How many times have you groaned when you saw a favorite athlete fall apart at the Olympics or other big competition?

It doesn’t matter how well trained you are physically—your mind can throw a wrench in the works in a heartbeat if it’s not equally prepared.

Any athlete who has sustained a long and successful career will tell you mental preparation is critical to performing your best. Yet, for many athletes, it one of the most neglected aspects of their training. Don’t make the same mistake!

Here are three keys to cultivating the mindset of success:

Motivate Yourself

One of the most difficult aspects of bodybuilding is pushing yourself when you don’t want to. The training is endless and the attention to diet is nonstop. Top performers learn to motivate themselves.

Motivation comes from within. Others can inspire you, but the driving force comes from you alone. Without knowing what you want to achieve and why, it will be hard to maintain motivation!

Ways to keep yourself motivated include:

  • Knowing your ultimate goal
  • Posting reminders of what happens if you don’t work out or maintain your diet (such as getting fat again)
  • Using the skills you are learning in your training in other areas of life—for example, applying the discipline you use in your workouts to your career and personal life

Visualize Success

Visualization is picturing the outcome of an event before it takes place, which helps your mind lock onto the goal. Famous golfer Jack Nicholas called this “going to the movies.” He would visualize a putt rolling along the ground and into the cup over and over again. His mind then became conditioned to simply repeating what it had already seen on the course.

Visualization does not mean you will be able to lift a lot more weight than you ever have. But it can be a tiebreaker—the combination of your physical effort and mental imagery will be the one-two punch you need to achieve greater goals.

Model a Champion

Find a competitor you admire and want to emulate. Strive to copy the best of their habits, routines, and attitudes. Modeling your efforts on those of a proven champion will speed your development.

This isn’t about stealing their personality and signature routines. Instead, you are applying your own personality and style to the framework of what they do. Eventually, your own framework will evolve as your career grows.

Overall, the more mental training you do to achieve success, the more likely you are to actually achieve that success—and more!