pitt Road or something like that, something
to get that little burst of energy. In continuing on
this topic of my rituals, I don't feel like I
do anything particularly crazy, but I do have things that
(09:52):
I have to do very specifically before any competition or
any on track competition. The first is that sprint. I
feel like I have to do that sprint. It might
be short, it might be sweet, it doesn't matter, just
a nice little sprint. I also have a very specific
tightness that I need my racing shoes to be at,
and typically it takes several tries before I feel like
(10:15):
I've gotten both my shoes where they need to be.
So that's a little annoying, but it's something that I'm
very sensitive to. And then the last set of things
that I do as a ritual is have a very
specific order and way that I put my gear on
as I'm getting into the car. So first I have
to tie my hair back in a low ponytail pretty tightly.
(10:37):
It needs three loops on the ponytail holder, if you
all know what I'm talking about. So we have that
tied back. I throughout my racing career could never have
bangs or angled haircuts so that I couldn't pull back
my hair fully like I felt like I needed the
security of my hair being pulled back in its entirety
(10:59):
with no loose strands, So that was one thing. Then
I put my bottle clava on. While I'm still out
of the car, I put my suit up, I zip everything,
tighten all the velk row, and then put my hans device,
my neck hands device on. I get into the car,
and then I loosely put on all of my seat belts.
There's no particular order to this. But then while I
(11:21):
still have my helmet off, I tighten my right lap
belt pretty tight. I tighten my left lap belt pretty tight.
I then loosely put on each of my shoulder belts
and so they are locked in but pretty loose. And
then I make sure that the center unit of the
seat belt system, like where everything comes together, is very
(11:42):
centered on my body. Then I give a final tug
on the right belt and a tug on the left
lap belt, and then I put my helmet on. I
secure it right away. I put my hans device on,
and then I make sure that the shoulder belts are
back over the hands for how they have to be,
and then I I mostly tighten the right shoulder belt,
(12:03):
and then I mostly tighten the left shoulder belt. And
then I have to put my left glove on first,
and I have to hold my sleeve of my suit
in a certain way to make sure it gets that overlap.
I have to do the same thing on my right glove.
I then take a second while my shoulder belts are
still somewhat loose, to take a deep breath in and
(12:23):
a deep breath out, and then I tighten my shoulder
belts like there is no tomorrow, and I try to
feel like I cannot breathe because the seatbelts do loosen
up a little bit when you're in the car, just
from all the vibrations. So that's what I have to
do before every race. Sometimes it feels a little tedious,
but it definitely also feels wrong if I don't do it.
So I am committed to those pre race rituals as
(12:48):
a special treat for you guys, and because I was
curious about what other racers might do during their rituals.
I have asked several people to send me what they
do before every race as their ritual, and this is
who they are and what they had to say.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
I am Catherine Legg and my rituals before races are vary,
but they very along the same theme, which is always visualization.
I always have just a routine that has become so
ingrained in me over the years, which is wiping the
bottom of my soles on my feet, like scraping them
(13:26):
on the pavement so that I know nothing stuck to
the bottom of them.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
It's like getting in my zen place, which I can
do just by telling myself that I've been this hindern
times before and I'm going to be okay if I
trust my subconscious so I don't overthink it. So then
I just kind of let myself go through the motions.
And visualization is obviously a.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Big tool and being prepared because if you're prepared, you're confident.
If you're confident, you can let your subconscious deal with everything,
and that, my friends, is the most effective way.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Of doing Thank you, Catherine.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
Next we have My name is John Edwards. I spent
eleven years as a factory driver for BMW in the
GTLM class of the Imsoweathertech sports Car Championship. I think
for me, the biggest ritual I had was always having
a shot of espresso right before I would drive. It's
not something I did when I was younger, but in
(14:21):
sports cars, I guess the nature of doing long endurance races,
I kind of started drinking a lot more espresso at
the racetrack, especially being surrounded by all the Europeans, and
that built into kind of a tradition. And eventually, whether
it was a hot summer day at VIR and I
was only going to do one stint, or if I
was doing an endurance race, you know, twenty four hour
(14:42):
race at Daytona in January, I would have to have
a shot of espresso before every stint that I drove.
