Forging Elite Mindsets

Warmup

JM/ samson stretch

5 minute jump rope

burgener warm up

CrossFit WOD

3 rounds of (total time will include your rest time)

10 hang power cleans 155#/ 105#

run 400 meters

rest 3 minutes

then 

3 rounds 

10 push jerks 155#/ 105#

350 m row

rest 3 minutes

*photo courtesy of www.EricNelsonPhotography.com

SHIFT HAPPENS: Developing Your Potential with Mental Flow

Your potential lies within. It’s not on the whiteboard nor does it reside outside of you. Your potential is tapped into by recklessly abandoning  what you thought you could do, be and achieve based on the noise and limits you placed  on yourself and perhaps the need to impress others. It is extending your present skill level and developing your mental flow.

It is neurological (refer to previous “Hammering New Neurons” post). You have to create new-neural pathways by shifting what you think. Only you can decide this for yourself and you have the opportunity to practice it with every challenge or training.  Decide to think differently and find your mental flow. Look for your ability, not your disability.

When you decide to shift your thinking, you create what I call in the athletes’ world “FLOW.” Flow is fluid. It’s not thinking “I suck at this” or “I can’t.”  It focuses on your present strength, ability and skill level while tapping deep into your personal reservoir of potential and pulling from it to push through and challenge it to expand to your next level.  You with me? Good!

I often hear my coach Lamarr’s words in my head; “find your rhythm.” I love this statement and it has everything to do with mental flow, digging deep and finding untapped potential to push on and bring your focus back when the physical and mental challenge extends and depletes what feels like very cell of your being.  There is more to give. You find it in mental flow.

Here’s how to “flow” and maximize your potential and peak performance (can be applied to anything). So simple and often overlooked:

• Believe you can. Simple and foundational. Be aware of your familiar thoughts; create mental flow of “you can.” Confidence is key.
• Focus on YOUR performance, write YOUR story, not what others are doing or to have a great outcome on the board; Forget about everyone else during your execution. When you focus on what others are doing, it robs your energy, focus and mental flow.
• Push through each rep with focus and intensity on the movement in front of you. Your attention is here at the present moment, beit on the bar or one spot that your eyes are fixed on, not on the next rep, challenge or sequence that is ahead. When you focus your eyes on one spot, you keep your mental focus in tact during challenging sequences and aids in pushing past limits instead of mentally “loosing” it.
• Remove attention from comparing what or how others are doing and from the clock DURING your training. If you are motivated by the clock and it authentically pushes you to do more and doesn’t take away focus or energy, then you are the exception here; for others, looking at the clock takes away focus, mental flow and energy which takes seconds, even minutes away.
• Practice mental flow at every challenge or training. Check in with your thoughts. Shift accordingly.  Like any development, you have to train and exercise the brain. Practice. Repeat.

Flow creates complexity and facilitates digging deep and finding your rhythm for increased athletic development and achievement by challenging your existing skill level. 

Make your unthinkable, thinkable. Overreach. Extend yourself. Tap into all your potential and find your flow. 

*Photo courtesy of www.EricNelsonPhotography.com

Visualization: Performing Out of Your Mind

Have you ever looked in the face of an athlete right before competition? It’s one of my favorite things to do. You want to know what they’re thinking/doing?

They are visualizing their performance with precision detail of their desired outcome.    

They are making a movie in their mind of how they want to perform, seeing themselves actually achieving their desired end result. This is a powerful tool that you can utilize in any area of life, but here we will focus on athletic performance. In Sports Psychology this is referred to as “performing out of your mind.” 

Why visualize?   

• You will extract your personal best in training and competition 
• You will be DIRECTING what will happen in your training and as a way of pre-experiencing your best competition or personal achievement 
• You will progressively increase your development as an athlete
• You will be able to accomplish more and push through the “wall” or “edge”  

What is so powerful about visualizing is that your brain does not have the ability to know the difference between the visualization of your performance and the actual, real physical performance, providing you do so with clarity and intensity.

Think of it this way; it is difficult to push through the last half of a competition or a marathon when your brain is spitting out thoughts of “what did I get myself into” or set a new PR on a front squat while thinking “its too heavy, I’ve never lifted this much.” The execution of your increased athletic achievement will be knocked down by voicing these mental monologues. Instead, see yourself actually doing it, regardless of what it feels like. Create a mind movie and then look and expect to achieve it. 

A large percentage of achievement is the mental game!  Use visualization in your mental development.

