October marathon PR鈥檚 begin as January plans that manifest into methodical consistency over weeks and months of training. Goals provide an anchor for focus, drive intentionality, and create meaning in our lives.聽

One of the reasons I personally love having races on my calendar to look forward to is the structure and meaning they provide to my days and weeks. The meaningful individual goals I鈥檓 striving toward provide a foundation for daily motivation, weekly consistency, and matching appropriate effort and intensity throughout the training cycle.

Psychologically, goals in and of themselves serve a powerful function in our human psych. Most athletes can attest to the satisfaction felt when achieving goals, and the disappointment when falling short.聽

Identifying goals is usually easy. Staying committed in a consistent way to see them through to fruition is another story. When goals are clear and , we can leverage the underlying psychological function they provide on a daily basis through a three-part routine that involves learning how to say yes to the right things at the right times. Here鈥檚 how.

Setting Up Your Run

Check in with yourself before you run, spending a quick moment of honest reflection with these three questions:

1. What type of run/workout am I about to do? (Review the specifics of the day鈥檚 plan.)聽
2. Why is this important at this stage of my training? (Review how this workout will lead to fitness improvement in pursuit of your goals.)
3. How am I planning to engage in the work? (What mental skills or attitude are you planning to focus on and develop?)

These three questions can be considered while your watch is locking into GPS and you are lacing up your shoes. Answers don鈥檛 need to be written down; going over them in your mind works just fine.

If you are like most athletes I know, my guess is that while you often consider the first question 鈥� consulting your training plan to determine what type of run you鈥檒l do 鈥� you rarely entertain the subsequent questions. But the importance here cannot be overstated. Mentally reviewing the connection between the specifics of the planned run/workout with how this will contribute to your overall fitness at this stage in training (stage is an important reminder here given the different periodized training demands), and reminding yourself of the mental skill development you are working on helps you stay anchored to the larger goals you are pursuing. It takes the guesswork out of the importance of each day鈥檚 training and sharpens the image of why today matters in the pursuit of your bigger goal.聽

One of the biggest disconnects I hear from athletes is the difference between how important goal achievement down the road feels to them and how little they connect to it on a daily basis (or how severely that connection can wane throughout the training cycle). Frustration paired with a lack of a daily actionable plan becomes a recipe for giving up on the goal or not fully leaning in when required and doing the hard work.聽

The self-awareness process helps bridge that gap, helping you realize that each and every day is another step in a meaningful direction. As the philosopher Socrates is , 鈥淚f you want to get to Mount Olympus, make sure every step you take is in that direction.鈥� This process starts by saying yes to these three questions as you prepare to embark on the day鈥檚 workout.

Making the Growth Choice

I have quite a few athletes come my way within a week or two of their A race, looking to learn mental toughness skills. And I always ask what they did during their training to build mental toughness along the way. Some point to specific workouts, or specific 鈥榤oments of truth鈥� during their training, when they decided to keep going or increase intensity despite feeling tired, fatigued, or watching their own thoughts doubt their ability to be successful. Some shrug their shoulders.聽

The secret to mental toughness is that there is no secret. There is no shortcut, nor easy path to becoming mentally tough. Further, no two mentally tough athletes are the same. Each of us has the capacity to become mentally tough in our own way, with our own unique constellation of skills to help us stay on course despite how we feel in the moment. This truth holds for every possible mental skill you can develop as an athlete.

Instead of looking for a special trick, take advantage of the fact that every workout provides you a choice for how you 鈥渟how up,鈥� as Des Linden says. You get a choice during every run for what mental skills you plan to work on, influencing your attitude and intentionality as you go about clipping off the miles or pounding out the day鈥檚 intervals. Recognizing that the point of the workout includes the mental skill development lets you integrate the mental reactions with the physical sensations 鈥� 鈥淚t鈥檚 supposed to feel this way鈥� 鈥� and consciously work on building and using your mental fitness and toughness.

But you need to be clear about what you are developing before you begin. I call this process the 鈥淕rowth Choice鈥� 鈥� learning to spend time during each workout developing some aspect of the mental game. Harder efforts allow you the opportunity to work on key elements 鈥� willingness to accept and embrace discomfort, credible self-talk, and optimism 鈥� that are the cornerstones of mental toughness. Easier, aerobic based days provide opportunity to focus on gratitude and mindfulness. Some runs lend themselves to developing focus, during others you might work on learning to use an energy-saving zen-like dissociation. And there are endless others.聽

Clarity and purposeful development of these skills on a daily basis not only helps you keep your longer term goal in focus as you recognize that the development of these skills is critical to your successful attainment of your goal, but further ensures that these mental skills will not be left to chance come race day.聽