I think in terms of preparing to drive, I had
to kind of rely on what I did when I
was younger and junior Formula cars back then, I spent
a lot of time on visualization. I would associate that
with music and so I would listen to embarrassingly a
(15:05):
lot of eminem while I would do visualization, and slowly
I could do less and less visualization before a stint
and just listen to music on my way to the grid,
and that kind of helped trick my mind into Okay,
it's game time, and you got to get your mind
ready to go. As I got older and as I
(15:25):
raced year after year, and especially getting into sports cars
where you don't have the luxury to sit by yourself
for ten minutes or fifteen minutes before a stint, because
you don't really know when you're getting in the car
sometimes whether it's under green fly conditions or if a
yellow comes out at a weird time and you might
be in the middle of eating a sandwich and somebody
turns around and tells you to throw a helmet on.
So you've got to be ready to switch it on
(15:46):
at any time. And so for me, those years of
training and work that I put in in the junior
Formula car days is what paid off at that point
where I got used to just being able to turn off,
turn off my brain a little bit and just let
myself go into the zone and be ready to go.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Thanks for sharing that, John, Next we have.
Speaker 6 (16:11):
Hey, this is Zach Karen, driver in NASCAR's Arkamanaut Series,
and here are my prairace rituals. Before stock cars, I
used to race professional supervikes, and I would actually roll
around on the ground in my leathers to kind of
associate the idea that I've already made contact with the
track surface so I won't need to during the race. Now,
(16:32):
my perirace rituals are a bit more tame. Typically I
just put on some really good music. Sorry, but unfortunately
that means no country for me. Then I also tend
to pee a lot. I don't know if that's because
I get super nervous or more so likely because I
overhydrate myself leading up to race days, but yeah, they're
(16:53):
my perious rituals.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I to pee a lot before a race. So right
there with you, Zach. Thank you. The last race where
we're gonna hear from is Raja Caruth, who races in
the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.
Speaker 7 (17:05):
In terms of pre race rituals, I used to be
like pretty antsy just because I didn't have a lot
of experience and so I just didn't know what to expect.
But nowadays I'm pretty calm pre race and usually the
day of, just because we practice a lot during the week.
I personally practice a lot and look at a lot
of film and practice all my simulators and at the
(17:26):
Gokar track and things of that nature. So it's really
not a super nerve wracking environment for myself in terms
of on race days, like I usually always get eggs
and pancakes in the morning or a waffle, but I
always getting like strambled eggs and stuff. And then pre
race and stuff, I'll do like a little stretch just
to activate like my lower back and stuff like that
(17:48):
and get my body feeling nice. Then I'll juggle and
then just pray or listen to music a little bit
and then just go out to intros. It's really simple,
just because, like I said, I used to be pretty
antsy due to my inexperience, but now that I've got
some years on my belt, it's really just kind of
a just shown up to do my job and have fun.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Definitely important to have fun, and it's so cool to
hear my fellow racers pre race rituals. I didn't know
the answers ahead of time, and as you see, some
are more wacky, some are more mundane, but provide that
familiarity that is so critical to success and performance. So
big thank you to Catherine, John Zach and Raja for
sharing your pre race rituals and hopefully it adds some
(18:34):
color to motorsports fans and viewers when we watch a race,
to know that there are these complex and inexplicable but
still very very important stages and processes for getting ready
to go out and to compete. In summary, pre race
or pre competition rituals can be really, really beneficial. Clearly
(18:54):
a lot of people use them. We know, thanks to
the University of Toronto, that they can actually help regulate
the brain's response to performance failure. We know that they
promote familiarity in new environments and situations. They can make
us feel lucky and boost our confidence. Not doing it
can make us feel unlucky and hurt our confidence. And
sometimes some superstitions play into our pre competition rituals as well.
