Tag Archives: positive thinking

Just One Of Those Days

Posted on by
6

Do you ever have those days when you get home from work/school/whatever and you are 

just.

mentally.

done.

Yep, I was there last night.

It all started off the other morning when I got to the gym. This week is a de-load week for me, meaning I’m still in the gym 3-4 times this week but doing much less intensity and volume, in order to give my body some much needed recovery time. However, I’m afraid the de-load has gone to my head.

Literally.

My schedule has been thrown off a little bit so it was even a squat day, which is usually my favorite day of the week! However, yesterday I was NOT feeling it. I got through the workout as planned, but it certainly wasn’t my best work, de-load or not.

So the question is… What came first? Did I have a crappy workout because I knew I was de-loading anyway so I wasn’t pumped up for a heavy lift? Or did I just physically crap out as my body’s way of telling me that this lighter week is desperately needed?

Chicken or the Egg? Which came first?

I guess the bigger question here is How much of your workout is mental, and how much is physical?? 

The answer? Well, I think it’s complicated.

There is a ton of research out there in the sports psychology world that tells us that mental imagery, positive thinking, and positive self-talk can have a huge impact on training and competition. That being said, there are obvious physical limitations as well — I’m not going to be squatting 300 lbs any time soon no matter HOW mentally ready I am.

No, I don’t walk around the weight room telling myself how jacked I am (out loud anyway), but I can honestly say that the days that I picture my lifts before hand are the days when I have the best lifts. It was the same when I used to be a pathetic runner. If I would take the time to do some mental imagery before I headed out door, 9 times out of 10 I would have a great run (I use that term loosely here).

On the same token, negative self-talk has exactly the effect that you would think. Let’s look back to my runs again. If I focused on how tired I was, or how slow I was, or how I would never make it home in one piece, guess what? Those runs were torture. Yesterday’s lift was a great example too. I can almost hear myself saying “Bah, it doesn’t matter, it’s an off week, just get through it.”

Just get through it? WHAT? Self?  Is THAT supposed to motivate me?

But I do care! I do I do!

So why is it that I know this, that lots of people know this, but that we don’t all practice it on a regular basis? I know that on my heavy squat and DL days, I have to be mentally all there or I won’t get the job done. I know that getting through my sprint workouts is at least 50% mental, and probably more like 80% for the last few reps.

Sometimes I watch people mope around the gym, looking like they have not a care in the world, nor any type of passion or motivation for what they are doing (and that is probably what I looked like the other day, to be honest).  Maybe I’m just tired this week, maybe my body really does desperately need this week to be light, or maybe I really just psyched myself out of the game yesterday?

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to try something next week. Once I’m back into my regular lift schedule I’m actually going to work at doing a little bit of positive imagery for every single workout session I have, because I can’t for the life of me figure out why I don’t do it every time anyway.  Lift, sprints, plyos; whatever the workout calls for, I will be ready for it mentally and physically.  Picture yourself hitting that last rep with perfect form. Picture yourself getting one more rep in. Picture yourself finishing a set with 5 lbs more than you did last week. Who’s with me?

Do any of you have specific psych-up techniques before a workout? Do you have music that helps you out the most? Has anyone ever totally psyched themselves out of a workout?

A moment of self pity

Posted on by
10

I’m a generally healthy person. I eat relatively well, I spend a good amount of quality time in the gym,  and I take care of my overall health pretty well. I have a great job and my life is cruising along pretty smoothly if I do say so myself.  However, there are certain days when my overactive female brain makes me feel like this:

Take this past weekend, for example. While getting dressed for work, I put on a pair of pants and realized that they were just too tight for work. Now, instead of just accepting that   my recent holiday eating habits and 2 weeks away from the gym had resulted in this minor fitting issue, I went into some sort of rage blackout.

Self Portrait.

Before I knew it, 80% of my closet was strewn across the bed and I was 100% convinced that I owned NOTHING that I could wear to work that day. Logically speaking, I am well aware that a small fluctuation in weight (probably a pound or two)  is virtually unnoticeable to others, and also very easily corrected, usually within a week or so. (I’m also aware that I own way too many clothes, and of course I have something to wear). However, in that very moment when my extreme emotional sensitivity kicked in, my brain went through something like this:

WHY DOESNT ANYTHING FIT I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR NOTHING EVER LOOKS GOOD ON ME WHY ARE MY LEGS SO BIG WHERE DID THIS ASS COME FROM F*&% S#%* I HATE EVERYTHING IN MY CLOSET THERE ARE NO PANTS IN THE WORLD THAT WILL EVER FIT ME AGAIN……… and on and on in this vicious self-loathing thought cycle.

Now, luckily I have a very supportive boyfriend who is able to talk me off of the self-pity ledge, but even then, it takes me a couple of days to break out of this sort of thinking once it starts.  And I know I’m not alone here. Why do we, as women, go through this? I am well aware of the multitude of things that can cause my weight to fluctuate a couple of pounds either way: hydration status, hormones, water retention, etc. I’m a health professional for crying out loud. My brain contains a multitude of reasons why my pants may have felt too tight and lots of sensible ways to correct this. Usually when this happens, I can just toss on another pair of pants and head out the door, but every once in a while, it’s like I get sucked into this negative-thought cycle for no good reason.

So what’s the point of this post? Honestly, I have no idea. I just wanted to let you all know that yes, even “healthy living” bloggers go through this type of S— too.  We’re all vulnerable to negative self-thoughts, and as much as I like to think that I have all of the answers, I definitely don’t. I don’t have some magical elixer that will instantly give me my confidence back when something like this happens. So the question is, What do You do? How do you correct your thinking when you’re having a Debbie-Downer, self-pitying, pants-not-fitting day? I need to come up with a game plan here. Maybe next time I’ll go the Stuart Smalley route:

Note: So what DID I do to make myself better? Come Monday morning, I went to the gym and had a killer heavy squat day. Because that is what these legs are for. And Yes, 3 days later, my pants fit just fine. I guess a rage blackout wasn’t needed after all.