Working out is pretty simple; many reach levels of unreal athleticism on extremely basic programming, often times with no coach and little structured guidance. Taking their genetics as a given, we need to look inside the mind of these athletes. This is where the “secret” is…if you want to call it that. The mind is where the true athlete is made.
How you think defines who you will become. All things being equal, taking two athletes of equal strength and skill, the athlete who is mentally stronger will win every time. We can consider each workout a battle of the mind. Win the battle, and you’ll find yourself walking out of the gym, and into your next session stronger than you were before. Lose the battle, and through the negativity of your thoughts, you’ll magnify the stress responses of your physiology, knocking you down a rung on the ladder of your ultimate potential. The mental battle an athlete faces is a two front war:
We are either fighting motivation or fighting association.
Motivation to succeed is what nearly all coaches talk about when they discuss mental strength, but in my experience, most dedicated athletes are strong here by default, and if they aren’t motivated, they don’t last too long. I am assuming since you are taking the time to read this, you care about what you are doing enough to put significant effort into your training and competition. You have probably had a few “eye of the tiger” moments in your life, and maybe even ran up a large set of steps with your arms thrust in the air.
On top of that, if you aren’t motivated to train hard, not only am I unsure of why you are reading this, but I know that simply reading an article will not help you get and stay motivated. Sure you might get fired up for a few minutes if I threw down an article dissing modern work ethic and masculinity, and then had a video with a cool soundtrack, famous movie scenes and fiery quotes. Chances are, after a few hours you’ll settle back to normal. If you don’t like hard work, your journey to athletic success will be a long, harsh rollercoaster lying out before you.
Each workout is a battle of your mind. Through mastering the mental war, you will move closer to becoming the athlete and person, you want to be.
On the other side of this battle, athletes can actually be held back by their passion to succeed. Highly motivated athletes, particularly in the intrinsic realm (they train and compete for personal growth rather than external rewards), stand the chance to rip themselves apart. I commonly train athletes who just have a hard time using any training percentage less than “kill yourself under a mountain of iron”. Training with the only focus of “all-out!” on the surface is admirable, but won’t lead to an optimal result. Without exception, the “kill-yourself” mentality shows up in burnout, overtraining, poor technique/sport skill, and injury. As Jack Reape has said, “show me an athlete who goes hard the time, and I’ll show you a career about to end”. I rarely see optimal exercise technique or form out of an athlete whose foot is constantly on the gas pedal. Usually athletes like this struggle with the second battle of the mind… the one we don’t consider often. It is the battle that can change your approach to training and life itself.
The second battle front of the mind is the battle of association.
The problem with so many athletes is that they have used sport as a vehicle to define themselves. They “associate” themselves, personally, with their sport. When a person merges sport with their true identity, every bad performance, or even workout is associated with their well-being as a person. This results in training sessions becoming a whirlwind of volatility; fun when we are doing well, and misery when we are not. If you had a great workout, you are fulfilling your destiny on this earth and you are on top of the world. If you can’t move the weight, you failed and life, for now, is relatively meaningless.
Deeply associating our self-worth with our training performance makes workouts a struggle when things aren’t going well. It leads to constant frustration, and questioning of our programming. It leads us to fear and dodge any situation where our abilities might not be as good as ourselves or others expect them to be; those situations often being the most critical ones for our growth. This association brings us to attempt to force things to happen; rather than putting solid work in, enjoying training, and letting performances come around. Trust me, I have seen many more PR’s when athletes are having fun and letting it happen then when they are forcing everything. Often times, I’ll encounter the “year 4” syndrome, where an athlete had a great junior season of college, and realize that the next season is their last chance in a competitive environment. They must beat what they did last year to really make their final college season count. They strain and strain and force training down the pipe.
Result: They get injured or overloaded, technically broken, and have a sub-par season.
Training is best when we don’t force it. What we need to realize is that the true measure of ourselves is not rooted in our athletic feats. Our life’s mission will still be accomplished whether or not we will have bad workouts… and you will have “bad” workouts. The true measure of a person via sport is how we react to those days we feel weak. Successful training is how we handle fatigue and failure. Success is about the way we approach each and every chance to train our body. The mind of an athlete should be liquid in a sense, as it must flow and mold to adapt to the current state of the body. You must know when to push and yield, and how to put off feelings of discouragement along the way.
As Bruce Lee’s famous quote goes:
“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and crash. Become like water, my friend.”
Inability to bend and yield can cause a chain of negativity. We often push intensity too hard before we have prepared ourselves with the work capacity to earn that intensity. This overruns our ability to recover, and the next workout we become discouraged and upset. Negative thoughts creep in telling us that we are weak, or that our program needs an overhaul.
We must stay grounded and remember that a bad workout is just another day.
This isn’t to say at all that programming isn’t important, because it is. Without a good workout plan, you’ll never hit your full potential. Even with great programming, everyone still has a bad workout every now and then. Every elite athlete that has ever existed has had bad workouts, and seasons of time…. weeks, months, or even years where they weren’t at their “best”. The difference between an elite mindset and an amateur one is the ability to dissociate themselves personally from those bad workouts to allow themselves to move forward. A professional mental athlete knows that they are not their workout, and uses their failure as a tool to help them succeed in the future.
So the bar feels heavy today? Don’t worry, use lighter weight, choose higher reps, and move the bar fast. Spend some extra time doing deep breathing, mobility, or single joint isolation of a weak point. Not jumping as high as you thought today? Do some dunks on a low rim, or jump over a lower bar. Not running fast? Do some shorter runs up a small incline. Find a way to have fun during the workout, play a short game at the end of it. Did you hit a max or submax in something last week? Maybe don’t push as much next time around or allow more time to work accumulation, power, or reps before you go heavy again. Done and done. Suck it up. Contrast shower tonight and move on to the next day.
In order to improve anything, discipline is required. One of the tried and true ways to do this is through keeping a dedicated log. I present to you a minimalistic “mental log” that you can use as an athlete to help improve your mindset, reduce the stress response between workouts, and become a resilient warrior who puts fear of failure back to the pit it came from. Becoming familiar with these concepts will also help you to derive greater joy and happiness from your workouts, and perhaps even life in general.
There are only two parts of this log to be filled out each day. Below are the two simple questions.
I had fun this workout by:
Through this workout, I came one step closer to my vision/goals by:
That’s it! You need to find two positive aspects of your workout: how you had fun, and how you came a step closer to your goals, and then be thankful for that. If you had a great workout, congratulations! If it wasn’t the best, find something to be grateful for (chances are you might have had to work harder than normal on something you usually don’t) and dwell on that victory. Reload, and get ready for the next day. You are one step closer to winning the battle in your mind.
Key Points:
- Being mentally strong is more than just being dedicated to working hard
- Don’t associate your athletic performance with your self-worth
- Use failure in workouts and performance as a learning tool
- Find the positive in any workout and dwell on that, instead of becoming frustrated
- Make a habit of finding the positive
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