(19:19):
Everyone that is our show, thank you so much for
tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this. If you liked it,
please share it with the friends someone who might benefit
from learning a little bit about rituals. Please leave a
review for the podcast, Rate the podcast, follow subscribe to
the podcast. As always, thank you for letting me be
honest with you, and I look forward to seeing you
next week
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If
I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I hope you are doing well.
I've been good. I've been busy. I've been ramping up
at work. I've been trying to get enough of Vitamin
D and be outside. It's been really cool. I'm really
feeling satisfied with the amount of stuff that's going on,
(00:24):
so that's awesome. Today I want to talk about pre
competition rituals because they've come up in a few different scenarios.
So we were having a brainstorming session as to what
kind of content to put out from the NASCAR channels,
and we asked the crew members of various teams what
(00:45):
their pre race rituals were, which was super cool. I
highly recommend checking out that TikTok. I'll link it in
the description. I also hosted a panel with a few
racers and we were talking about pre race tradition, and
so I wanted to dive into that a little bit
more because I also definitely had pre race traditions that
(01:06):
I did for the entirety of my twenty one year
racing career, but I never really thought much more about
the science or the psychology or why we do that.
So that's what I wanted to jump into today. Before
I get started on some of the things that I
read about and researched that I thought were particularly interesting.
I did want to note that rituals are considered to
(01:29):
be distinct from traditional preparatory routines and habits. Rituals are
more rigid and more formal, and there are fixed steps,
and I think the key thing is that there's no
real direct function or result of doing a ritual. It
is something that is personalized. It is something that is
(01:51):
kind of separate from the actual activity that you were
going into, whereas a preparatory routine or habit is something
you do for warming up your muscles or getting in
the right mindset. Or we'll see racers who do little
activities with their physios before racist so that they're priming
their body to be ready to make quick decisions. So
rituals are distinct from habits and pre competition routines. With
(02:15):
that context, I want to first talk about a study
from the University of Toronto and how they learned that
rituals can actually help performance, and then I want to
jump into more of the subjective observations that I've read
about from different people in different sources that explain why
pre competition rituals might be really beneficial. So from the
(02:38):
University of Toronto, as I said, they learned that rituals
can help performance, specifically by regulating the brain's response to
personal or performance failure. And the way they discovered this
was that they conducted a study that observed brain activity
and measured brain activity during a series of challenging tasks
where participants sometimes did a ritual before these tasks and
(03:02):
then sometimes they didn't, and the task was intended to
be extremely challenging so that everyone would fail at some point.
And what they found was that the people who did
the rituals had less brain activity and less brain reactivity
after failing than the people who hadn't done a ritual beforehand.
(03:22):
So this supported their hypothesis that having rituals desensitizes the
brain's anxiety related reaction to an error. And if you
think about how this helps with competition, if you're able
to stay calm, cool and collected after making a mistake,
you're that much more likely to recover and rebound quickly
(03:43):
and get back on track. The racing example would be.
Let's say you get oversteer or you're loose, and so
the car turns more than you're expecting it to. If
you freak out, you might not be able to get
the car back on track quickly. Or if you go
off track or if you spin, and the quicker you're
able to get back going again, the better your results
(04:04):
going to be. And so what they found is that
people who did rituals regularly before these tasks were more
likely to be able to recover. I think that's interesting
because that was something we also actively trained for with
Pitfit in the motorsports training that I was working on,
because they really emphasized when we were training if we
dropped a ball during an exercise or if we somehow
(04:26):
made a mistake or didn't do as well. I remember
that I would give commentary or make fun of myself,
and my trainer was very rigid, like, no, just get
back into it, get your brain back into it. Don't
dwell on what you did wrong, Like get back into it.
And so I thought that was interesting that the study
actually sees that rituals can assist in being able to
get your head back into the competition mode after making
(04:48):
a mistake, and that recovery is critical regardless of if
you're in a sport competition, if you're doing anything performance,
if you're giving a presentation, if you're in the middle
of a really important if you're parenting. I mean, the
ability to recover from a mistake or an error is
so important. So maybe we can also think about how
we can incorporate rituals into our day to day lives
(05:11):
to help us minimize that brain reactivity to making mistakes.
