Whether you want to
become fit and healthy, become a professional sports person, or just shed a few
pounds, it is imperative that you have the right mindset if you are to keep up
your training for any extended period of time. I can tell you now that hardly
anyone who trains actually enjoy it; in fact, there are many people who
downright HATE it. So what keeps them from just stopping, you wonder?
There are a number of
possible reasons people are able to fight their laziness and keep training, but
you will find that they are all based on a single aspect: MIND OVER MATTER. My
father taught me this phrase many years ago but it took me awhile to truly
understand its meaning. This phase carries the message that if you can master
your mind and exert control over your feelings, you can overcome any obstacle
your mind presents to you, from vague misgivings to primal fears (although our
deepest fears can be significantly harder to overcome!).
In order to overcome
misgivings or feelings of laziness that occur before a training session, it may
first help to put these feelings in perspective by examining how they work:
Information is carried
to, from, and within the brain by electrical signals called nerve impulses. A stimulus, such as
pain, causes impulses to be transmitted from that point to the brain. This is
how the brain recognizes where the pain is originating from. However, impulses
can be coming from many parts of the body at once. The brain prioritizes which
area requires the most immediate attention by the frequency and number of
impulses sent from a particular source. The higher the number of impulses, and
the more sent per unit time, the more attention is given to the source. For
example, if a man has an itchy elbow, but then something heavy is dropped on
his foot, many impulses will be quickly sent from his foot to his brain, which
will immediately outnumber the impulses sent from his elbow, and his attention
will immediately shift to his foot.
It is thought that
this model can be applied to mental processes as well, such as whether or not
you eat a sweet if you know you don’t feel like it but also know that it tastes
so good and you may miss out if you don’t have it now. In this situation, you
could force yourself one way or the other, with a little willpower. I believe
this also applies to fitness training. Sure, there are impulses that make you
feel lazy or have misgivings, but for a beginner trainer I believe this is
simply your body warning you that you are about to take your body out of your
comfort zone and damage some muscle fibres (in advanced trainers it may be a
sign telling you that you need a bit of a rest!). But we already know that
muscles get stronger by rebuilding damaged muscle fibres! Just like in the
example of the sweet, all it takes is a little willpower and you will be able
to overshadow your negative thoughts with positive ones and banish your
misgivings about the coming training session. Whether people listen to music
while they are exercising, sing songs in their heads, or pretend they are some
sort of indestructible machine, in the end these all simply ball down to ways
that people counter the impulses caused by negative feelings.
This information has
actually been put into practice for many years already. When you were a child
you may remember your parents telling you when you were in pain to ‘think about
something else’. Once again, this is simply a method of overshadowing impulses
from the source of pain with impulses created by other strong feelings.
Unfortunately, the
mental lead-up to a training session doesn’t get any easier as you get fitter,
however, you may find yourself less likely to gain excess weight again. This is
for two reasons:
Firstly, you will have
worked so hard to get to your current fitness, and you will start to feel that
it would be a waste to have done all that hard work just to let it all slip
away through laziness, and secondly, you will notice yourself start to feel
worse both physically and mentally if you start to accumulate fat again. You
will become slower and more sluggish and you will not like it one bit. This is
likely to prompt you into training once again.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Find
some way of banishing or diminishing negative pre-training thoughts, something
that works for you, and just get out there and start training! There’s nothing
to lose and everything to gain!
GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR TRAINING!!!
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