Month: May 2020

Successful people get asked all the time who is their biggest influence or who do they admire/aspire to be like and why? A few will answer with another well know athlete but I can almost guarantee every single one of them will also have someone closer to home that influenced their life way more than any successful athlete they could look up to ever could.

The definition of inspirational is said to be something or someone who is uplifting and motivates people to bring out the best in themselves. And inspirational is for one to lead as an example to encourage others to follow.

The question I am asking is… does the person you admire need to be a top athlete or can they be someone who has stumbled and fallen many times yet always manages to pick themselves up and carry on using their fall to help them grow. The person who inspires you may never be the top of their game or be “famous” in their chosen field but does that really matter?

In my eyes…. NO! a person who inspires me is someone who always works hard, be it in sport of just in life. They can fall a million times and have suffered through life but as long as they are doing the best they can and they achieve their goal be it a small competition or reaching top of the podium they have inspired me to want to be as dedicated and as disciplined as them.

 I defiantly have a few very good friends that inspire me daily through their sheer hard work, determination and will to drive forward and never give up – although they may not know it. I really have to thank them as they keep me grounded everyday supporting me and helping me to remember I can achieve my dreams.

Alongside those who are around me every day I have to say the biggest influence in my life had to be my Grampy. I’m sorry to disappoint and not mention some famous CrossFitter but that’s just how it is.

Have you ever had that one person in your life that literally meant the world to you and you admired so much for everything they did. Their strength, their courage and their determination. Well yes my Grampy he was them all. I had a special bond with him and I can’t explain how but he was always there on the end of his phone checking on my training wanting to watch videos of what I was up to and so very proud of me when I won a competition.

I remember when I showed him my powerlifting trophies I won when I took the BPO 60kg World Records, he just burst into tears. My deepest regret was that he was never well enough to come in person and watch me compete, but it was ok we took my competing to him, all be it by phone or computer.

Grampy never had the chances like I have had to train and compete but I can guarantee if he had he would have been very successful and I always wished I could have taken him for one workout in CrossFit because I know in his brighter days he would of absolutely loved it.

My point being your biggest influence doesn’t need to be someone who has been incredibly successful but someone who you believe has affected your life in a way not many others can. They could be a family member, friend or even someone you know from the gym but they have supported you and encouraged you to work harder and believe in yourself. It is always good to have ‘famous’ athletes to look up to but I also believe having someone closer to home is also very important.

Whilst thinking who is your biggest influence have you ever considered that you may be an influence to someone else or even multiple people. Now there is a thought.

I will leave you with one last thought.

My Grampy was one of the strongest and most determined people I have ever met and through him I believe I had gained my strength, determination and drive to never give up because I have seen how you can use obstacles to make you stronger. My Grampy never feared a hard day’s work and was never one to complain even on his last few days whilst suffering never once did I hear him complain. A true hero in my eyes.

So who is yours?

Latin phrase ‘sacrifice’ meant the ‘act of giving up one thing for another’. The word sacrifice can be used within many contexts but the context in which I’ll be discussing it is what sacrifices are you willing to make to be the best and achieve the dreams you want to achieve. 

I often get asked about the sacrifices I make each day in order to achieve and live my life the way I do; but what prompted me to write this blog was a conversation I had with my mum. It went a little like this…..

Mum….. I’ll see you when I get back from my late shift, Lucy

Me…. No you probably won’t mum I’ll be in bed

Mum….. at 8.30 pm Lucy

Me….. Yes mum I’ll be winding down I am training in the morning

Mum….. Lucy, are all these sacrifices you make really worth it? I’m sure you go to bed earlier than anyone else we know

Me….. 100%

When I was talking to my mum there was no hesitation in my answer of whether my sacrifices were worth the outcome that they may have. My answer to anyone would always be the same 100% yes.

