What Do You Think?

Simple question to ask yourself when you train. "What are you thinking?"

How we think determines how we train. If you tell yourself that you are going into the gym to smash out a bloody good session, chances are you probably will have a good session. If you go in with the thought that you are tired and it has been a long day at work, you will probably be sluggish in your workout and lack that motivation. This boils down to how we approach things and especially how we approach our workouts.

Ever had the thought in your head that you are not going to be able to do a certain exercise? Ever thought that you are not going to be able to complete even a 5km run? These are all negative thoughts which you come up with that gets translated into your physical actions. Positive psychology has garnered much interest in the past decade and it has been around to help many in all aspects of their lives. Why not use that in our training?

Simple exercise is to take note of how many negative words you use in a day. Any phase or sentence with the word "not", any word that has a negative meaning to it. How many of these do you use in a day? Once you have a specific number, give yourself a target to lower that number. Work towards getting it down to a zero!

When you train, also see how negative you can get. How many times do negative thoughts such as "oh man, that weight is going to be heavy" or "damn. my legs are going to hurt so much after this" appear in your head? Once you are able to rewire your mind to think more positively, you will realise that you will feel very different about your training. You will be motivated to do more, you will be motivated to give it your all. And if you are still capable of more, you will make sure you try harder the next session.

P.S. after writing this post, I went for training and it was a heavy week this week. keeping this post in mind, i started the session off with doubles for back squats. target given was 140kg and i kept 145kg in mind all the way. Guess what, 145kg was easy. but then i went up to 150kg. After the first rep, the thought in my head was "damn that's heavy" and sure enough, i failed the second one when i could have gotten it. then again, heavy snatches were next. told myself i am just gonna go for it. target was 85kg. and i told myself leave it all on the platform and went for 90kg. sure enough again, a gutsy 90kg snatch in the books. just a real-life example to me of how thoughts actually influence our training.

So Stay Positive, Stay Strong and Keep Moving.

The Training Geek.