I’ve always been very apprehensive about diving into the mental aspect of endurance athletics.  Every time I think about it I picture myself lying on a couch in a psychologists’ office delving deeper and deeper into my mind and trying to find out what draws me towards Ironman.  Frankly, the idea of finding out scares the hell out of me!  I’m afraid of letting Pandora out of the box.  I know I love this sport with all my heart and I have some deep reserve of motivation to be the best.  Why should I question this? Recently I’ve had a paradigm shift on this topic.  I’m finally realizing, I can go ahead and leave Pandora in the box, but still use my mind to improve my abilities in this sport.  It’s not about analyzing what’s going on in my head, it’s about building my mind like a muscle.  It’s training, not analyzing.  My coach, Neal Henderson, opened my eyes to this fact by explaining that my body alone can only take me so far.  I can’t just train my body to perfection and expect everything to automatically fall into place on race day just because I’m physically fit.  It’s like trying to run a high performance Indy car with the battery out of a go-cart. 

Okay…….so how in the heck do you train the mind?  I definitely don’t have the perfect answer to this question, but I’m finally starting to work on it.  I figured this blog would be a perfect place to start my stream of thoughts on the matter.  I apologize in advance if the following seems to be rambling and disconnected.  PLEASE feel free to send along your comments and ideas as I am basically starting from scratch here and welcome all the input I can get.

What does a fit mind look like?…..Here is what I have learned so far.

• 1. Attitude absolutely controls the way the body feels.A perfect example…….one of my very close friends raced her tail off on Saturday in a Duathlon and then turned right around and nailed a 23mile long run on Sunday because she decided in her mind that she would feel good and it would go well. This same friend taught me one of my favorite sayings…..”Negative thoughts will not help a negative situation”
• 2. Humans have the ability to get into an almost trance like state during times of peak performance. Many refer to this place as “The Zone.” I always think of Michael Jordan here. He would find this zone and it was impossible for him to miss. He would just look up at the crowd and shrug as if to say “I have no idea where this is coming from????”
• 3. Confidence is a huge part of the minds ability to produce peak performance. My dad used to always tell me that success breeds success. It’s so true! Just look at the Rockies last season. It was all about momentum and confidence.
• 4. Game day routine is very important.I read a story about Jerry Rice’s pre game rituals. They were insanely precise, but they seemed to be the trigger that put him in his zone.
• 5. Visualization plays a huge part in performance. This topic was my very first blog entry. I truly believe that if a person can visualize something well enough, the mind will not know the difference between the thoughts and actually doing the action.
• 6. The mind responds dramatically to cues given by the senses. A U2 song, the smell of a wetsuit, the sight of the Flat Irons, a mantra I say to myself, the taste of a power gel, the feel of the water……these all cause huge reactions in my mind and thus cause another huge reaction in my body. These cues can be controlled and used to our advantage.
• 7. A relaxed and calm mind seems to be the best. Every account I have read about a person finding “The Zone” mentions something about being very relaxed or calm or in a trance. Mark Allen often speaks of getting his mind to be completely quiet. No thoughts.

Periodization of the mind?????   

My first instinct when thinking of actually training my mind is to train it exactly as I would train my body.  I spend countless hours on setting up very precise periodization for my physical training, so why not do the same for mental training.  But what would that look like?  I’m picturing an athlete saying, “I’m in the base phase of my mental training.”  What would the taper phase look like?

My basic definition of periodization is to play volume and intensity against each other in a very precise way in order to cause peak fitness at a certain time.  Very generally, this means gradually building volume and intensity together and then at some point dropping the volume off while the intensity continues to climb.

How would volume and intensity be measured when training the mind?  Maybe volume is as simple as measuring the amount of time you spend doing mental training.  For intensity, maybe it’s a measure of how specific you are.  For example, maybe low intensity mental training is just thinking generally about a race, where as very intense mental training is being able to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell every little last detail as you visualize a race. 

Mental Recovery

We have recovery days and rest days in our plans.  What does this mean on the mental side of things?  Sleeping is my first thought for resting the mind, but what about during the day?  Personally, I feel like every day for my mind right now is a 20mile track workout with a main set of 60×400m in Z5 with 5 seconds rest!  Okay…..that’s an exaggeration, but I don’t feel like I let my mind “rest” enough.  So how do I sit my mind on the couch?

I have a feeling this is going to be a huge can of worms.  I’m wide open for suggestions!  Until next time, shop at trisports.com using my discount code chowie-s, eat more powerbar, and tell your endurance family