‘Are your sacrifices really worth it’

‘You may never achieve your dreams’

‘You might regret it one day’

For me going to bed an hour early, not going on a night out or even skipping a dirty takeaway are not sacrifices they are just part of life. For me every ‘sacrifice’ as some people may see it is no sacrifice to me rather a decision I make because I want to achieve and my will to achieve far outweighs one night on the piss or an extra hour up watching crap TV.

For some this may make me seem boring and not like everyone else but personally I would not change what I do and how I live my life for anything.

I make sacrifices everyday but they are because I WANT to make them this is why I achieve. Never will I regret any sacrifice I have made and I sure will achieve because I will make sure of it!

The only regret I would ever have is not making the sacrifices and taking the chances I am given. Who knows when the day will come and I can’t for some reason do what I love doing! So for the time I can I sure as hell will do all I can.

Many people get too caught up in what others think of them and how they live their life but I always remember that most of those people are usually just jealous because you may have a life they wish they could lead.

The moral of the blog is to understand that each day many of us make decisions and sacrifices to help us try to achieve our goals and dreams but always just remember they have to be because you want to make them! Don’t ever worry about what everyone else is saying or doing.

Remember never let the opinions of others stop you!

And always remember

What are you willing to sacrifice to get to where you want to be?

Every athlete who works and trains hard will have bad days where we stumble and we have to find a way to pick ourselves up and move forward! But how you do this is very individual to each person!

Some can stand up, use what happened as a learning experience and carry on but for some it is not this easy and excuses start to appear for reassurance and emotional reasons!

Stumbling, falling, bad training days, and even failing, is not a bad thing and it happens to all of us a lot more than we would like! But how we deal with it is key!

For me, I find it hard when I fall/fail at something or have a bad day training but the biggest thing I have learnt is to think about it at the time, find out what went wrong and then learn from it and leave it behind at the gym!

Days when I would take my training dramas home with me just led to me being in a massive sulk for the rest of the day which is not pleasant for anyone – trust me!

Leaving it all at the gym is not my way of ignoring what has happened but me realising that it does no good to dwell on something or to make excuses for it! Yes, I may have trained a lot before it, I wasn’t feeling strong, I had had a busy day working but who knows what you will have done before hand in a competition and it is likely that there are many people out there who exactly the same as you.

Too many times I see athletes posting on social media, here is my last set of muscle ups excuse, the bad technique I had done this this and this before. Today’s training was bad because I didn’t hit my max lift today; where has my strength gone?

Writing excuses and negative comments on social media leaves a lasting negative thought in your head around your day’s training and makes you believe it was OK to do badly. Yes it is OK not to max lift everyday or have a bad gymnastics session but you should not need to make excuses for it! If you did your best that is all you could do that day!

Every training session for me gets my full effort, even if it is just for that day! No one is going to feel 100% everyday, so as long as you give all you can each session then you are improving and doing your best!

Never beat yourself up for having a bad day! Embrace what you have managed to do and realise how lucky you are to be able to do it!

Negative thoughts leaving the gym leave lasting negative thoughts around an exercise or lift so never leave feeling that you didn’t do your best.

There are many arguments around the topic of over training and not improving in CrossFit! Will too much training hinder your growth and strength and does quality of training outweigh quantity or is it purely a case of under recovery?

Firstly, let’s look at the argument of will too much training hinder growth and strength gains. Yes, this can appear to be true as muscles, tendons and ligaments do not have enough time to recover and grow if they are trained too intensely too often with little recovery time in between. Muscle growth is stunted as muscle fibers that you may have gained during your strength cycle/session cannot be used fully anymore as they have become prematurely fatigued while other assisting muscles are pulled in to help!

This can lead to other detrimental effects such as  elevated heart action, heavier breathing and, very noticeably, higher levels of lactic acid build-up. All these additional effects are extremely detrimental to growth and strength training leading to catabolic effects on your muscles.

If you should decide to train through the signs of over training then you will eventually spiral into a downhill roll which may lead to injury and extreme fatigue.

