Control vs Worry may be one of the simplest mental frameworks an athlete can learn: put your energy into what you can influence and stop wasting it on what you cannot.
Training rarely happens under perfect conditions. Competitions change. Judges make decisions you disagree with. Equipment fails. Weather shifts. Workouts are announced that you did not expect.
None of those things necessarily determine your performance. What matters is how much mental energy you allow them to take from you.
This idea appears throughout the coaching philosophy of Ben Bergeron and his approach to developing athletes who can perform under pressure.
If the answer is no, why are you spending your energy on it?
Who Is Ben Bergeron?
Ben Bergeron, from CrossFit New England in Massachusetts, became known within competitive CrossFit for coaching high-level athletes and placing significant emphasis on the mental side of performance.
Athletes associated with his coaching include Mat Fraser, Katrin Davidsdottir, Brooke Wells and Cole Sager.
His approach extends beyond sets, repetitions and conditioning. An important part of the philosophy is teaching athletes how to direct their attention when competition becomes unpredictable.
Focus on What You Can Control
The concept becomes much easier when you divide the world around your performance into two categories.
The first contains the things you can influence directly. The second contains everything happening around you that you cannot change.
Your Actions
Training, preparation, nutrition, sleep, recovery, attitude and the way you respond.
External Noise
Judges, weather, schedules, competitors, equipment, workouts and situations you cannot change.
What Can an Athlete Actually Control?
Bergeron's framework brings the athlete's attention back to five areas.
Your Training
You decide whether you train consistently, whether you approach difficult sessions seriously and whether you prepare for the demands of your sport.
You cannot control how prepared your competition is. You can control how prepared you are.
Your Nutrition
You control the decisions that influence how your body is fueled before training and how consistently those decisions support your performance.
Competition may introduce uncertainty. Your everyday preparation does not have to.
Your Sleep
You cannot guarantee that tomorrow will be your best training day.
But you can make decisions that give tomorrow's athlete a better opportunity to perform.
Your Recovery
Hard training creates the need for recovery. Ignoring that relationship does not make you tougher.
You can manage your rest, mobility, workload and the habits that help you return ready to train again.
Your Mindset
You cannot control every event around you, but you have considerable influence over the response that follows.
A bad call, an unexpected workout or a stronger competitor does not have to dictate what happens next.
What You Cannot Control
Weather. Judges. Competition schedules. Equipment. The workout. Your opponent's performance.
Those things may affect the environment in which you compete, but worrying about them does not necessarily improve your ability to respond.
That is the difference between awareness and wasted attention.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Before the 2017 CrossFit Games, Bergeron asked Katrin Davidsdottir, Brooke Wells and Cole Sager to imagine everything that could possibly go wrong during the competition.
The list eventually reached 101 possibilities.
Some were realistic. Others were deliberately extreme—even the possibility of a shark attack made the list.
But the important part of the exercise came next.
Divide the List in Two
Create an Action Plan
If the athletes identified something they could influence, they prepared for it.
Turn anxiety into action.Remove It From the Mental Load
If there was nothing useful they could do about the problem, continuing to worry about it would only consume attention.
Release it.The Matchstick Example
Imagine that every morning you receive a box containing only twenty matchsticks.
Each match represents part of the mental and physical energy available to you that day.
Every time you obsess over something outside your control, you burn one.
A judge makes a decision you dislike. One match.
Someone else's score is better than yours. Another match.
You spend an hour worrying about tomorrow's workout. Another match.
Eventually you arrive at the things that actually matter with fewer matches left to burn.
How to Use Control vs Worry in Your Own Training
Chasing Excellence
The control-vs-worry philosophy is part of a much broader conversation about mindset, preparation, discipline and competitive performance explored by Ben Bergeron.
If this mental framework resonates with you, explore our overview of Chasing Excellence.
Explore Chasing ExcellenceControl Your Response, Not the World Around You
Sport will always contain uncertainty.
You cannot guarantee the workout. You cannot guarantee the judge. You cannot guarantee the weather. And you certainly cannot guarantee the performance of everyone competing beside you.
Trying to control those things wastes energy.
Put that energy somewhere useful instead: your preparation, your habits, your recovery and the attitude you bring to the next challenge.
Do not burn your energy fighting what you cannot change.
Master your preparation. Master your response. Master your mind.