The next thing that was really interesting to read about
when it came to pre competition rituals was the idea
that by having a standard and consistent ritual that you
do before an event, it helps promote familiarity even in
(05:31):
different environments and different situations. And if we're focusing on athletes,
we compete in very different places. Racers go to different racetracks,
the culture is different, the environments different, the people are different,
the food is different. And so if you're able to
find comfort and stability in the familiarity of your routine
and your ritual, that will help you feel more calm
(05:54):
and it will help you stay more comfortable, which then
helps performance. So that's a really interesting thing to think
about again in our day to day lives, if we're
having to perform at a high level in different environments,
perhaps having that ritual will help center us, even if
it's on a more subconscious level. The last more subjective
(06:15):
thing that I read about in different op eds or
that rituals can make you feel lucky and feeling like
you are giving yourself an advantage or feeling like you
are making yourself lucky will boost your confidence and it'll
make you feel just that extra a little bit better.
And so that ties in with the familiarity, it ties
in with the reducing the reactivity to errors. But being
(06:39):
able to do anything to get your confidence up is
critical for any high performance activity. I would then argue
that if you are used to doing a ritual and
for whatever reason, you don't do it ahead of time,
I would assume that that could also make you feel
unlucky or hurt your confidence. And so it's important to
make sure that if we are having these effects rituals,
(07:00):
that we are being consistent in how we're using them
before any competition. As I was reading about rituals and
some of this higher level research that was done on rituals,
it also got me thinking about how, in any given
competitive environment, regardless of what we're doing, if we inadvertently do
(07:21):
something that precedes a win or a strong performance or
anything like that, it might make you more inclined to
repeat that action every time. And it kind of ties
into some superstitions that I know a lot of competitive
athletes feel that they have to do something because they
just feel superstitious about it. This happened to me very
(07:43):
early in my racing career. I clearly remember I had
done my first Skip Barber race when I was thirteen
years old at Limerock. I did terribly. I have another
episode about it where I explained that I was two
laps down at the end of the race. It was awful.
But starting the next season, when I was fourteen, I
was racing in the Skip Barber Series for full time
and our first race was at Virginia International Raceway. We
(08:05):
were racing the full course. I had qualified pole. I
was so excited. I was also so nervous. I didn't
quite know what to do with the incredible turnaround from
the first race of my race car driving career being
too laps down to then qualifying on pole. So it
was just feeling a little uneasy, very nervous. And it
turns out that I was a little late getting to
(08:26):
the grid to get ready to go out and race,
and I had to go to the bathroom. So I
ended up sprinting to the bathroom. I sprinted to my car,
and as I was getting ready and dressed, I realized
I felt a little better. I felt a little calmer.
I felt a little more optimistic and positive. There was
something about that little burst of energy that raised my endorphins,
(08:47):
and endorphins make you happy. And I went out and
I ended up winning the race, and there was something
on a subconscious psychological level that told me that I
need to do that little sprint before or every single race.
I decided to do this partially because it physically made
me feel better and it made me feel less anxious,
and that was a way to treat my symptoms of
(09:09):
fear and nervousness, which I learned. But I'm looking back
and I definitely also just felt superstitious that by doing
the sprint, I want a race, and that I had
to keep doing that, and in that season in particular,
I want twelve of the fourteen races, and so it
clearly worked. I haven't won all my races since then, obviously,
but it's something that I do, and the next time
(09:32):
I'm in a car, I will also do a little sprint.
I don't sprint to the bathroom anymore, but I do
sprint down pit Road, or maybe I'll sprint from the
hall or to Pitt Road or something like that, something
to get that little burst of energy. In continuing on
this topic of my rituals, I don't feel like I
do anything particularly crazy, but I do have things that
(09:52):
I have to do very specifically before any competition or
any on track competition. The first is that sprint. I
feel like I have to do that sprint. It might
be short, it might be sweet, it doesn't matter, just
a nice little sprint. I also have a very specific
tightness that I need my racing shoes to be at,
and typically it takes several tries before I feel like
(10:15):
I've gotten both my shoes where they need to be.
