Your Brain Needs a Warm-Up Too

Oct 23

Written By GSMBC

This weekend in the freeride scene, Red Bull Rampage went down. Riders face colossal cliffs and mind blowing lines in the Utah desert. The physical risks are extreme, and so is the mental pressure.

Athletes often describe the mental prep as one of the hardest parts of Rampage - they know a single mistake could be disastrous, so confidence and focus are literally life-saving.

Many Rampage competitors develop elaborate routines leading up to their finals run. For example, two-time champion Kyle Strait has explained that he dedicates the entire month before Rampage to one thing: riding only his Rampage bike.

This extended routine is a form of neural priming in itself - when Kyle drops in at Rampage, his brain and body already feel at home because he’s essentially been living in that state for weeks. Other freeriders have their own habits: some visualize their entire line top to bottom every night before sleep; others have a playlist of songs that put them in the fearless mindset; nearly all of them perform a final bike check and a personal mantra or prayer at the top of the run to center themselves.

These routines might seem simple, but science and experience show they can make a huge difference. In this post, we’ll explore routines, and how they affect performance.

Neural Priming and State-Dependent Learning

Why do routine mental and physical actions before an event help us perform better? A big part of the answer lies in our brain’s ability to prime itself through repetition and recall.

When you visualize a race run or rehearse a skill in your head, you’re engaging in mental rehearsal, which activates many of the same neural pathways as the real activity. This kind of neural priming essentially warms up your brain’s circuitry, so that the “real” performance feels more familiar and automatic.

Another powerful factor is state-dependent learning; which suggests that we recall information and skills best when we’re in the same mental or physiological state in which we learned them[2].

In practice, this means that if you always train feeling calm and focused, you’ll ride a trail best when you’re calm and focused. Pre-run rituals help create that matching state on demand. By using tools like controlled breathing, music, or self-talk, athletes can recreate the emotions and arousal level of their practice sessions. Sports psychologist Brett Steenbarger explains that effective mental rehearsal “is a gateway to action via state-dependent learning.” It works by having athletes vividly evoke the sensations and even stress of real performance in a controlled way, then practice staying calm and confident, linking a high-pressure state with positive outcomes[3][4].

In simpler terms, when you close your eyes and feel yourself dropping into a steep section, heart rate under control, you’re training your brain to retrieve the “learned lines” and skills under those same conditions during the actual run.

Visualization is a cornerstone of this process. Athletes from many sports use imagery to program their minds for success. Mountain biking is no exception - mentally riding the course ahead of time can boost both physical and psychological readiness. As one overview notes, “repeated imagery can build both experience and confidence in an athlete’s ability to perform certain skills under pressure”[5]. By the time you actually hit the trail, it can feel like you’ve already ridden it, because in a sense your brain has. This mental familiarity breeds confidence. It’s easier to commit to that big drop or tricky rock garden when your mind says “I’ve got this - I’ve seen it before.”

How Routines Enhance Focus, Confidence, and Calm

Pre-performance routines aren’t superstition or luck charms - they’re intentional sequences of task-relevant thoughts and actions designed to get you in the zone[6]. A good routine typically includes both mental and physical elements: for example, cognitive steps like visualization or positive self-talk, and behavioral steps like rhythmic breathing or a physical warm-up ritual[7]. Together, these elements serve a few key purposes:

Sharpening Focus and Blocking Distractions: A routine gives your mind a familiar checklist to follow, which leaves less room for intrusive worries. By concentrating on controllable actions (breathing, imagery, gear checks, etc.), athletes tune out distractions. Research in golf, for instance, shows that a consistent pre-shot routine encourages focus on task-relevant cues and prevents overthinking[8].

This could mean the rider is thinking about their line and technique instead of the crowd, the competition, or that mistake from the last run.

Triggering Automaticity and “Flow”: Going through the same motions each time can cue your brain that it’s time to perform, helping shift into an automatic, flow state. One sports psychologist explains that routines “trigger well learnt movement patterns” and reduce attention on mechanics, effectively increasing automaticity[9].

The less you have to consciously think about how to ride, the more smoothly and confidently you can react. By the end of your ritual, you’ve signaled to yourself that practice is over - now it’s game time, and your skills can run on autopilot.

Building Confidence and Self-Belief: Perhaps most importantly, a pre-run ritual is a confidence-booster. It’s a moment of calm control before the chaos. You can remind yourself of successful training runs, use positive self-talk, or recall a coach’s encouraging words. Over time, following a set routine becomes a mental cue that you are ready[6].

Robert Singer went further to say the purpose of a pre-performance routine is to “put oneself in an optimal emotional, high self-expectant, confident, and focused state immediately prior to execution, and to remain that way during the act”[10].

In essence, your ritual is a switch that turns on your confident mindset. Knowing you’ve prepared your mind and body as best as possible leads to a high self-expectancy - an expectation of success - which is the foundation of real confidence.

