Where's your head at?

Dragan

We all discuss a huge amount about lifting techniques, cardio, diet, rep ranges, workout structure and supplements. But we never talk about the mental aspect of an exercise routine. As such, I would like to put out a little thread and hope it gets added to about people thoughts on the mental aspect of gym time and working out. Please feel free to add to my ramblings, lets face it, we all need to think about this just a little bit sometimes.

Honesty : If your not honest without yourself, you can't suceed. I had this conversation with some peers down the pub on Friday night. Being a little overweight, would I be getting anyway if I was telling myself I wasn't? Nope, not at all. But due to being honest with myself, my current status, my current work ethic the results are now starting to come into play. Don't cheat yourself. Don't tell yourself your form was good when it wasn't , that you ran 3 kilometers when you only ran 2.7 , that you rarely cheat on your diet when you do so on a regular basis. It's not helping you, it's only holding you back and moving your goals a little bit each time. Respect yourself and be honest to yourself.

What do you think about? : When your in the gym, what do you think about. Are you sitting on a bike, wondering about work, or clothes or your next meal. Are you doing through the motions on curls without even feeling the muscles working?? If so, once again you are robbing yourself. Remember, your giving up the time to go to the gym, so well done. Make sure you are getting everything you can out of it while you are there. Do your best to immerse yourself in your workout and you will learn more about yourself and your body each time you are in the gym.

I'm not in the mood to workout : Why not? Are you tired? Did you have a bad day? Why do you need to look at going to the gym as being a bad thing? Get to know some people, have a laugh with the staff, enjoy yourself and you will grow to love it. Sure, we all have days where we think about going home. But these are the true tests, go anyway, have a good workout and you know you will feel better. Getting healthy and in shape can't just be done on days when your feeling happy!

Are you getting what you need? : Not physically, but mentally. As I said in the previous part, there is no need not to enjoy what you are doing, or no reason you cannot find a physical activity that you do like! There are tons of clubs and adventure groups out there! Every been rock climbing or hill walking? Ever gone caving or scuba diving! Fitness didn't start in an air conditioned gym and it sure as hell doesn't end there!!!

Be there for yourself : Having recently gone through a tough time of having to make a choice between my personnal goals and my relationship it has become clear to me that the only person you can do anything for is yourself. Sure, sometimes you may be aiming at the wrong thing and be a little misdirected, but with the right frame of mind you will find not only where you are, but where you truly want to be. The only person you can go to the gym for is you. You cannot try and be something for somebody else. Of course, sometimes they can make a suggestion that you have never thought of!

Depression : Sometimes even the best of us suffers from a bad day, your goals seem to be further away than they were when you started, and everything seems to be going wrong. You hurt your elbow doing dips, and your housemate keeps eating chocolate cake in front of you and the bitch never puts on a pound, it's taken you longer than you thought to get that 100 kilo bench press. These things happen. Setbacks occur. Never forget, your greatest strenght in the gym is also your greatest weakness. Your are human. As such you have the potential to do the most amazing things, but it will never be easy. Keep your head up, don't break and guess what. You'll be one step closer to that goal.

joejoem

Excellent post, I have nothing to add.

Mr E

Brilliant post, Dragan. Well done. Good advice all round. I was going to give the gym a skip today, but after reading that, I think I'll go for a lunchtime session......

... and your housemate keeps eating chocolate cake in front of you and the bitch never puts on a pound.

g'em

Nice one m'dear. Can't add to it, don't want to spoil it!!

Dragan

Cheers folks.

slicus ricus

Here here Dragan. Cheers for helping to keep us all motivated!

zAbbo

Whenever i lack motivation i read this site - http://www.hardgeus.com/index.php?npageid=17

After i hit a weight loss plateaux, my enthusiasm dipped a bit, but that site always cheers me up. Gone from 18.5stone to just under 16 in 10months.