So that's a little annoying, but it's something that I'm
very sensitive to. And then the last set of things
that I do as a ritual is have a very
specific order and way that I put my gear on
as I'm getting into the car. So first I have
to tie my hair back in a low ponytail pretty tightly.
(10:37):
It needs three loops on the ponytail holder, if you
all know what I'm talking about. So we have that
tied back. I throughout my racing career could never have
bangs or angled haircuts so that I couldn't pull back
my hair fully like I felt like I needed the
security of my hair being pulled back in its entirety
(10:59):
with no loose strands, So that was one thing. Then
I put my bottle clava on. While I'm still out
of the car, I put my suit up, I zip everything,
tighten all the velk row, and then put my hans device,
my neck hands device on. I get into the car,
and then I loosely put on all of my seat belts.
There's no particular order to this. But then while I
(11:21):
still have my helmet off, I tighten my right lap
belt pretty tight. I tighten my left lap belt pretty tight.
I then loosely put on each of my shoulder belts
and so they are locked in but pretty loose. And
then I make sure that the center unit of the
seat belt system, like where everything comes together, is very
(11:42):
centered on my body. Then I give a final tug
on the right belt and a tug on the left
lap belt, and then I put my helmet on. I
secure it right away. I put my hans device on,
and then I make sure that the shoulder belts are
back over the hands for how they have to be,
and then I I mostly tighten the right shoulder belt,
(12:03):
and then I mostly tighten the left shoulder belt. And
then I have to put my left glove on first,
and I have to hold my sleeve of my suit
in a certain way to make sure it gets that overlap.
I have to do the same thing on my right glove.
I then take a second while my shoulder belts are
still somewhat loose, to take a deep breath in and
(12:23):
a deep breath out, and then I tighten my shoulder
belts like there is no tomorrow, and I try to
feel like I cannot breathe because the seatbelts do loosen
up a little bit when you're in the car, just
from all the vibrations. So that's what I have to
do before every race. Sometimes it feels a little tedious,
but it definitely also feels wrong if I don't do it.
So I am committed to those pre race rituals as
(12:48):
a special treat for you guys, and because I was
curious about what other racers might do during their rituals.
I have asked several people to send me what they
do before every race as their ritual, and this is
who they are and what they had to say.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
I am Catherine Legg and my rituals before races are vary,
but they very along the same theme, which is always visualization.
I always have just a routine that has become so
ingrained in me over the years, which is wiping the
bottom of my soles on my feet, like scraping them
(13:26):
on the pavement so that I know nothing stuck to
the bottom of them.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
It's like getting in my zen place, which I can
do just by telling myself that I've been this hindern
times before and I'm going to be okay if I
trust my subconscious so I don't overthink it. So then
I just kind of let myself go through the motions.
And visualization is obviously a.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Big tool and being prepared because if you're prepared, you're confident.
If you're confident, you can let your subconscious deal with everything,
and that, my friends, is the most effective way.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Of doing Thank you, Catherine.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
Next we have My name is John Edwards. I spent
eleven years as a factory driver for BMW in the
GTLM class of the Imsoweathertech sports Car Championship. I think
for me, the biggest ritual I had was always having
a shot of espresso right before I would drive. It's
not something I did when I was younger, but in
(14:21):
sports cars, I guess the nature of doing long endurance races,
I kind of started drinking a lot more espresso at
the racetrack, especially being surrounded by all the Europeans, and
that built into kind of a tradition. And eventually, whether
it was a hot summer day at VIR and I
was only going to do one stint, or if I
was doing an endurance race, you know, twenty four hour
(14:42):
race at Daytona in January, I would have to have
a shot of espresso before every stint that I drove.