Here’s how: 

During a challenging workout/training, set your mind (in other words decide, be absolute, have certainty) to see yourself executing the rep as though you were watching a movie of yourself doing it. You, vividly accomplishing it.  

Think, speak and see yourself achieving what you decide you want and you will be “performing out of your mind.” As with anything, it takes practice. Practice. Repeat. Practice. Repeat.

This is a simple way to begin using visualization as a powerful tool to push you through to the next level and forging elite mental and physical performance.

Want more? Guided performance visualization techniques available: email me at Rachael@VerveEnterprises.com for details.

Go perform out of your mind!

Think Different,

Rachael

 *Photo courtesy of www.EricNelsonPhotography.com

“It's not the will to win, but the will to prepare to win that makes the difference.” – Bear Bryant

Hammering New Neurons: Begin with the End in Mind

Great achievers have trained their brains to focus on the possibilities through forging new thoughts about their ability. They block out the noise of negativity and shut out voices of doubt. They get that their mindset is a valuable resource. They become skilled in using it.   

They begin with the end in mind. 

Beginning with the end in mind is a way of thinking that involves starting and keeping in the forefront of your mind your desired end result, what you want to accomplish in your training or WOD (workout of the day). How you want to finish. To go faster, further, higher, heavier or set a new PR. Knowing what you want and aiming your brain towards it. Your body will follow.  

Here’s how;

When you begin with your end result in mind, your brain fires signals telling your muscles and nervous system to go along for the ride. It’s how the human body is wired. Your body is connected to your mind and will physically perform according to thoughts, conscious or unconscious. When you entertain self-doubt, negativity, how it’s going to suck, how hard it is, what your weakness is, how you won’t be able to do it or how fatigued you are going to feel, guess what? Your brain communicates to all your body systems to stay comfortable and under-perform in order to “survive”, which is its primary, genetic goal.  You’ve told it to do so by firing off neurons of familiar thoughts, actual pathways that have been carved from thinking that way for what could be years, or even a recent experience. There is more in you for increased performance and accomplishment. 

Using your brain and your thoughts is the key to digging it out. It will make the difference of shaving off seconds, minutes, unbroken reps, going one more mile or pushing through another round. It is in you, if you use your brain to tap into it.

Here’s where I wax the inner science of the brain for you, but in laymen’s terms that you will easily understand and apply for achievement;   

Your brain fires off neurons which are your thoughts/thinking.  Those neurons have pathways that control your body.  Think of your brain as a thick forest and neurons create the pathway the same way hikers who frequent a trail carving out a foot path in the forest.

All of your beliefs, habits and everything making up your mental reality (the way you think, what you believe about yourself and what you can accomplishments) is contained in these physical neural-pathways.  Each time you think a thought, it is communicated among your nervous system to your body.  Positive and negative thoughts are all reinforced in neural-pathway. They become part of the way we think and drive your actions.  

You forge pathways in your brain of thoughts that make up how you function, most of which happen in mili-seconds, they are unknown to the conscious brain. They make up your mindset.

The great news is mindsets are not fixed. You can reinvent them. 

You have an opportunity to reinvent and practice an elite mindset by noticing your thoughts and forging new neuro-pathways by thinking in absolutes and certainties rather than “try” or indefinites. All with that excited, nervous feeling in your gut that happens moments before a challenging workout, race, competition or any aspect of the nervous unknown that presents itself in your life. 

Best time to forge a new path is when you cross it. The moment you think it, when old, familiar thinking has come to the forefront. Like developing any skill, practice makes perfect. Elite mindsets and transforming your thinking and performance happens with same commitment and hours as physical training.  

As you practice and experience thinking different you will create the most physically complex and durable neural pathway forged and hammered into great performance and achievement. It is what I call forward thinking.  Thinking forward, or beginning with the end in mind.

Practice. Repeat. Practice. Repeat.

Practice isn’t what you do when you’re good. It’s what you do that makes you good.

Your thoughts can be altered, you will weaken old patterns of thinking with NEW thoughts; override old wiring and produce a new achievements, greater performance and what was once the next level is beneath you, giving way to greater heights of achievement.    

Do you see how your thoughts are an integral part in creating greater achievement and success?

Forging, hammering and reshaping elite thinking through practice creates a cemented highway for your high achieving neurons!

Think in certainties, think in absolutes. Think different.  