Putting Your Run Away

After you hit stop on your watch and you鈥檙e preparing to head into the next part of your day, how often do you reflect for a moment on what you just completed? On how that contributed to your fitness development in achieving your goals? And how you approached the work?聽

The moments after hitting stop on your watch are an important, yet often overlooked, timeframe in your life as an athlete. A quick review in your mind as you are walking back into your house or apartment or taking off your shoes and preparing for the next part of your day, helps cement this mental framework and keeps your goals, and the necessary steps it takes to achieve them both physically and psychologically, fresh and in perspective. Consolidating the work psychologically in this way will also help you pick back up from a relatively similar starting point tomorrow, giving your longer term goal daily accountability and focus.

The post How to Connect Long-Term Goals to Your Daily Runs appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

One of my all time favorite etymologies comes from the Latin root for the word compete, translating to 鈥渂e in rivalry with鈥� or more favorably, 鈥渢o strive in common; strive after something in company with or together.鈥� This mindset shift of striving together changes the entire concept of competition. Competing is not necessarily connected to winning or losing, especially for the vast majority of those who participate in running events, rather it鈥檚 about pushing each other to achieve our own individual goals.

Given the unprecedented present day circumstances, with our global gears grinding to a complete halt 鈥� including most, if not all, endurance-race related events being postponed or canceled 鈥� we collectively find ourselves seeking new meaningful opportunities in our running pursuits. Virtual race series have popped up to help fill the void (even the ) providing us the continued opportunity to strive together鈥攚hile separate. Yet, virtual racing not only makes us keenly miss the 鈥渁longside” aspect of racing, it also presents a set of newfound challenges.

A personal time trial is going to differ psychologically from an in-vivo race experience. After all, chasing down your own personal glory through your neighborhood is going to feel much different than charging through a major metropolitan area with tens of thousands of your closest running friends in an organized event. How you prepare mentally may be the key determining factor between a virtual race day PR or a time trial flop.

Shifting Subjectives

An aptly-timed聽 was recently published on the perception of effort running a 10k time trial in an organized race versus a solo time trial. While the study is not without limitations 鈥� it included a total of only 14 runners, all of whom 聽were male 鈥� it was revealing. The study found that runners were an average of 58 seconds faster when racing head to head with physical competition compared to their time trial efforts alone. Of interest was that the perception of exertion was largely the same for both races but, when running alone, the subjective feelings were judged as far more negative as the race pushed on. This is a key finding that bears repeating; the perception of effort feels nearly identical in both scenarios, but we interpret the effort to be more unpleasant when it occurs outside of a race day context.

A virtual race is going to change how you focus,聽 what you focus on, and how you judge the experience (three key ingredients in the psychology of sport). The changing psychology occurs because an individual time trial effort is you versus you; you’re locked into your mind with few external cues. A solo venture is going to lead to a heightened awareness of the physical sensations you are experiencing merely because there is little else to focus your attention. Without a race鈥檚 pomp and circumstance to externally draw your attention, the physical sensations of mounting discomfort, fatigue, and exhaustion are subsequently much more likely going to be appraised negatively than when they occur on a race course.

Suffering Alone

When these mounting feelings of discomfort encroach at the end of a in-vivo race, we tend to find a deep well of internal motivators to keep going, as a traditional race offers more interplay between you and the race day environment. Most significantly, other athletes on course provide head-to-head comparison. Keeping pace with competitors we know both distracts us from internal signals of distress and lets us know that we鈥檙e running an appropriate pace regardless of how it feel. Plus, we can reference our distress against others: 鈥淚鈥檓 hurting, but they are hurting more鈥� is a powerful incentive to keep pushing down on the gas pedal and dig a bit deeper into the well.

Besides chasing down fellow athletes, a race offers a variety of focal points to shift our attention: Getting to the next mile marker or aid station, or anticipating a mood boost in seeing family or friends waiting around the corner etc).聽Simply the fact of having a bib tacked to our front provides a context in which we expect increasing physical discomfort.

We tend to have a higher likelihood of positive judgement on our bodily feedback within an organized event, given the changes in motivational factors and ascribed meaning we鈥檝e given to the race performance itself. A race provides a context where it is accepted, even expected, that you suffer in public. When it鈥檚 just you vs. you, the entire experience can feel fundamentally differently and be internally appraised toward the negative.

Mentally Preparing to Race Virtually

The first step in psychologically preparing for a virtual race is to decide in advance what it is you are pursuing. If the goal is participation, there may be little else required to mentally prepare, and you can expect to go out and have fun knowing your run is connected in spirit with others.

