Build a better trigger

You’re clipped in. Hands gripping the bars. The start is thirty seconds away.

Your mind is everywhere — the gear you forgot to check, the racer next to you, that heavy feeling in your legs from yesterday’s workout. You’re physically present, but mentally scattered. And you know, somewhere beneath the noise, that this is the moment everything gets decided.

Josh Waitzkin wrote about this in The Art of Learning. A chess prodigy turned martial arts world champion, he understood that getting to a peak mental state on demand wasn’t luck — it was a skill you could build. 

His method?  Find the moments when you’re already at that peak — after nailing a workout or when you’re in a flow state — and attach your trigger to that feeling. This goes beyond recognizing the peak: you are creating a conditioned link, one that brings you back there on command. Do it enough times at lower stakes, and the association becomes real.

Ride, listen, breathe. Let your nervous system learn where the trigger sends you. Then, when the pressure comes, pull that trigger – your body already knows where to go.

Waitzkin’s trigger was Lose Yourself by Eminem.

Mine is Metallica’s Enter Sandman.

When that opening riff starts, something settles. Not a feeling of calm, exactly — more like grounded. My scattered thoughts narrow into one thing. I’ve heard it hundreds of times in the right moments. Now it finds me automatically.

Your trigger could be a countdown, a key phrase, the ritual of pinning your number on.  Whatever you choose, it has to be trained — paired with the real thing, at the right moments, until the association holds.

The trigger doesn’t create the readiness. It retrieves it.

Build yours deliberately. Use it consistently. Trust it when it matters.

See you next time.

Yours in speed,

Steve