Secondly, we will look at quality of training over quantity! Is less more when it comes to strength? The answer from most appears to be yes! Really focusing on how your muscles are moving and if they are being recruited correctly far outweighs using them and engaging them as quickly as possible and as sloppily as possible. Less reps at a moderate weight with good technique is far more advantageous in helping you correct form and technique than low reps with heavy weight with poor technique. Although there is a place for low reps with heavy weight, but good technique! This comes in time. You need to earn this right.

Lower weight also helps in the long run as risk of injury is also lowered.

If you feel during your strength cycle that there is not enough volume, which I must add should never be the case if you are on a good training programme, then adding in some mobility or corrective exercise work is always a good idea. Mobility and corrective exercises are a must for injury prevention and improving movement patterns which directly link to any movements you do in CrossFit, such as overhead mobility, hip movement during lifts and making sure that your wrists move properly when upside down or in the catch of a clean or snatch.

Lastly, some would argue that if the correct recovery techniques are used between sessions, such as massages, using compex machines, Epsom salt baths, floatation tanks etc alongside nailing your nutrition and supplementation, then no amount of training is too much! This argument again has points for and against but I will leave you to ponder over this! But remember no human being, no matter how good they are, is not indestructible! And maybe have a think about the longevity of your career! Do you want to be a one hit wonder?

Looking at all the arguments above it is clear that there are points for and against and, like most things, everyone is an individual and each person’s exercise tolerance and recovery is going to be different.

If you take anything away from this then I would suggest that, if you take your training seriously, then invest some time and money into a good training and nutrition plan to make sure that you don’t over train or put yourself in a detrimental training position. I’ve been there and trust me it wasn’t nice and I successfully made zero gains! Well that was a wasted strength cycle!!! Don’t let it be you!

One of my favourite books is Champion’s Mind: How Great Athletes Think, Train and Thrive by Jim Afremow PHD. From this book, I have put together what I believe makes a champion’s mind.

There is no gene that makes someone a champion however someone’s innate traits can lead them to being more successful than someone else. The question many ask is can a champion be made and shaped or are they born a champion, they just need to discover what will make them a champion.

A champion in my eyes is the one who is in the gym when no one else wants to be, outside running in the rain, snow, dark or sweating in an empty gym when no one is watching. They often train on their own because they don’t need someone pushing them to work to their full potential.

You could say that their want to succeed is so bad they have that innate ability to push themselves to breaking point without needing to be told.

So, what makes someone be like the above?

• A champion needs great confidence, composure, the ability to concentrate and be coachable – the 4 C’s. I would also say that the athlete needs to want to excel and have the desire to be the best they can be in their chosen sporting field. Their will to succeed needs to overshadow everything else and this tends to come only with a very disciplined individual.
• Being disciplined is not always easy and it can mean giving up a lot of the fun things in life for the duration of your competing season, but for those who are truly dedicated and want to succeed, making sacrifices is never too hard a decision to make. I would say that being disciplined and having the will to succeed is one of the traits that is hard to teach or ingrain in an individual – I would suggest that they are born with it, they have an inner want to succeed, dream and desire.
• I believe champions that can excel and can be shaped in the gym. A good coach is able to spot an athlete with great potential from a distance. Why is this? Because they themselves often know what it takes and have the innate traits of a champion in them so can easily spot them in another athlete. They can then use this to help shape and push an athlete beyond the potential they thought they had.

• ‘Winning the day’. A successful athlete must realise that there are going to be days when it is going to feel hard and they are not going to want to get up in the dark and train but that 5 a.m. alarm is what will make them better than anyone else. The days you don’t feel like training are sometimes the best training sessions they can have.  Embrace what is hard and grow from it.
• Logging your successes is imperative to becoming a champion – remembering the times you succeeded and learning from the times you didn’t. Never is there a failure, just a lesson. A champion must remain positive and proactive in their pursuit of excellence.

