It Takes 15-20 Pieces: Why Mental Training Isn’t a Quick Fix for Rowers
“We tried that reflection thing. It didn’t work.”
This is what coaches and rowers tell me after they’ve asked the three questions twice, maybe three times, and their athletes are still fading at the same point.
I get it. You want results. Your athletes want results. Everyone’s looking for the quick fix, the hack, the thing that will transform mental toughness by next weekend.
But here’s what I tell every coach: if you’re not willing to commit to 15-20 pieces with structured reflection, don’t start. Because three pieces isn’t enough. Five pieces isn’t enough. Ten pieces might start to show something, but you’re still building toward critical mass.
Systematic recalibration of Racing Brain takes 15-20 exposures where prediction doesn’t match outcome.
Let me show you why.
Rowers have two brains. The Racing Brain is your automatic threat-detection system. It has been collecting data and building patterns over years of training:
“When discomfort reaches this level at 1200m, danger is coming.”
“When my breathing feels like this, I need to back off.”
“When my legs burn like this, I’m approaching my limit.”
These patterns weren’t installed overnight. They were built through hundreds, maybe thousands, of training experiences.
Every time your athlete felt the stop signal and backed off, Racing Brain logged it: “Prediction confirmed. Backing off was correct. Threat was real.”
The pattern got reinforced, piece after piece, season after season.
And now you’re trying to overwrite that pattern with… three counterexamples?
Racing Brain doesn’t work that way.
Research on exposure-based learning, the kind that drives therapy for phobias and anxiety disorders, shows a consistent pattern: meaningful recalibration of threat responses requires repeated exposures where the predicted threat doesn’t materialize.
One or two exposures? Dismissed as anomalies. “That time was different. The real danger is still there.”
Five to ten exposures? Maybe the person starts to notice a pattern. Maybe doubt creeps in about whether the threat is as severe as predicted. But the old pattern is still dominant.
Fifteen to twenty exposures? This is where the literature shows reliable recalibration. The new pattern has enough data to compete with the old one. The threat response begins to shift.
Why so many? Because you’re not just adding new information. You’re competing with years of contradictory data. The old pattern has massive statistical weight behind it. You need substantial counterevidence to shift the equilibrium.
This is the same mechanism that drives exposure therapy for anxiety. If someone has a fear of heights, one trip to a high balcony where they don’t fall doesn’t cure the phobia. They need 15-20 exposures to that feared situation, where they explicitly recognize: “I predicted catastrophe. Catastrophe didn’t happen. My threat detection is miscalibrated.”
Your athletes need the same systematic approach.
Let me walk you through Mike’s story in detail.
Mike was a college rower. Junior year. Strong aerobic base, decent technical efficiency. But every piece, training or racing, started with the same thought: “I don’t have the legs today.”
He’d open conservatively. “Protect yourself. Don’t blow up in the first 500.” He’d finish with gas in the tank. His 2k was consistently 3-5 seconds slower than his training predicted.
We started the protocol in October. Three hard pieces per week: two threshold workouts, one race-pace piece.
Mike started noticing Racing Brain’s predictions. Before each piece: “You’re going to blow up if you open at this pace.” During the first 500m: catastrophic feelings, heart racing, convinced he’d made a mistake.
After each piece: “Where did Racing Brain tell you to stop? Where did you actually stop? What does that gap teach your Racing Brain?”
His answers: “Racing Brain told me I’d blow up in the first 500. I didn’t blow up. I finished. The prediction was wrong.”
But Mike didn’t believe it yet. Five pieces isn’t enough to overturn three years of protective pacing.
This is where it gets interesting. Mike started to recognize: “Racing Brain sends this same catastrophic signal every time. And every time, I finish without blowing up.”
The doubt was creeping in. Not about whether the signal would come—it always came. But about whether it meant what Racing Brain claimed it meant.
After piece #9, Mike said: “It still feels catastrophic in the moment. But I’m starting to think the feeling is lying to me.”
That’s progress. But he wasn’t done.
By piece 13, something shifted. Racing Brain still sent the signal. But the urgency was lower. The catastrophic feeling was still there, but it didn’t completely dominate Mike’s decision-making.
He was learning to experience the alarm without obeying it automatically.
After piece 16, he said: “I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling that signal. But now I know: that feeling at 500m doesn’t mean I’m at my limit. It means Racing Brain hasn’t fully recalibrated yet. I have way more capacity than it thinks I do.”
Week 13, Mike tested his 2k. 6.2 seconds faster than his previous PR. Not from fitness gains – his physiological metrics were essentially unchanged. From eliminating protective pacing patterns driven by miscalibrated threat detection.
Racing Brain had learned: “The catastrophic signal at 500m doesn’t predict actual danger. Recalibrate threshold upward.”
It took sixteen pieces over twelve weeks.
Most coaches bail after 3-5 pieces. Here’s why:
We’ve been sold on quick fixes. “This one mental hack will change everything!” So when athletes do the reflection three times and still fade, coaches think it’s not working.
But three pieces isn’t training. It’s barely introducing the concept.
Mental toughness recalibration doesn’t happen linearly. You don’t see 5% improvement after each piece. You see:
If you’re only looking at piece #3, it looks like nothing’s happening. But the foundation is being built.
After two or three pieces, athletes start saying: “Do we have to do this reflection thing again? It feels pointless.”
Of course it feels pointless at piece three. Racing Brain hasn’t accumulated enough prediction error yet. The pattern hasn’t shifted.
This is where you, as the coach, need to hold the line: “We’re doing this for 15-20 pieces. I know it feels repetitive. That’s the point. Racing Brain updates through repetition, not through understanding the concept.”
If you’re doing 2-3 hard pieces per week (which most programs do), 15-20 pieces fits within a normal training block:
That’s one training block. Fall season, winter training, spring preparation—you have time.
But you need to commit to the timeline upfront. You need to tell your athletes: “We’re doing this reflection protocol for the next 20 hard pieces. Not three. Not five. Twenty. It’s going to feel repetitive. It’s supposed to.”
Here’s what you’ll notice as athletes accumulate exposures:
If you want to train mental toughness systematically, you need to commit to the timeline.
Don’t start the protocol if you’re going to give up after three pieces. Don’t introduce the Three-Question reflection if you’re not willing to require it for 15-20 hard efforts.
Because partial implementation is worse than not starting at all. Your athletes will learn: “Coach tried another mental training fad and gave up on it when it didn’t work immediately.”
Instead, commit. Tell your athletes: “We’re implementing this protocol for the next 20 hard pieces. Some of you will see changes earlier. Some will take the full 20. But we’re doing this systematically, not hoping for quick fixes.”
Then follow through.
Want the complete week-by-week progression and troubleshooting guide? Check out the free Mindset Clinic.
© 2025 Schary Consulting, LLC. All Rights Reserved