For me specifically, I don't think I've the will power to fully reach a single long term goal. ie 'I'm going to bench 100kg, gonna lose 6stone etc etc.' without creating smaller goals. My first goal was to lose 1lb in a week, when i lost 4 I was thrilled. I set a half stone weight loss from Jan1 for 6 weeks, and I've just achieved it with a few days to spare. Again I'll set another goal, similar to gym work, I went being only able to run 30seconds, to running a mile in 8:41 and now running 2.5k in 15minutes. I you see the improvement it will spur you on and even if you don't there's one thing I always say to myself when i see the gym full of fit toned people ' At least I'm not at home stuffing my face '

Be honest with yourself is the best advice

Prior Of Taize

I went from 23 stone to 17 in just under 9 months. I was not on a program and took no drugs, supplements or anything to aid my weight loss. All i did was eat good proper food. Which changed my mental state entirely. Sitting down and eating steak and spinach etc etc actually makes you feel great. I know this is designed to be a mental approach to the gym but your diet affects your mood in my opinion and the better the food you eat the better and more energetic you feel.

joejoem

Prior Of Taize wrote:

Sitting down and eating steak and spinach etc etc actually makes you feel great.

A grilled chicken salad would probably make you feel like you were on E so

onenightinmay

As usual a great post Dragan. From personal point of view its just a matter of beating yourself, go faster than last time, lift more than last time and above all enjoy it.

hardtrainer

I agree with everything Dragan said, but in particular the part about being focused on your workout while in the gym. This is so important but I think many people don't realise how much more they can achieve by really immersing themselves in their workout.

For example, there is lots of evidence of the benefits of the mental gym. That is, going through a lift in your mind, really putting yourself in the mental state as if you were going to lift the weight for real, but only doing it in your head. This has been shown to have real physical benefits. You can read more about it by doing a google search. There is a lot of research on this topic right now. Prof Ian Robertson, from TCD, has written books about the power of the mind and he details much of the benefits of the 'mental gym' in those.

Remember that muscle is only part of the equation. The neural input to that muscle must be strong, and there are ways to strengthen the neural connections without having to actually lift the weight physically.

Really focusing on what you are lifting, visualising the entire loop, from brain, through spinal cord, and out to the muscle tissue, really paying attention to the sensations your brain receives back from your muscles, you can achieve so much more than just mindlessly going through the motions of lifting a weight.

again, great post Dragan

Dragan

Cheers folks,

once again i find that i agree with a hardtrainer post! I didn't want to really get into it because while i do want to help people out ( and in turn be helped by you guys! ) i don't want to seem preachy. But all in all, he was spot on.

Each day, i go through exactly what i will be doing in the gym, in the back of my mind i'm thinking about each rep of each set of each excercise and how it will feel, how the muscle will work etc. Sounds weird but it has become such a subconcious thing now that i don't even really notice, except when i really put my mind on it, like on my break or something, or especially when i am walking to the gym.

If you have thought enough about the workout then all you have to do, is do it!

t-ha

This type of mental working out or 'focus' I guess you could call it actually causes your body to undergo many of the physio-chemical changes associated with real exercise. Importantly the CNS gets charged up and the neural patterns associated with, a squat for example, can be strengthened and reinforced by just mentally focusing on squatting, and the muscles you would be activating. Another name I can throw in of someone who has been looking at this area is Chad Waterbury.

This neural business is also the reason why it's not a good idea to listen to music or be otherwise distracted when going for a max lift attempt. You have limited neural pathway space, so you don't want to be wasting any of it.

babypink

Dragan, hardtrainer - fantastic!!

nothing could be more true

Easygainer

About the state of mind one, I wholeheartedly agree that you need to focus on the lift, the rep cadence etc, but I don't think you need to focus when doing cardio for fat loss.

As Transform will agree, low intensity cardio is preferable for burning fat and this doesn't require much concentration. I use it as extra study time as I'm in finals... This is not to be confused with training for a race where maybe music alone would suffice to keep you going...

SpAcEd OuT

i think this thread should be sticky'ed

great post!

Limerick Dude

that was an amazing post dragan, im one for becoming lazy and making excuses to not go to the gym if i dont feel like it. reading that makes me more determined. thanks man!

Jak

I'd suggest you paste this into the basic blocks of fitness post that has been stickied and then we can tidy that up at a later stage into sections. Each of the current sticky's will be getting tidied in a week or so when I'm not so busy in work.

However, I won't be stickying every good post and the tagged on praise as it just looks a mess - there are too many areas and we wouldn't have a first page on the board.

JAK