• The most important point for me is that a champion never compares themselves to others, they merely focus on their own journey and where they are headed. This is imperative and even more so important when you are competing. Focusing on where everyone else is in relation to you is wasting time and energy. This can be crucial and sometimes even cost you the win.
• And finally, know yourself, who you are and where you want to be. There is nothing more powerful than being comfortable in your own skin and knowing you are doing everything possible to get where you want to be. But always remember confidence above arrogance – don’t be that person.

A while ago I was shown a YouTube video by Jocko Willink called GOOD. I have sat and watched the video many times and thought about what Jocko says realising that each and everyone of us who is chasing a dream or a goal goes through similar challenges but it is how we deal with those challenges that determines if we prevail in reaching and achieving our goals or not.

I like to think of it as

Are you brave enough to look at a ‘challenge’ as a way to push you forward and attack against or are you willing to let it crumble you. Will that challenge help push you one day closer to your goal because you decided you would work harder and not give up. Are you, one-day tougher and stronger because you didn’t wallow in pity and can you enjoy the grit and the struggle enough to dig deeper chase harder and enjoy that struggle that little bit more to help you prove that ‘challenge’ was just a building block to where you can go.

Think about it!

Unexpected challenges come up in our lives from time to time and this is the same for everyone but not everyone will cope or react in the same way. Some will find the challenges too hard to deal with and they cannot seem to look past them so they don’t carry on and keep moving forward. This is where the champions or those that will achieve are set aside from those who will just never cut it.

Challenges to me should be seen to help you grow, attack harder, learn, build, get better, feel alive, fight harder, never coast and never become complacent.

None of the words or phrases above are new thoughts or feelings but they are thoughts and feelings that need to be used in the correct way to help build a person instead of pushing them down. It takes a certain individual to be able to do this, turning what can be seen as a negative word or phrase to a positive. An individual who is often good at doing this has a growth mind set and is able to see the positive in every situation and use it to help them grown. I guess you could say that the way an individual speaks plays a massive part on how successful they are. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone win who said

 “I don’t think I can win this race” or

“I’m feeling really tired today and I can’t be bothered”

If we look back to the YouTube video Jocko says

“When something is going wrong or bad you say ‘good’ …. Some good will come from it”

“It’s more time to get better, to learn, to find a solution”

For me, this sums up everything I am trying to say no ‘challenge’ missed rep or competition is bad it’s ‘Good’ it gave you time to grown, build and learn. A chance to find what went wrong and not let it happen again. A way to learn to control your emotion and help it push you forward. Nothing you want bad enough is going come easy so use the journey to help you, build you and grow and always remember when something ‘bad’ happens say ‘GOOD’, I learned, now let’s show them what I can do.

The best time I like to think of the phase ‘Good’ is when people say

“I would never do that workout, I would give up” Good

“I don’t know how you train on your own, I couldn’t do that” Good

“I am not sure I could be as disciplined as you” Good

Why?

Because then I know I’m doing something that other people, or not many other people will do and that will help me towards success.

I have had times when I have achieved my goals but I have also had times when I have ‘met challenges’. The biggest being not getting to the CrossFit Regionals in 2017. Something I had worked hard all year for and given up so much to achieve.

After this I had two choices, either let it set me back and give up training all together. Or I could use it to build me up, get my sh*t together, work hard and fight for it even harder this year!

I’ll let you guess which option I took

I often get asked the question “How do I stay calm under pressure, especially when competing?” This is a question I have often asked myself as I never thought that I would be someone to thrive under such a pressured circumstance, especially as I have always hated being centre of attention and hated the thought that everyone may be watching me.

With this in mind I put my thinking cap on and brainstormed what goes through my mind and how do I manage my thoughts and feelings on a competition day. Competitions can range from a local competition, an Open workout or Regionals. When thinking about it there seemed to me to be three key areas to consider: my mind-set, my self-awareness and my internal focus.