If your goal is to pursue a race day effort, you鈥檙e going to need a little extra work. That starts by being 100% clear and focused internally about your intentions. Setting your self-determination before you begin includes reminding yourself why this virtual race has personal meaning and how you plan to attack it. This is going to become a much needed self-reference point when it starts to get uncomfortable. We are far more likely to hold ourselves accountable when we鈥檝e settled the question of whether suffering for this goal is worth it long before we鈥檙e facing the cost in the throes of the race. Being clear about why this effort is important to you will help you dig deep during tough stretches.

The Power of Self-Talk

The biggest takeaway of the 10km study showed the powerful influence of negativity on performance. Knowing that negative judgment is a performance robber allows you to prepare your self-talk in advance so you can guard against the tendency to appraise how you鈥檙e feeling as 鈥渂ad鈥� and therefore a reason to slow down or stop. Have a few positive or neutral affirmations 聽to tell yourself when those moments occur. Normalizing the uncomfortable experience with expressions like, 鈥淭his is supposed to hurt, it鈥檚 a race鈥� or 鈥淭his means you鈥檙e doing it right, keep pushing鈥� will go a long way.

Beware Watch Checking

One of the age old debates in endurance performance psychology is distinguishing between the mental approaches of 鈥済oing harder鈥� or 鈥済oing faster.鈥� The latter almost always puts us into a heightened focus on metrics and watch watching. When we try to run fast, we are often basing that effort by the paces we see on our watch or our split times. This can work, but it can backfire too, if it builds unnecessary anxiety or pressure.

We each develop a personal narrative about our running numbers which provides greater psychological power than the numbers themselves. If we are trying to run at our peak, we may get caught into the trap of overly checking our watch metrics and tapping into our bias on what numbers indicate rather than tapping into how our effort feels. We almost always perform better when we鈥檙e connected to maintaining a high level of effort by staying locked in to going harder compared to being overly focused on running faster.

Without the traditional race day atmosphere to round out what we focus on, it鈥檚 even easier to fall prey to the trap of becoming overly focused on self-referencing via watch checking. During an organized race we can align ourselves with other athletes running similar effort levels and fall into that familiar foot fall pattern matching stride and cadence, providing a sense of relief that although we may be struggling we are ultimately striving together.

When聽 running hard alone, we have no external reference but the watch. Repeatedly checking it, however, can kick into negative appraisals and the need for more affirmation鈥攁 potentially damaging cascade. Entering a virtual race by committing to emphasizing effort over paces may help you keep your mind in a positive frame of reference.

It All Comes Down To鈥�.

Perception. Perception. Perception. Our perception significantly impacts our decision making, and our ability to maintain pace, speed up, or slow down is largely based on how we evaluate effort. And this perception is going to be exploited and slanted towards more negative appraisals when pushing hard alone.

Being prepared for a virtual race requires alignment with personal meaning and specific self-talk. Remember that a virtual race is a great opportunity to test yourself on the ability to maintain a high effort level rather than over-focusing on hitting specific time splits. This will lead to a more satisfying performance and overall increased enjoyment. And perhaps most importantly, it can lead to psychological skill development that you can carry with you into your next in-person race.

—

is a clinical psychologist in Denver, Colorado, specializing in human performance. He is an 11 time marathoner, with 6 BQs and a personal best of 2:57. His newly launched course, is a masterclass aimed at building fundamental psychological skills for sport.

The post The Psychology of Racing Alone appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Stress is stress. Our bodies don’t necessarily know the difference between where stressors originate. A hard training session, a fight with a partner, looming economic concern, uncertainty of the ongoing pandemic; each contributes to the stress response with multiple sources piling up leading to larger problems in mind and in body. For runners, this can become increasingly problematic on a number of levels, including impacting the ever important relationship between training, stress and recovery.

What is the Vagus Nerve?

Enter the Vagus Nerve. This 10th cranial nerve is the longest and most complex nerve in the body. It connects our heart, lungs, GI system and other major organs to our brain as it wanders all the way down into our lower abdomen. In fact, it gets its name from the Latin etymology for Vagus translating to 鈥渨andering.鈥� Perhaps most importantly, the Vagus Nerve is an important toggle between the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of our nervous system; the former flooding our bodies with stress hormones signaling threat (whether real or imagined) and triggering the 鈥渇ight or flight鈥� response, the latter tapping into our bodies ability to 鈥渞est and digest.鈥� One of the primary features of the vagus nerve is to help regulate heart rate and heart rate variability.聽