I think in terms of preparing to drive, I had
to kind of rely on what I did when I
was younger and junior Formula cars back then, I spent
a lot of time on visualization. I would associate that
with music and so I would listen to embarrassingly a
(15:05):
lot of eminem while I would do visualization, and slowly
I could do less and less visualization before a stint
and just listen to music on my way to the grid,
and that kind of helped trick my mind into Okay,
it's game time, and you got to get your mind
ready to go. As I got older and as I
(15:25):
raced year after year, and especially getting into sports cars
where you don't have the luxury to sit by yourself
for ten minutes or fifteen minutes before a stint, because
you don't really know when you're getting in the car
sometimes whether it's under green fly conditions or if a
yellow comes out at a weird time and you might
be in the middle of eating a sandwich and somebody
turns around and tells you to throw a helmet on.
So you've got to be ready to switch it on
(15:46):
at any time. And so for me, those years of
training and work that I put in in the junior
Formula car days is what paid off at that point
where I got used to just being able to turn off,
turn off my brain a little bit and just let
myself go into the zone and be ready to go.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Thanks for sharing that, John, Next we have.
Speaker 6 (16:11):
Hey, this is Zach Karen, driver in NASCAR's Arkamanaut Series,
and here are my prairace rituals. Before stock cars, I
used to race professional supervikes, and I would actually roll
around on the ground in my leathers to kind of
associate the idea that I've already made contact with the
track surface so I won't need to during the race. Now,
(16:32):
my perirace rituals are a bit more tame. Typically I
just put on some really good music. Sorry, but unfortunately
that means no country for me. Then I also tend
to pee a lot. I don't know if that's because
I get super nervous or more so likely because I
overhydrate myself leading up to race days, but yeah, they're
(16:53):
my perious rituals.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I to pee a lot before a race. So right
there with you, Zach. Thank you. The last race where
we're gonna hear from is Raja Caruth, who races in
the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.
Speaker 7 (17:05):
In terms of pre race rituals, I used to be
like pretty antsy just because I didn't have a lot
of experience and so I just didn't know what to expect.
But nowadays I'm pretty calm pre race and usually the
day of, just because we practice a lot during the week.
I personally practice a lot and look at a lot
of film and practice all my simulators and at the
(17:26):
Gokar track and things of that nature. So it's really
not a super nerve wracking environment for myself in terms
of on race days, like I usually always get eggs
and pancakes in the morning or a waffle, but I
always getting like strambled eggs and stuff. And then pre
race and stuff, I'll do like a little stretch just
to activate like my lower back and stuff like that
(17:48):
and get my body feeling nice. Then I'll juggle and
then just pray or listen to music a little bit
and then just go out to intros. It's really simple,
just because, like I said, I used to be pretty
antsy due to my inexperience, but now that I've got
some years on my belt, it's really just kind of
a just shown up to do my job and have fun.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Definitely important to have fun, and it's so cool to
hear my fellow racers pre race rituals. I didn't know
the answers ahead of time, and as you see, some
are more wacky, some are more mundane, but provide that
familiarity that is so critical to success and performance. So
big thank you to Catherine, John Zach and Raja for
sharing your pre race rituals and hopefully it adds some
(18:34):
color to motorsports fans and viewers when we watch a race,
to know that there are these complex and inexplicable but
still very very important stages and processes for getting ready
to go out and to compete. In summary, pre race
or pre competition rituals can be really, really beneficial. Clearly
(18:54):
a lot of people use them. We know, thanks to
the University of Toronto, that they can actually help regulate
the brain's response to performance failure. We know that they
promote familiarity in new environments and situations. They can make
us feel lucky and boost our confidence. Not doing it
can make us feel unlucky and hurt our confidence. And
sometimes some superstitions play into our pre competition rituals as well.
(19:19):
Everyone that is our show, thank you so much for
tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this. If you liked it,
please share it with the friends someone who might benefit
from learning a little bit about rituals. Please leave a
review for the podcast, Rate the podcast, follow subscribe to
the podcast. As always, thank you for letting me be
honest with you, and I look forward to seeing you
next week
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