Mind-set

For me mind-set is the most important which is why I have written about it first. The mind-set you walk into a competition with will determine how well you perform that day. If you walk in thinking that the workouts are hard, or I am feeling tired, or there are so many good people here, in my opinion you have started the day with a defeatist attitude and you have lost before you have even begun. On the flip side, if you walk in thinking that today is going to be great fun, I can learn loads from this, how lucky I am to be competing against some of the best athletes, then you already have a positive attitude and will enjoy the experience more and most likely preform better.

Winning or losing does not always matter, sometimes you need to go to a competition to take part, learn and enjoy the experience so that next time you go back you know how to attack a competition with experience. Every competitor was once an amateur and we all had our first competition.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is quite a big topic but for me the part that I like to focus on most is how well you know yourself and how good you are at what you do. Firstly, most of the time the competitions we attend include qualifiers, so straight away you should have confidence in your ability, as you have earned the right to be there to preform. Secondly, you must have faith and confidence knowing that you have prepared for that competition to the best of your ability and there was nothing else you could have done apart from what happens on the day, which is usually out of your control to a certain extent. Thirdly, you must trust your body to complete the exercises, as it would on any other day.

This for me brings me onto the next part, internal focus. Are you able to shut down your brain when necessary to save precious energy?

Internal focus

When I think about internal focus I like to think about whether you are able to shift your mind-set and take your brain to another place or put it in shut-down mode. When you take your mind away from the task at hand you are able to zone out and ignore the people around you who are quite possibly competing against you. You send your head to space, so to speak, and use your muscle memory to help you through the movements.

Putting your mind into shut-down mode is the best way to save mental energy and use it to help you push harder during your workout. When your mind goes into shut-down mode it means that you are thinking about nothing else but the task in hand. It is at this point that you may breakdown the workout into reps, sets or even focus on your split-times. You may even be listening to someone counting for you. Saving as much energy from over thinking is essential as mentioned before; that 2% extra energy could be put into your workout and could turn out being 5 extra reps.

Conclusion

On a competition day I try to remember always to have fun and to enjoy the experience first and foremost. Granted, this may not happen on your first competition and I will admit this maybe didn’t happen during my first competition but as I have become a more seasoned athlete, competing multiple times per year, I have learnt to channel my thoughts and feelings into being excited and give me additional energy to compete rather than using up all my energy panicking or worrying about what may happen. This I believe will be the same for you.

The best tips I was ever given were:

Control the controllable and forget the rest.

Nerves represent excitement and should never be seen as a negative feeling – this one has helped me massively as I can now channel my ‘negative’ energy from being nervous into positive energy helping me to preform better.

As we all know being a successful CrossFit athlete, or being successful at anything for that matter, takes a lot of time, commitment, dedication and sacrifice. Training can take up to 6 hrs a day, recovery just as long and time to eat all the food, well that can take even longer! Due to this there is no surprise that trying to get to the top can lead to some athletes leading very unbalanced lives finding it hard to strike a balance between being an athlete and not.

After speaking to many successful CrossFit athletes over the years quite a few stated that at one point in their career they were so focused on what they were doing that they could not give anyone or anything around them the time of day. They also said that this approach may be not the best way and is far from sustainable.

My story

It is at this point I will hold up my hands and say I have been there. There was a time not so long ago when I really struggled to find a balance between training and wanting to be the best I could possibly be, and have a life. This brings me to my reason for writing this blog. Yes, I am making myself pretty vulnerable in sharing a struggle with you but I think it is so important for people to realise that everyone has their struggles and we are all human.

Dedicating all of my time to chase my goal was amazing and very rewarding but it did come with its downfalls and I have come to realise that there was no need for it to consume my life as much as it did. Not having a balance and giving my all to training and nothing else actually turned out to be very detrimental to me mentally and physically.

