“Mind over matter is magic: I do magic” – Frank Ocean, White Ferrari
The mind is the single most powerful training tool we possess.
When practiced with purpose, a healthy and effective mindset turns even those “unproductive” training days into valuable nuggets of information and experience. Even a mediocre training program can produce incredible results if approached with the right mentality!
So how can we use our mind to make the most of our training days?
The simplest way to cultivate an excellent training mindset is through practice! It’s worth noting that mental training tactics take mindful practice as a given – so working on training with attention and intent is a great place to start. Once you are practicing mindfully, it’s time to use your self-awareness to mold an amazing training mindset.
How to Mold a Magical Training Mindset
1. Positively reinforce every training session.
You’ll get the most out of each training session if your brain and body are rewarded for making it happen. My favorite way to do this is through simple statements of self-gratitude: find one thing about every session to feel grateful for, and then use precise language to express your self-gratitude (e.g., thank your shoulders for feeling stable, thank your hips for feeling pliable, thank your neck for moving freely without pain).
It is important to thank your body for the work it did that day, even if your session wasn’t “great” or “productive”. The simple act of showing up to your practice is deeply valuable to your progress and should be explicitly rewarded!
On the same note, do your best to avoid negative self-talk and punishment for training session that “went poorly” or sessions that you skipped. Any negative mental energy surrounding your training day will make it difficult for your brain to retain any of the good things that came from the session.
2. Discover something new every day.
When you are curious, attentive, and present in your body, secrets emerge! Make a point to notice how different parts of your body feel and move, and experiment with directing your attention towards seemingly uninvolved or neglected parts of your body. For example, where do you tend to look during your warm up jog? What happens in your jaw when you lift something heavy? When you interlace your fingers, which hand falls on top?
Reflect on any discoveries with an open mind and self-gratitude (see point 1 above!). Reframe failure as a legitimate opportunity to learn (and then take the time to find out what the lesson was!).
The more you can treat your training session as a time to grow and learn, the more you will grow and learn while you train! What a wonderful positive feedback loop!These two mental practices alone can radically transform your training program – even if you keep everything else the same! When you reward the discoveries you make along your training journey, things have an extraordinary way of coming together.
