Friday, January 8, 2010

THE MENTAL GAME


Ok your halfway through the WOD, your legs are Jello, your Heart is beating out of your chest, sweat is stinging your eye's, you arms are spent. So what keeps you going?
Its all Mental, ok more like 50% mental. Its the ability to tell your brain to just shut up and keep moving. Now Mr brain, will not like this at first and he will try to get you to stop, he will tell you you are weak, he will convince you that its not necessary to work this hard. Mr brain will tell body parts to feel tired or get sore to slow you down. Well tell Mr Brain to go f*** himself. You got to fight him at every step. Our bodies are capable of so much more than we will ever know.
You hear about it all the time, a 100 pound lady all jacked up on adrenaline lifts a car off her son, a man fights off a cougar, 5 fireman lift and move a big ol truck to save someone who is pinned. We can do so much more that we ever dreamed. We just need to first convince Mr brain of that. How do we do this, first, like with any battle we need to realize it, we need to recognize that the battle exists. then we fight back. When you feel that doubt and despair starting to creep in, use whatever tool you have to tell Mr Brain to shut up and keep moving. Sometimes thats all it takes, to just keep moving. When im going through an extremely strenuous 20 minute WOD where I have almost no oxygen in my lungs thats my inner chant, " Keep Moving " just keep moving, if its box jumps, just keep jumping, if its pullups, just keep pulling. Its the ability to conquer your mind as well as your body that will separate the good, and the great athletes.
Me personally I sometimes can get so pissed at that inner voice that I let that Rage drive me, other times I find an Inner calm int he middle of a grueling workout, its like a wave of peace comes over me and I forget how tired I am forget the pain, and I just keep going.
Learning to break through that barrier, and telling Mr brain that you are in control is what will make you better stronger and faster, it will also make you more confident in life as well as the gym.
So How do you tell Mr brain to go shove it?

2 comments:

Little Sysiphus said...

I don't get into elaborate stuff. I've heard of some folks imgining that failure results in the death of a loved one or something. I think the mind is too powerful to play games with so I'm hesitant to do that. Too, I prefer the notion of play-out, to work out, so, I try to keep stuff fun and positive. All of that said: I try to break things into smaller pieces that I know I can do. If I have 15 reps to do, I count to five and have a little celebration, and then count to 5 again, and celebrate that -- and then the last 5 is reatively easy. If I can't, do it, I put the challange into the future and say something like "I'll try that again next week and see how my progess is then." Too, in a group workout you have lots of opportunites to see where you suck and other folks are strong, so, I just challange myself to keep going to not quit. When I hear myself saying: "I can't do this." I force myself to say instead, "This is challanging and I love it." I guess once one achieves middle age, they can afford to be more gentle with themselves. Just like it takes longer to recover from injury it takes longer to achieve goals -- but so what.

Karen said...

What Crossfit has taught me so far is that I can do way more than I ever thought I could do. My brain used to tell me "you probably can't or shouldn't do that", but now I have the guts to try anything. I don't have a fear of heights, but I do have a fear of falling -- box jumps are tough for me, but I have tackled them and will continue to get better at them as I practice jumping higher. As said above, as we get into middle age, it does take longer to recover from injuries so you are more cautious and it does take longer to achieve goals, but little by little I'm meeting goal after goal that two years ago I would still be telling myself it's probably not possible so why try. Not anymore! So that is how I tell my brain to shove it......

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