Having a tunnel vision and only ever existing in the gym, my kitchen or bed sleeping and recovering was not the best way to go about things. It is now only on reflection that I can see this. Life was very isolated and things in my life were beginning to suffer, especially my relationship with those closest to me.  Not only this but training was beginning to suffer as well as I was putting incredible pressure on myself to preform and when I didn’t my whole world came crashing down. Not ideal and very unreasonable. Not surprisingly my mental game was also shot. Battling with negative thoughts from bad training and not having time to see friends and loved ones, and not having people to talk to begins to take its toll and when you have no mental strength you might as well hold up the white flag as it is very hard to pull yourself together in the gym if you can’t even do it outside.

Funnily, when I started to relax outside of training and find ways to work around my busy training schedule, training actually improved dramatically and I was beginning to preform how I had wanted to all along.

So, what did I change?

Life!

 I sat for a long time asking myself WHY?

Why do I do what I do and what do I want to achieve?

I came up with these answers.

I train CrossFit because I enjoy it and it is fun (said no one ever) and I wanted to get back to Regionals. As my love for CrossFit was disappearing I thought that and at this rate I wasn’t going to be making it back to Regionals because nothing was going right.

It was at this point I re-assessed my training, recovery and what I was going to do to make sure when training was done that Lucy the athlete took a break and Lucy was able to go out and enjoy herself and have a life.

Firstly, I started making sure I saw my friends more, visited my grandparents and spent quality time with them and my family.

Secondly, I made sure I didn’t consume my head with my training when I left the gym. If I had had a bad day I tried to leave it behind and move on.

Lastly, I brought the fun back to my training

Surprise surprise, my training quickly came back to life and my mind was able to think clearly.

The moral of the story

Sometimes we have to learn the hard way and experience lows to help us grow. The biggest realisation for me was that you can chase your dreams and be the best ‘you’ and excel even more whilst having a life and enjoying some time off. Someone very close to me once told me this and I never believed him till now. A little too late!

Final thought

One of my favourite quotes is:

“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life”

However, for the purpose of this blog I am going to change it slightly and leave you with my final thought:

“NEVER GET SO BUSY CHASING A DREAM THAT YOU FORGET TO HAVE A LIFE”

You defo can have both!!!

Yesterday I was very lucky to be able to speak with Justin Su’a on the phone. Justin Su’a is a mental performance and leadership coach for the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Browns. Justin also produces a weekday podcast called INCREASE YOUR IMPACT – for me one of the best podcasts around. Each day Justin discusses a different topic or drops knowledge bombs giving you focus and something to think about for the up coming day. Justin’s podcast has become part of my morning ritual.

Alongside working with sports teams and individuals Justin travels around the world giving talks, helping people and organisations to cultivate mental toughness and build a workplace of excellence. Justin has also written various books and is known as a leading expert in his area of mental performance and leadership.

I asked Justin if he would be able to take a little time out of his busy schedule to chat with me as I have begun to realise just how important mindset and being happy within your own mind/head is and how much this is overlooked by a lot of athletes/people. Mindfulness and being mentally strong relates not just to when you are training or competing but also in your everyday life.

From speaking to Justin, I was able to learn a great deal and to think about my mental game and strength in a very different way. I could write a massive blog around everything we discussed but here are the best bits. I hope you can enjoy and learn as much as I did

What makes a mentally strong athlete/person? 

I think the same components and principles that make someone physically tough also make them mentally tough. For example, strength and conditioning, by which I mean the ability to respond to failure, to recover from adversity, to embrace obstacles and hardships, to be able to take feedback and work with that. You have to think of mental toughness as training your brain to grow and become stronger and help it recover just like you would your body when you train.

Interestingly, some people have some parts of mental toughness but struggle with others; we are not always the full package. You can be confident but lack focus, have good focus but lack performance, be a great athlete in the gym but when it comes to a competition be unable to perform. There needs to be confidence but not arrogance in all areas. To be mentally strong you have to work on your areas of weakness and teach your mind how to be able to perform at its best when it most matters

What are the best two ways to work on your mental game? 

