5 Practical Strategies To Build Mental Strength For Running | How To Be A Mentally Tough Runner

in today's video we're gonna discuss mental toughness we're gonna give you a couple of tips that might help just improve your mental toughness when times start to get hard when you're fatigued you might be in a training session in a race and just a couple of tips that'll help you get through and over that barrier and make your run more enjoyable i'm devlin eden from coachperry.com and i'm gonna hand over to lindsay to discuss the first tip the first thing you can do to get mentally tough on race day is to actually visualize how you are going to respond in in specific situations once you know what the goal is once you know what the race is and in particular if it's a race that you've done before you'll have a very good idea the type of things that you're going to experience along the way so you can visualize yourself in those moments i think one of the problems that a lot of people do is when they think about a race when they visualize a race particularly if it's one they've done before and they're training better for it they almost fall into this false sense of thinking how perfectly the race is going to run the whole way and thinking that because they've trained so much better this time that it's going to feel so much better on the day the reality is that with running and particularly on race day if we've trained well we're probably going to end up feeling a similar way at a similar time in the race but if we've trained well we're going to be that much faster to get to that point and so part of mental toughness is actually knowing how am i going to feel when am i expecting to feel like that and how am i going to deal with those moments and then visualize yourself getting through those moments breaking through and getting yourself into the final quarter of the race because often when you get into that final quarter you can actually use the tug of the pool home and the fact that you are on track for a pb to really dig deep and crack on and do what you need to do another really good tip is for you to take confidence out of tough sessions and good sessions in training if you think about a training session where you might have been really struggling you might have been a little bit fatigued the session felt like it was hurting you a little bit but you got through that session that in itself is something for you to be able to look back on and go you know what i've been here before i've been in a dark place before and i can get through that it's a really good learning curve another one being the good training sessions where you've hit numbers you know how good it felt to be able to achieve a session the way it was required to be done and also gotten the feeling of you know what i'm in a really good place my condition is in a really good place and i'm ready for that race those are the kind of things for you to then look back in a race when you might be struggling and go you know what i've been here before i know what i'm capable of let's push through this just really one thing for you to to be able to think about and know have more confidence in yourself and your ability going forward and that the training has been done one of my favorite ways to get myself through tough pastures in a race or to push myself a little bit beyond what i feel like i'm capable of is to have a couple of little mantras which are sometimes right down on my arm and they could be little things like a reminder of a particular reason why i want to be doing well one of the things that i really like to do and i've got to admit that often when i say this one out loud to people it makes me feel like maybe i'm not as smart as i think i am because in many many races in my life and i know i will use it again i often convince myself that today is the day and i never have to do this again if i can get myself to do what i want myself to do and i can push myself deep deep enough into the pain i tell myself once i cross the finish line i never need to do this to myself again but of course achieving what i've set out to achieve and making myself get through that period even though i keep using exactly the same sort of mechanism the satisfaction of actually achieving what i wanted to and knowing that i can at least have a break from doing that to myself again means that it's a trick i can keep using over and over again we all get it we get into a slightly difficult part of the race and often negative thoughts can creep in things like i wish i had a little bit more time to prepare or i wasn't expecting to feel like this at this part of the race i think the most important part about that is recognizing early that it is negative self-talk and again just like the visualization if you kind of prepare yourself mentally for what-if scenarios as soon as that happens you can then consciously put positive self-talk in place that will override that that negative self-talk so a perfect example of that would be you've agreed to meet a specific person somewhere along the way and maybe there's traffic and they don't get to where they were supposed to get to and now you've missed your special bottle so you go oh that's it that's ruined my whole race i think an important conscious self-talk would be there are water stations along the way so it's not going to be very long and then i am going to be able to get the energy that i would have gotten now and then have a look at your progress and go well actually i am on track so things are not they're not bad at all i just have to get myself back into a positive frame of mind get back on track maybe use some of my mantras and maybe use some of my motivation from the good workouts that i did so talk yourself through remind yourself of a of a good workout so that you can so you can use that as you know building confidence as dave said from from good workouts you can also in a race turn around a negative mindset because ah but remember how well you did that training session the longer the harder and the tougher a goal is that you've set for yourself the more important it's going to become as to why you are doing what you want to do and so if you can figure out the why of your goal that is such a powerful tool especially in the final quarter of the race when every muscle in your body is screaming at you that it doesn't want to keep going but if you know your why you've written your why down somewhere so that you can remind yourself that why will help you to then unlock your mantras your positive self-talk the tools that we've spoken about already on the video to get you to your goal that if you can keep that front and center why can often push out anything negative and really help you to stay on track for what you're trying to achieve if you enjoyed this video and got value out of it don't forget to like the video and subscribe to our channel so you don't miss out on future content also be sure to check out some of our videos on screen now

Channel: Coach Parry

Views: 11,386

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Id: zBgYzmLoUdk

Length: 6min 59sec (419 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2022