Exercise Articles

The alarm goes off at 5:30am. You drag yourself out of bed, change into your workout clothes and drive to the gym. Once at the gym, you stretch briefly before beginning your workout routine. Less than twenty minutes into the workout, your thoughts are consumed by details and stresses of the day ahead. You quickly finish your workout so you can get started with your day.

Sound familiar? You are committed to your physical fitness/ sport but find that you are going through the motions. More often than not, you get the workout in physically but are not “mentally” in to what you are doing. This is a common situation given personal, professional and family responsibilities and the harried lifestyles we tend to lead.

How can we change this to make training more enjoyable and productive?

In the field of sport psychology, there has been an attempt to characterize elite athletes or compare less versus more successful athletes from a psychological perspective. One characteristic that typifies elite performers relates to training with quality on a daily basis; elite athletes use a variety of mental skills and strategies to enhance the intensity of training. Put another way, they take purposeful steps to maximize their physical and mental effort in training, a characteristic that relates to more successful performance.

Whether you are a recreational athlete, competitive athlete, or fitness enthusiast, you can benefit physically, mentally, and emotionally by taking steps to bring quality and purpose to your training. Two strategies are suggested to help you mentally engage in your physical pursuits.

Identify a Purpose

On a daily basis, you should have a reason to not just workout but to workout with physical and mental intensity. Having such a reason can be the “flame” behind the workout; it can raise your intensity from a simmer to a boil. A simple strategy that can bring this purpose and intensity to training is to ask yourself one question before you get started—“what am I going to do today to make myself better?” In answering this question, identify just one goal or objective—one thing to focus on that could be related to technique, duration, reps, effort, or attitude. After the session, hold yourself accountable by answering the question “what did I do today to make myself better?” (In a future column I’ll discuss details of effective goal setting.)

Be an Athlete

You wear many “hats” during the course of the day such as parent, spouse, co-worker, boss, athlete, and student. When working out, however, you should have on only one “hat”—you need to allow yourself (remind yourself) to be an athlete and only an athlete. Mental baggage from the day needs be left in the locker to be picked up later. This isn’t always easy to do. To help make this transition to “being an athlete,” you can use a strategy called behavioral symbolism. This simply means that you tap into a behavior that symbolizes for you that you are now an athlete and are ready to get on with the workout. For example, the act of putting on your lifting gloves or tying the laces on your running shoes could be used to symbolize that you are now an athlete and are focused on the task ahead. While training, all that matters and all you can control is what you are doing right now so invest your energy wisely.

Be an athlete with a purpose—and have fun!

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