You might be able to guess my answer as I say it many times on my podcast – IT DEPENDS. There are many ways to work on your mental game and strength and most of the time it depends on the individual and which area they most struggle with. However, my top two ways are:

1. Mindfulness – Mindfulness can help your brain to relax and it can help you train your brain to be where you want it to be and how you want it to think in a given situation. The best places to start with mindfulness are apps like Headspace, Calm and 10% Happier. 10% Happier is my favourite as it has teaching components where it helps to teach you how to quiet your mind and well as use meditation. All these apps can be used anywhere so there are no excuses.
2. Journaling – Writing a journal everyday can help to teach self-awareness and it can help you to become aware of certain things in the day that went well or not so well that perhaps had not occurred to you before then. This is very important as how can you change things if you are not aware of them? When you are journaling try to answer these 3 questions everyday:

• – What was the best part about today? This helps to show optimism and gratitude for what you achieved that day.
• – What did I learn? Always look at successes and failures as this helps you to move forward, learn and reflect.
• – What am I going to do better tomorrow? This is the activation piece allowing us to move forward with the lessons we learnt and put them into action the next day.

Should we make a daily list of things to achieve to keep us on track? 

Again, I would answer this with IT DEPENDS. Some people work really well having lists they can tick things off from but for others who are more open and fluid it can cause even more stress to their day. Each individual needs to find something that works for them and stick with that.

I try and create a HIT list – HIGH IMPORTANCE TASK LIST. I figure out the things that are the most important that need to be done that day or over the next few days and try to tick them off. This does not give a direct timeframe in which they need to be done but it just reminds me of the most important things.

How do you know the best way to find what works for you?

Experiment and try out different things. You will never know until you have tried, but never get angry or frustrated if the first thing doesn’t work.

Do you think meditation and mindfulness are important?

Yes, I believe that meditation and mindfulness is very important. There is a lack of awareness around this topic and people do not tend to participate in it because they don’t understand it and find it hard. You do not get any direct feedback so it can be hard to see if it is helping or if it is changing your mental toughness.

People find it hard to change habits and are not always keen to take time to work on new approaches. If you take even just 5-10 minutes a day even 1 minute you can really start to see a change in the way you are able to think and deal with situations.

If you are not an athlete should you still take part in mindfulness and meditation?

Everyone should take time to give back to their body and mind. It is so important to stay healthy and well within your mind as well as your body. Knowing where you want to be able to put your mind or how you want it to think at a certain time is so important, not just in a workout, but in general life.

Taking time to meditate can help you to process what has happened in your day, what is going on in your life and how you feel about certain things that are going on in your life that maybe you are trying to push to the back of your mind. It is essentially time to reflect and think, giving you time to process and cope with feelings.

The longer you hold onto things the heavier they become.

It is so important that we recognise how we are feeling and know how to deal with those feelings.

Do people need a mind coach?

It is always good to have a coach, just like in sport, as they can help you to learn, to know you personally, are someone to talk to and they can help to direct your thoughts, feelings and emotions in the right direction. However, it is not imperative and you can work on all of this on your own through the apps mentioned above

Favourite book on this topic?

10% happier by Dan Harris

Is mental training as important as physical training, nutrition and recovery? 

Yes, for sure, especially for the more elite athletes. It can be even more important for some as potentially they are physically strong and very fit but their mind is lacking strength. If they work on that they will become better without changing anything but their mind.

Final thoughts!

Our mind tries to protect us and tell us not to hurt ourselves – if we keep pushing it we hit flight or freeze. We need to train our brain to say “No, it’s OK”. It will be OK and push through our mental freezes. You need to be able to quiet one voice (bad chimp) in your mind and allow the other (good chimp) to come through. We need to be able to allow our chimps to have a debate and see that the bad chimp is not always right. For more on good and bad chimp see The Chimp Paradox by Prof Steve Peters.

