Get your pump on! Mentally; as well as physically.
We have all seen a some “great feat” at sometime in our life. Whether it be athletically, in business, in our personal life, whatever. Something that has “wowed” us. Regardless of what it was, one thing all those amazing feats had in common was a tremendous amount of focus to make them happen. They didn’t happen by accident and they didn’t happen without effort.
Last week in a blog I talked about “intensity” and how it related to what we do in the gym. This was referencing our physical output. It is our measurable “power output” in any given workout. We can create data and track the results. However, almost equally as important is something that we can not measure or create a formula for.
Most people only really “focus” on the physical side of fitness when they are in the gym and never consider how their mindset plays into their workouts. In order to achieve maximum results, you have to push yourself to a point past what you are comfortable with. Whether it’s burning calories in a cardio workout or breaking down muscles in strength training, you must push your body to a point where it will actively respond to your training. For example, you can spend hours at a gym lifting weights and not accomplish anything. If you workout to lose weight or to “get into shape”, your focus is likely on cardio. In order for cardio workouts to be truly effective, it requires elevating your heart rate, which shows as sweating. So if you go workout for an hour with the intension of losing weight and you leave the gym not sweating, you just wasted an hour of your time. You may have noticed people in the gym that have been working out for what seems forever, yet they don’t seem to have made any progress whatsoever. So, what does this have to do with mindset. It’s not enough to just show up. You need to show up with a purpose and a plan for how you will push yourself to achieve your goals. It doesn’t matter what the workout is, we will get to that point where our mind tells us to quit. If we just shut it down and go through the motions at that point, we are not getting nearly the results we could if we told that voice to take a hike!
The best way to get better at “mental toughness” is, surprise surprise, to work on it. It’s much easier to give in. Just the same as any physical movement we do in the gym needs to be practised in order to get better at it, the same goes for our mental game. When are learning to deal with those uncomfortable moments and use through them, we have to remember what our goal is. One of the problems we often have is to expect a perfect outcome. We have a vision in our head of how “something” is supposed to go and when it doesn’t happen we break down. The true mental toughness comes from when things don’t go as planned and despite that, we keep going. Your mental toughness doesn’t show itself until things don’t go as planned. In those moments, it’s time to see what you are made of.
Final thought, you build mental toughness by practicing to be mentally tough. If it’s in fitness, practice pushing yourself harder than you did the day before. When you hit that point where you normally quit, do a few more sets. Come in on those days when you check the workout on the website and think “Yikes, I’m avoiding that one”. Don’t be afraid to fail or to have things go differently than you planned. It’s all part of the process of building those mental muscles we need to back up physical ones. Stay strong everybody. In both regards.