Posted on February 04, 2010 by Dave W

Your State of Mind

This is a tricky area to get involved in, and one our 50 plus male has found both the benefits and pitfalls of his state of mind.

This section is not really about how to train relatively to our frame of mind, more how to get in the right frame of mind to train effectively.

The mind is a wonderful thing and who knows what secrets it holds which have so far remained just that, secrets?

We have all read of amazing feats that people have achieved seemingly with just the power of thought.

Here we look at motivation, an area we all need to succeed in to reach our goals.

Let’s take another look at our poor over 50 guy!

He has always been a self motivated type of guy, but even so, has often struggled with his willpower.

He eventually stopped smoking but not without a battle of epic proportions along the way.

If you have tried to give up smoking, you will know how he felt. Constantly trying to convince yourself if you didn’t smoke what other pleasures do you have?

A similar thing exists when we try to lose weight. Convincing ourselves that the little cream cake has only 250 calories, I will soon burn that off in the gym, or I will eat less tomorrow!

Of course, this happens on more than one occasion and before we know it we have convinced ourselves it was a waste of time going to the gym or that diet was not right for me.

Even when we seem to have conquered our initial demons and have managed to get to the gym on a regular basis we often still have to fight our own minds.

As I said before, our 50+ guy has often had to battle with himself to get him to keep going to the gym, to continue playing the sports that he loves.

Currently he still plays Badminton each week, has started to ride a bike as much as he can and visits the gym regularly.

It is not always as simple as just turning up. Many a time he has lost at Badminton before a serve has been made. This is just down to not being in the right frame of mind.

There have been numerous studies done regarding motivation psychology and techniques to change our thinking from negative to positive.

I would not pretend to be any sort of expert in this field, but the one thing I do know, is, if you don’t want to do something you won’t!

That is the first and main principle in getting fit or losing weight, you know it makes sense, but do you REALLY want to do it?

Can you be bothered going to the gym and training hard, or do you really want to give up all the foods you crave so much?

If we feel tired, dejected, depressed or low in confidence, how can we get ourselves motivated?

In my opinion, maybe it is time to sit down and get out the paper we wrote when we first decided we were going to lose weight/get fit. You did write one didn’t you?

You know the one with our goals and our plan of how we will reach that goal!

It might be that we need to tweak our plan. Did we set ourselves reasonable goals?

If the answer is no, we need to change them immediately. You will not get any satisfaction from failure.

If it is a case of just not feeling like doing much today and the sofa and TV are more inviting than a workout. Try to think of a time when you were highly motivated, when you put in a top performance, remember how you performed that day and replicate it today.

One technique our old fellow uses when he plays Badminton is the ‘next shot’ strategy.

On too many occasions he played a bad shot only for it to be followed by two or three more bad shots. He was still playing over his first bad shot in his mind and before he knew it ‘game over’.

Now after a quick analysis he tries to completely blank out any bad shot he makes and immediately focus on the ‘next shot’. He has not perfected the technique but is getting there.

Now I can appreciate our over 50 guy has managed to remain fairly motivated for a long time and not everyone will have the same focus.

Surely we can develop our motivation with a bit of learned behaviour?

Can you think of a time in your sport when you performed extremely well? You may have beaten an opponent who you thought you had little chance against.

Now think of a time you played really badly. You may have been beaten by someone you thought you should beat.

What do you think would happen if before the next game you played you thought of nothing but the time you played badly?

That’s right; you probably are beaten before the game starts.

Now let’s flip it and think of the time we played out of our skins and see what happens next.

I am not suggesting you will win every game, but if you can master the technique you shouldn’t lose before the game begins.

Try using the same technique for other areas you may be lacking motivation, you never know it might just work.

As they say ‘don’t knock it until you have tried it’

If it does work for you send the cheque to………..

Keep Moving

Dave W

Cycling For Fitness

 P.S. Our old fellow thinks he has every base covered. He has been studying a 6000 year Chinese philosophy and intends to use it more and more as he gets older. He has read two books so far, one about balanced diet and one about internal exercises. The Complete System of Self-Healing: Internal Exercises

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