Professional traders and professional athletes are very similar. It comes down to their routines, what they actually do, and their mindset.
Both are disciplined and patient, and both follow a plan. But that does not make them rigid. They stay flexible and change the plan when the need arises.
Key takeaways
For a trader, backtesting is what training is for an athlete, where you find and fix mistakes with no real money at stake.
Profitable traders run the same routine every day regardless of whether they feel happy or sad.
Impulsivity leads to revenge trading and overtrading, and meditation helps you stay calm and in control.
Rehearsing a loss or a winning trade in your mind means you are better prepared when it happens for real.
Once you have trained and rehearsed, you execute without overthinking, free of fear and greed.
Backtest the way athletes train
A lot of unprofitable traders only ever trade every day. That helps, but professional traders also backtest, and backtesting is their version of training.
You can test your strategy many times, make improvements, and find mistakes you would not have spotted otherwise. Better to make those mistakes in a backtest than with real money in the live markets.
The more you train, the more of what you do goes into your subconscious. So when you are live trading, there are far fewer decisions left to make.
Meditation and impulsivity
Athletes do a mental warmup before training and competing, and meditation does the same job for a trader. It keeps you calm and in control.
That matters because impulsivity is a disadvantage. It is what leads to revenge trading and overtrading, and getting rid of it is worth practicing daily.
The strange thing about meditation is how hard it feels even though it is easy. It is closing your eyes and focusing on your breath for about 10 minutes. However, the harder it is for you, the more you actually need it.
“The more difficult it is for you, that means the more that you actually need to do it.”
Visualization and getting in the zone
Athletes visualize to prepare for different scenarios. A footballer pictures scoring a goal, and that makes him more prepared for the action.
The same applies to trading. You can visualize being in a loss and prepare the action you will take, or visualize a profit and how your strategy plays out. Personally, I add to winning trades, so I rehearse that first.
This gets you in the zone, which is what Mark Douglas writes about in Trading in the Zone. Being in the present moment, distraction free, means no fear and no greed, and that is where you make the best decisions.
Executing on autopilot
When an athlete is competing, they are no longer thinking. They are doing everything subconsciously because they have already trained, visualized, and reviewed their previous games.
Traders can do the same. Reflect on your journal, review your strategy, do the visualization and the meditation, and by the time you trade you are just executing on the plan.
When you are not thinking that deeply, you are not fearful, greedy, or impulsive. In short, that is what gives you much better results, and a lot of professional traders will tell you the same.
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