Canadian defender Lauren Sesselmann (left), seen here during a football match against the US at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas, says a healthy mindset might play a bigger part in success than physical prowess. Photo: Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports/Reuters

For everyday athletes hoping to glean more than vague inspiration from watching the elite compete at the Olympic Games in Sochi, fitness experts say let the mind games begin. With imaging techniques, meditation and biofeedback, sports psychologists, athletes and coaches say Olympians and top performers train as intensely mentally as they do physically.

Lauren Sesselmann, whose Canadian Olympic soccer team captured a bronze medal at the 2012 Summer Games in London, said while the physical prowess has to be there, a healthy mindset might play an even bigger part in success.

“We do a lot of mental training,” said Sesselmann. “You have to push yourself and put goals before yourself every day.”

Motivation was never a problem for Sesselmann, 30. The creator of Fit as a Pro workout DVDs says she always relished hitting the field, playing against the boys and even driving two hours to play against the best high school in her state.

“I’ve always been a really competitive person, even if I’m playing a video game,” she said.

But Sesselmann credits the mental strategies learned in the team’s so-called “mind room” with helping her counter inevitable Olympic stressors, from a bad practice day to a truncated personal life to being far away from family and friends.

“In one programme, called ‘Brain paint’, you put yourself into a state of relaxation and imagined yourself doing well for 20 minutes while a psychologist watched your brain waves,” she explained.

Another, called ‘Heart math’, focused on breathing techniques. Sesselmann, who is in Vancouver preparing for the 2015 World Cup, said she regularly meditates before game time.

Sharon Chirban, a sports psychologist with Children’s Hospital Boston who has worked with Olympian skiers, hockey players and figure skaters, said along with talent, determination and commitment, the elite athlete exhibits a high tolerance for frustration and challenge.

“Whenever I go to the gym with my fiancé, who is a former Olympian bobsledder, I work out 20 per cent harder than I do on my own,” Chirban said.

For people who excel, she explained, there is always a bit more to do: “They teach the average person that no one gets there without a lot of hard work. Everyone’s looking for the magic bullet but there’s no short road.”

Gregory Chertok, a sports psychology coach and mental skills trainer with the American College of Sports Medicine, finds that elite athletes eagerly embrace the mental game, happily honing practice tools such as visualisation and relaxation techniques to manage anxiety on the field.

You have to push yourself and put goals before yourself every day

“They’ll dedicate as much as 30 minutes every day to writing down goals, or imagery, or taking time to be mindful,” said Chertok, who has a hockey client at the Sochi games.

He added that sports psychology borrows much from the Eastern philosophy of mindfulness and, although it has become mainstream in the past 25 to 30 years, is still in relative infancy compared to other branches of exercise science, such as strength training.

“It’s not about Buddha sitting cross-legged but about putting oneself in a relaxed position and training to be in the now,” he said. “The elite athlete will have this shelf of mental images that they can call on in times of boredom or laziness to keep moving forward.”

Chertok said he once asked a group of female cross-country runners what motivates them when they are nearing the finish line with nothing left in the tank.

“One girl yelled, ‘Pasta!’ It was her favourite meal and her reward, but only if she gives all in her event,” he said. “That one vivid mental picture affected her breathing and her muscular level, and helped her perform better.”