EKAITZ SAIES

It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I still had two hours until my doctoral thesis defense. The auditorium was empty, just me and the weight of three years of relentless work. I’d spent those years rising at 5:30 each morning, often just to produce a single sentence, constantly refining it, comparing it to studies, or weaving in citations.

I’d only been in this auditorium once before, a visit meant to help me with my visualization sessions. Now, as I stood alone in the space, I reached into my briefcase, pulled out my headphones, and hit play on the song I’d chosen deliberately for this moment. I set it to repeat, letting the music anchor me in this room and this occasion.

I connected my laptop to the big screen and opened my presentation, double-checking each slide with care, ensuring every detail was as it should be. This was all part of the routine I had crafted for myself—my ritual to focus my mind and manage my energy.

If I felt tension rising, I turned to breathing exercises, releasing each breath slowly until I found calm again. If I needed a surge of energy, I bounced lightly on my toes, the beat of the music carrying me into an active, ready state.

The defense went exceptionally well, and I was awarded the coveted cum laude distinction.

The next day, as I reflected on everything that had unfolded, I realized I had drawn on the same mental activation techniques that had carried me through countless races. In a way, this defense felt like one of the biggest competitions of my life, and the strategies I had perfected over years of athletic training had carried me through.

Interestingly, a few months earlier, when Saul Craviotto emerged victorious on the Spanish edition of Celebrity MasterChef, he revealed that he approached the competition using the same mental strategies that had led him to win his Olympic medals.

Mental activation is a crucial component of peak performance in high-performance sports. Activation refers to the optimal mental, emotional, and physical state athletes need to access in order to perform at their best. Achieving this state requires managing arousal levels, emotional control, and focus, balancing between a calm mind and a state of readiness for action. While the precise activation level needed can vary between sports and individual athletes, research shows that consistent use of mental activation techniques enhances performance reliability, especially under pressure. This chapter explores core mental activation techniques and their application in training and competition contexts.

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*You can download all the other chapters that I have shared on my blog: https://ekaitzsaies.com/blog-posts/