VISUALIZING WINNING THE WORLDS WITH DONNY ROBINSON

Recently retired Donny Robinson was one of the hardest workers in the BMX Pro class. He trained constantly, double days all year round. That was his program. That was his belief, and that was his strength. But his true strength was his vision. Having the vision to see himself succeeding. Having the courage to see himself beating top guys. It’s actually this vision that he possessed that inspired his hard work actually. If you don’t have the vision to succeed and take care of it by training consistently hard, then you just train to train, not train to win, a common problem in BMX and sports in general.

Donny shares how he went to the 2009 UCI World Championships in Adelaide, Australia, having a bad season by his standards because he hadn’t won a race in 10 months, but in one week of thinking differently, he turned things around.

SIDE NOTE: ATTITUDE CHANGE WITH MIKE DAY
Let me add a side note, I was coaching Mike Day at the time, and traveled 20 hours to this race just to coach him. I recall his negative attitude and how he was in a rut. With this attitude, he might as well have not raced. I changed his mindset by stating he nothing to lose to begin with. I also changed his training that week, just doing things way differently to break up the monotony and the rut that he was in. Mike not only made the final but he finished with a silver medal right behind Donny Robinson. Proof, with an attitude change, you can also turn things around almost instantly!

@bmxcoach

Donny locks into the worlds final in lane 3 and just focused on what he needed to do, get a good start.

The Machine was in lane 1 and was coming off a banner season winning the Olympics and came into this race as the defending World Champion. This was Strombergs first title defense. One of many and after this race, he also learned how to deal with newly found pressure.

Off the hop, Donny is finishing up the holeshot and immediately taking no chances of letting Maris into the front door, taking his line away.

Donny takes off down the second straight and he is riding the lap that he visualized all week. Ramiro Marino in second.

Donny makes one mistake as he cased doubling over two rollers in the tight Adelaide rodeo rhythm section.

Mr. Robinson’s owned the track and heads down the last straight clear and free.

Donny didn’t smile a whole lot at races, he was too busy visualizing at time. He was at work and he was determined to prove to USA Cycling that he deserved to be funded for the trip.