Train Your Mind Before Anything Else

The gym isn’t a warm and cozy place.

Yet that’s where change, the change that affects your physical world (and in some ways, mental), takes place.

The difficulty that you think of is where a lot of people stop at the gates.

You can get a rush of inspiration and go once or a handful of times.

But then you fall back into old habits, no matter how good your circumstances could be.

“Just go to the gym” is a great starting piece of advice, but it’s still going to be hard. Trying to be your own drill sergeant will only get you so far, because your inner soldier will find it all too easy to just get up and leave.

It’s hard to start working out.

It’s hard to keep showing up long after it’s exciting and the boredom starts to creep in.

Not a very inspirational start, but we’re going to turn it around.

The thing that will determine whether or not you continue in the gym and make progress is your mind. It’s the thing that will sabotage you from even starting, telling you that “this won’t work” again.

To paraphrase Arnold Schwarzenegger, the mind is more important than the body, because it’s the mind that has to visualize the finished product.

So for as much as people talk about just getting “mentally tougher,” there are practical ways we can make that happen without yelling at yourself while running long distances.

Our Minds on Auto-Pilot

We only operate and show up for ourselves based on what we believe about ourselves.

If you think you’re going to get hurt lifting, then you’ll think that every little tweak is a “uh oh I should stop before something bad happens” moment. If you keep calling yourself unmotivated and lazy, you’ll live out those commands every night in your gaming chair and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Our environments don’t help us either.

Social media, negative comments, negative news, negative people around us fill our already negative-biased brains. We have something within us called “negativity bias” which used to help us survive. We noticed a bear cave and a bear came out. We made note not to go near bear caves again. But if we’re not careful, this defense mechanism can creep into other areas of our lives, even the ones we want to improve in.

There are people out there (most of us) who know that they should do something. But we know it will be hard. They also have negative viewpoints about themselves, so they stop before they get started. So since the negative view is how they see themselves, it’s how they treat themselves. If you call yourself a couch potato, you will do couch potato things because you gave your mind those instructions. Don’t do that.

Breaking the Cycle

Your output is determined by your outlook.

Your outlook is determined by your input.

Most humans these days have a little device attached to the hip feeding them randomness and negativity. But guess what? You can replace that habit and device with something better. Read better books. Two come to mind for this very topic, specifically for athletes but they can work for anyone: Mind Gym and 10 Minute Mental Toughness. The latter is more practical, plus I don’t remember the former, but the idea of both is this: our brains will repeat a thing and our bodies will follow the commands of the mind. Athletes from all over the world will visualize themselves doing their next event or practice well, thus improving their chances of actually performing well.

If they can do it for big sporting events, we can use it on a small scale for ourselves. Without all the woo-woo, practically speaking you need to put in the mental reps to get what you physically want out of your own training.

We think getting “mentally tougher” means doing harder workouts like a bootcamp or long runs. While those do take guts, we can apply this “toughness” as “strength reps” for whatever else we want to do. We don’t have to do a certain type of workout to make things harder, we can do that just in our mind.

Besides, it’s a lot harder to build up the habit of training consistently than it does doing one hard workout and quitting for the rest of the month.

The Mental Gym Workout

These are in no particular order.

Accept the fact that working out will always be hard.

• Once you accept that, you won’t be bothered when you don’t feel like going…because most people don’t feel like going. But, easy won’t work for very long. It’s going to take effort, especially if you don’t like your current results. But keep in mind that your body deserves the work required for maintenance for the rest of your life.

• If you haven’t been putting forth the effort, remember why you’re doing this in the first place.

Read Positive Books

• For all the reasons why people bash reading non-fiction these days, saying we could just get a quick summary on the internet, we don’t equally bash mindlessly scrolling on social media every night for 2+ hours absorbing randomness and negativity.

• Just 10 pages per day of something non-fiction that is something wholesome and that applies to your life will start to change your mindset.

• Make this your default activity when you’re bored instead of picking up your phone. Keep a book close to you. Get a kindle. Get a library card. Stack the deck in your favor.

Set a big goal.

• Set something for the next 3-12 months. You can set 1-3 goals, but the fewer goals the better. You could also set a longer term goal, but you have no clue what will happen next Tuesday, so a year is long enough. You don’t have to tell anyone. Do yourself a favor and visualize achieving this goal in vivid detail to make yourself feel good. Seriously.

• Depending on the timeframe of the goal, you’ll be able to break it down into quarters and months and even weeks. That way you won’t be scrambling at the end of the year. You might even surprise yourself and achieve a few goals earlier than you thought you could.

Practice Visualization

• Before each training session, take a page from 10 Minute Mental Toughness:

  • 1 minute thinking about what went well the last time

  • 1 minute thinking about your big goal

  • 1 minute thinking about doing well in the current training session

• That’s 3 tiny minutes that can be done on the way to the gym. It puts your brain in the zone.

Start Small

• For whatever goal you have, take the smallest action to start. Your brain operates based on how you view yourself, and the tiniest action you take is a small bit of evidence for the person you want to be.

• It doesn’t have to take a ton of time either. Even if you just spent a ton of time visualizing the perfect workout, there’s nothing wrong with that workout being just 10 minutes. It’s still a win.

• Focus on building the habit before you build any dread over having to do this monster of a workout just because that’s what you think a workout should be. Start small. No one starts their running journey by running a marathon on day 1.

No Music

• If you want a little bonus mental challenge, then do your workouts without any audio. No podcasts, no music, and definitely no scrolling.

• Why? First of all you need to practice focusing during your gym time. The second reason is…just because it’s harder. Think about your next set instead of whatever is going on in the far corners of the earth.

• Feel good. Doing these things - visualizing the outcome and doing the tiny work - will make you feel good after. That’s your reward. This closes the self-motivational loop that keeps you going. If you’re in a rut, it’s because of habits you’re doing. The only way to get back on the positive mental path is to take this win you just achieved and repeat it the next day and the next day.

Start with the Mind. The Body Will Follow.

People often think that they need a gym, a training partner, a new program, a new piece of equipment, etc. before they give themselves permission to get started.

That’s backwards.

People have been improving their bodies with minimal equipment, or even none, for decades now.

The only thing holding you back is the space between your two ears.

Stop letting your incredible brain get in the way and force it to get on your side.

Thanks for reading! As always if you have any questions feel free to respond back to this newsletter.