Now, this may seem like an advanced anatomy and physiology lesson with information about the nervous system suggesting that these responses may be largely outside our control. But quite the contrary. We can actively impact our vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system through specific practice. The overall health and quality of our vagus response is most commonly referred to as Vagal Tone, which we can measure through a relatively straightforward biofeedback process examining Heart Rate Variability (HRV).聽

Heart Rate Variability

HRV is a measurement that emerges from understanding the nuanced interplay between the fight or flight (sympathetic) and rest and digest (parasympathetic) branches of our nervous system. We want our HRV readings to be high. High HRV is a signal of a body that is highly responsive and adaptive in a balanced way. For athletes, high HRV typically signals balanced training with recovery. Low readings typically suggest prolonged exposure to stress or persistent medical concerns and typically are accompanied by feelings of fatigue or exhaustion. For an athlete, low readings indicate the likelihood of over-training with inadequate recovery.

Biofeedback programs measuring HRV are now widely available, even for the public. You don鈥檛 need an advanced degree to obtain one or advanced training to understand the basics of how they work. And many watches promote the capability of measuring HRV, including many Garmin products with a chest strap heart rate monitor, WHOOP (specifically designed to examine sleep and recovery metrics), and Apple watches. But a word of precaution, indicates that heart rate chest straps far outperform optical heart rate sensors when measuring heart rate, especially as exercise intensifies. exists on the accuracy of wearable technology with HRV, with a 2018 study indicating that the performance of such devices, 鈥渞anged from very good to excellent during rest, yet it declined progressively as exercise level increased鈥� with a call for more research into the matter. So take any HRV readings from wearable technology as a rough estimate, with some devices performing better than others.

Exercises to Train Vagal Tone

You don鈥檛 necessarily need any technology to train HRV, however. We can train vagal tone through simple, yet effective breathing and/or meditation practices allowing our body and intuition to guide us. When I鈥檓 using biofeedback to train athletes on HRV in my office, one of the first practices I have them do is a basic 5-5 breathing exercise. Simply stated, you breathe in slowly and steadily for a count of 5, then exhale slowly and steadily for a count of 5. In essence, what we鈥檙e aiming for is to slow breathing down to 6 breaths in 1 minute (most adults typically take between 10 – 16 breaths per minute, so this is a sizable slow down). Deep rhythmic breathing in this manner, even for just a few minutes, shows a marked change in HRV readings, including physiological shifts engaging the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system helping your body enter a natural state of recovery.聽

Another simple, yet effective, strategy for training vagal tone is merely to extend the exhale and make it longer than the inhale. This doesn鈥檛 necessarily need to be timed, your subjective sense of your own breath will work just fine. These practices are best utilized in a deliberate manner 3 times throughout the day to ensure you are activating the recovery branch of your nervous system and slowing down the accumulation of stress. I recommend aiming for a 3-5 minute widow once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening. As a runner, you don鈥檛 need to attempt to breathe in this manner during your runs. Rather, utilize these practices prior to working out to get your mind and body aligned and post-run to aid in the recovery process.

Why it Matters

You may be wondering why as an athlete this matters to your performance or your recovery. Training the vagus nerve and our parasympathetic response is important for runners for a number of reasons, including research that blends together both performance improvements and prescribing when to tackle harder workouts. Research involving HRV training has shown that it leads to for cyclists, and has demonstrated the success of using HRV as a when prescribing workload in runners. indicates that recreational runners with a higher level of baseline HRV improved performance over a 14 week intense training period compared to those with a lower baseline HRV. This particular research is compelling for any runner considering embarking on a training plan with a particular goal in mind. And there鈥檚 copious amounts of research that connects healthy HRV with a variety of general health and wellness improvements, from reduction in inflammation to subjective feelings of calm and focus. Not bad when you consider it only takes deliberately slowing your breathing several times per day.

All of this comes back to a really simple concept that we鈥檝e all heard our entire lives when we are feeling stressed, anxious or overwhelmed: 鈥�.鈥� We may intuitively know that this helps, but consider how many of your daily breaths you are either aware of or are actively engaging. My guess is that most are done without deliberate attention. Optimal performance and optimal recovery require regulated states of arousal, which we can actively influence through this process. You are likely to find a subjective sense of calm, focus and reduced anxiety/tension through these practices. And the added potential benefits of improved performance and recovery aren鈥檛 too bad either.

—

is a clinical psychologist in Denver, CO, specializing in human performance. He is an 11 time marathoner, with 6 BQs and a personal best of 2:57. His newly launched course, is a masterclass aimed at building fundamental psychological skills for sport.

The post Why You Should Train Your Vagus Nerve, and How appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.