Everyone will have a different answer to the ‘What defines who we are as a person’  and everyone will be defined in different ways. What I wanted to talk about in this blog is the notion that we are all now too worried about what people think of us and are we too caught up with the way we want ourselves to be defined to the outside World (who probably don’t even care), that we forget who we really are.

 So, what defines who we are?

What job we have?

What we have achieved?

What we have done in our past?

How successful we are?

How people perceive us?

What we wear?

How we look and act?

What car we drive?

How many people follow us on Instagram/Facebook?

 Whilst this is not an extensive list of potential things that may help to define who we are it raises some of the most common and thought-about topics. These are all things that people can be judged for, but do any of these really matter? Does it really matter what car we drive or the clothes we wear or how successful we are? The answer in short is NO! Well not to me anyway.

While I believe that some of the above will always play a part in how people see us and define us even if it is in a very shallow. They should not be the only reasons.

With the continued growth of social media, I believe the most common and most prominent way people, especially young people, believe they are defined and portrayed is by how they appear on social media, for example Facebook, but especially on Instagram.

For some reason it is now believed that the more followers you have on Instagram the better a human being you are and the more you are liked. While this would appear true as the more followers and ‘friends’ you have the more popular you feel, although this is so superficial as most likely 60% +, if not more, are not really your friends. Surely having real friends that you can communicate with is far more important? This appears untrue these days. 

Recent studies have shown that young people are now getting so wrapped up in trying to portray themselves as the person they would like to be or who they think they should be via their Instagram account that is it having a negative impact on their life.

It is crazy to think that a social media channel like Instagram can have such an impact on young people and how they are perceiving themselves and how others are perceiving them, but why is this happening?

1.   If you do not receive as many likes on a picture as you thought you should or your last one received, or your friends received, this can result in you feeling worthless and like no one is interested in what you are doing or likes you for who you are.

2.   You scroll through hundreds and hundreds of photos wondering why you do not look as great as the person in the photo but what you forget to remember is they probably don’t even look like that either.

3.   People start to question why their life isn’t as perfect as the ‘perfect’ life people portray on their profiles every day forgetting that they only post the highlights, like a big show reel.

These are just a few reasons but they can create a really superficial life which others strive to have which in fact is highly unobtainable and probably is not even like that for those portraying it.

People’s Instagram posts promote a life that is somewhat unreal and is perfect through filters and often posed and presented in a way that they wish you to view it. I guarantee that if you spoke to them in real life it probably is not anything like their real life.

So why do we let ourselves get so caught up in the way we want ourselves to be perceived? Because we want to be able to keep up with the wider community and world and feel we are liked and accepted by everyone. As a nation we like to be accepted and liked by as many people as possible even if they are truly not our friends and just imaginary numbers. This, however, is not healthy and I believe it needs to be addressed.

While it is good for business to have a whole bunch of friends and followers I strongly believe that our Instagram/Facebook pages should reflect who we really are and the ups and downs of life not just the ‘perfect’ parts. This is why when posting on Instagram and Facebook I like to post real and honest posts showing my life as honestly as possible.  I often post videos of fails and days that have not been great when I have trained and also the ups and downs of life. The times I have struggled etc. I believe that it is important to show that everyone has bad days and sometimes we don’t look like we have just walked off a photo shoot.

I strongly feel that we should just be ourselves and If we are liked then that is great and if we are not then fine. You should be proud to be who you are and how you look and what you do. There is no need to look for acceptance or even chase it through promoting yourself how you feel you should to be accepted. Worrying about how people perceive you or what ‘defines’ you can lead to deep inner issues which are not always positive.

Always be yourself and be accepted for who you are! Never let the outside World pressure you into portraying yourself in a way you believe you should. Rather be accepted for being you and who you want to be rather than a person you are not.