Rachael

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Watching the intensity, focus and determination of the athletes competing in the Winter Olympic Games, and the NLP Team tryouts for the 2010 CrossFit games this past weekend, I am ever reminded that fighting well begins in the mind, but must be activated the heart.  

 The Olympic Creed of Athletes denotes the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential component is not to have conquered, but to have fought well.

Fight well. 

Fighting well begins in your mind.  The mind is an amazing instrument. It will first and instinctively find a thousand reasons to stop, give in, do less and be comfortable even though our bodies have more to offer.  You must find the ONE reason to keep fighting, to press on, to overreach your limits. To fight well.  It starts with training your mind, then your heart takes over.   

Fight well.

Though winning is a valiant goal, most of the thousands of athletes competing in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games know they will not receive a medal. They train and compete for the experience of an amazing world tournament that will test their limits, redefine who they are and to conquer what was once a personal best.

They fight well.

No one truly knows but you what your personal best is. Regardless of your finish, if you pushed your personal boundaries like many of the Olympic Athletes beyond where you had been before… then you have the heart, mind and Viking Spirit of the Olympics and its Winter Games origin.  You have fought well.

Train your mind to fight well. Your heart will follow.

Fight well.  Finish impeccably.

Mind Wide Open

Developing Your Greatest Skill, the Language of Your Mind for Increased Performance

By Rachael Cadden

  *Photo courtesy of www.EricNelsonPhotography.com

Before building anything, a foundation is set. In athletics, architecture and mental conditioning.  

The foundation is the basics.  By understanding and mastering the basics, we can go deeper, then improve, enhance and accelerate your mental conditioning for personal and athletic achievement.  

This entry is setting the foundation that will be your accomplice in increasing your performance, pushing beyond your limits and defying the impossible.   

All of us have our own internal language.  It is what we tell ourselves, consciously and unconsciously, and drives our achievement or lack thereof regardless of intention or will. Usually influenced or taught to us growing up by others. Some we learned and created from our own experiences and circumstances. We all have an internal language of belief about ourselves, what we can do, our surroundings and how it inhibits, limits or accelerates us from/into personal excellence and achievement.  

Example, we all grew up believing the sky is blue. In our young state we didn’t question it. What if the sky really isn’t blue? What if it was actually purple. What if I told you what you “thought” about the sky being blue your entire life isn’t actually true. Would you believe it or be open to believing it? Think about it and just notice how your mind may combat and even question the absurdity. It is the same with ingrained language patterns and beliefs. Often the mind, for survival or protection, does the same. It combats anything that challenges the story we've believed. These old languages/beliefs/stories are the driving force that often limits advancement.  

This example is obviously far fetched and will allow you to see, think and be more aware of your own thoughts in your performance and accomplishments. It’s broad and very general, most of my work is individualized and personalized, but these examples will provide insight for developing your mental conditioning by first being aware. It is your personal responsibility,  notice them, be willing to let them go and give yourself a new language. How? By practicing.

Let’s challenge what language or thoughts you have been holding onto, what stories you have been telling yourself and your belief about what you can lift, run, PR, perform, achieve, race, accomplish and crush. It begins with your awareness. Notice your thoughts going into a WOD (workout of the day), a WOD that is a challenge for you, one that scares you or involves movements that you are not “good” or “strong” at. How quick are you to think or state your reason why you are not good or strong at something. Are you beginning to see?

Awareness and thinking independently of your old beliefs is a process and isn’t remedied or conditioned overnight. It requires your action and like any skill, involves PRACTICE. The practice of being aware and thinking independently of your old beliefs. Almost every WOD does this for me.  Once you have uncovered something, you will find another layer of stories and beliefs in your language/thinking to let go of. It no longer serves you or your performance so why rehearse or hang onto it?

By the way, most of your thoughts that pertain to belief about yourself aren’t true. You just believe they are because it “feels” true.  Challenge them! I dare you.   

By doing so you give up the right to blame circumstances and outside excuses and move beyond reasons.  

Training, practice and conditioning the language of your mind will enhance and develop an elite mindset for personal and athletic achievement. Developing the language of your mind obviously overflows into all areas of your personal life, career and successes.

It’s time to learn a new language and give up your right to keep telling your story. Are you willing?  Welcome to the revolution!

What have you been thinking? Comments and questions welcome.

Stay tuned, next up: Visualization and Tapping Into Your Animal Brain.  

Rachael Cadden, Neuro Linguistics Practitioner & Mindset Coach 

Available for individual, group and specialized consults

Contact me at: Rachael@VerveEnterprises.com