Emotional Control and Nerve Management: Everyone feels pressure at the start line, from first-timers to world champions. The difference is that experienced athletes have strategies to channel that adrenaline. Pre-run routines often incorporate relaxation techniques like controlled breathing (such as the classic “4x4 box breathing”) to prevent heart rate and tension from spiking. The routine acts as an emotional stabilizer; it gives you something active to do about the jitters. Studies have found that pre-performance routines can lower competitive anxiety and increase a sense of control[11].

Instead of passively hoping the nerves don’t get to you, you proactively dial them down. The result is emotional control - you’re fired up enough to have energy, but not so anxious that it hijacks your focus.

Crucially, these benefits held true even under high-pressure competition. Any kind of sport or task that allows a few seconds of preparation can benefit from a routine, whether it’s a golfer lining up a putt or a mountain biker dropping into a race run[14].

The routine doesn’t have to be complex - consistency and personal meaning are what count[15].

For athletes and coaches, the take-home message is clear: having a pre-run ritual is a proven way to boost performance by enhancing focus, confidence, and emotional readiness.

Rituals on the Trail: How MTB Pros Prime Themselves

What do pre-run rituals look like in the mountain biking world? Let’s peek into that crucial moment before the ride, where routines help even the boldest riders steady their minds.

In downhill racing, if you watch the start gate at a World Cup, you’ll notice almost every rider has their own little routine.They might even talk themselves through the first section or hum a tune to stay loose. Visualization is key - you’ll sometimes catch riders almost dancing at the gate, eyes closed, subtly leaning or tilting as they mentally ride the course.

Troy Brosnan with his signature pre-race pose.

“You may have seen riders near the start gate throwing some funny shapes, eyes closed - visualising and mentally taking themselves down the track ahead of them.”[17]

It might look odd to bystanders, but it’s a sign of an athlete completely focused internally, picturing every corner and drop before it happens. By the time the beeps sound, the run is already mapped out in the rider’s mind.

Young downhill riders practice visualization and breathing techniques as part of their routine.

These rituals help racers be “focused and relaxed in the start gate, ready to hit the right line” when the clock starts[18]. Mental walkthroughs are so effective that even junior riders are taught to do them. At youth development camps, coaches explicitly work on pre-run mindset: teaching kids to pause, breathe, and visualize instead of just charging off with nerves jangling. The impact is immediate - as one bike park manager observed, after training, “suddenly you see kids actually starting to use visualization and concentration techniques before and while they head up to the start gate. A day earlier some of them would just go up the mountain and send it without a second thought or preparation.”[19] By adopting rituals, these young racers learned to calm themselves and focus, improving their performance and enjoyment. It’s a perfect example of routines building confidence: the riders feel more in control and less intimidated when they have a game plan for those pre-race butterflies.

It’s telling that the riders who handle the mental battle best often come out on top in freeride events.

Even cross-country and enduro racers, who face longer grinds rather than one explosive run, use pre-start rituals.

Take Evie Richards, an XC World Champion, who uses a unique form of neural priming: she memorizes motivational quotes that her mother sends her and repeats them in her head during tough moments of a race[21]. That’s a kind of cognitive routine that keeps her confidence high and emotions in check when fatigue and doubt creep in. While the specifics differ by discipline, the common thread is that all these athletes have a go-to routine to get in the right headspace to perform.

Evie Richards pre-race (credit: Red Bull)

Everyday Routine: Universality of Pre-Performance Rituals

It’s worth noting that these principles aren’t exclusive to mountain biking - pre-performance routines are a secret weapon across many fields. In sports, the examples are endless.

Michael Jordan has a free-throw routine (feet shoulder-width, spin the ball, three dribbles, deep breath, then shoot) that he never deviated from. Such consistency isn’t just habit - it “can strengthen concentration and help [athletes] dive into an optimal mental state for performance,” explains sport psychologist Peter Gröpel[22].

Watch a tennis player bouncing the ball before a serve or a climber shaking out their arms before a tough route - these are rituals to center attention and cue the mind for the task.

The benefit of routines extends to everyday life and high-pressure moments outside of sports. Public speakers, for instance, often have pre-presentation rituals - maybe rehearsing opening lines in the mirror, doing a breathing exercise, or visualizing the audience’s applause (to overcome stage freight). These actions work for the same reasons athletic rituals work: they prime the brain, reduce anxiety, and build a sense of readiness.

The next time you have a big exam, job interview, or performance at work, consider borrowing these techniques. A deliberate routine of mental preparation can help anyone approach a challenge with greater confidence and composure.

Bringing It All Together: Train Your Brain Like Your Body

As coaches and riders, embracing pre-run rituals and neural priming techniques is a no-brainer (pun intended). They are powerful tools to improve performance by improving your mental state. Just as you wouldn’t send a rider into a race without a physical warm-up, don’t send the mind in cold either. Developing a personal routine might take some trial and error, but start simple. Use:

Breathing drills
Visualization practice[5].
Key words or mantras
Consistent actions

Over time, these steps become your mental launchpad. When you follow your routine, it sends a signal: I’m ready to go.

And because you’ve practiced it, you truly are.

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