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F! Weight
eal change is slow and hard. It takes effort, and although it’s incredibly rewarding and edifying, it can be painful and frustrating at times. It can also feel very uncertain: “am I doing the right thing here? Am I headed in the right d
What are you getting out of your training?
I love coaching, I love training. I have spent several years of my life in higher education institutions earning various degrees. However it’s in the gym that I have learned the most. Watching people sweat, talking about food, feelings, and the biomechanics of the squat, is where I have seen the most epic battles, and where I have had the biggest impact. I love it. Nonetheless there is one aspect of training/coaching that I have not yet learned how to address very well and that bothers me constantly. This post is an attempt to start changing that.
- Life is your Mindset Gym | Mindset | Science | The Gym as Your Mindset Sandbox | Train your mind in the gym | Training
Are you training your mindset?
Both of my athletes Francy and Henrick agree with me that mindset is important when it comes to athletic performance. This is unusual because they mostly think I am full of shit. Truth is most people know that what you think greatly determines how you perform at a given task. This is very intuitive and obvious on a superficial level. We all know that if you think you suck at running, well guess what? You are going to suck at running. What is really hard for most people is to flip it around and use this idea to their benefit. But in fact, the base of all sports psychology is exactly this: if you want to be good at something you have to believe that you can actually be good at that thing.
Why is the Assault Bike so Hard? - Part II
Part II on why the Air bike is such a mean piece of equipment.
The 3:00 PM Chocolate: the Basics of Mindset
Let’s be mathematical today and start by defining what we are talking about: mindset. A mindset is a set of ideas or assumptions that mediate our behaviors. This mediation is bi-directional: mindset can determine our behaviors, just as much as our behaviors can determine our mindset. Long-held mindsets become our core beliefs and define how we see ourselves in the world. So if you think you are bad at math, that conditions your behaviors around numbers and mathematical problems. Which means you don’t even try to do the tip on your bill at a restaurant. On the other hand if you consistently and intentionally practice German each day with the help of a good program and a good teacher, you will end up learning German. In turn you will end up creating a mindset in which you think of yourself as a smart person who can learn new languages. That's it. The mindset model is simple and useful. The great thing about it is that it allows change to happen. Your mindsets and core beliefs can be modified and re-wired.
Positive Habits of Mind
You see, Mindset is one of those concepts that has become very popular and because of that, it has lost specificity. It is often vague. On top of that, our ideas around it come from academia, especially from the Psychology departments -although not exclusively. This means that we often look at it from one of two points of view 1) a very superficial one; or 2) a pathological one. The first case is represented in the average daily use. When a person says mindset most of the time they just mean attitude. When Henrick tells me: “Juan I went to that meeting with the right mindset, I was ready to crush it.” That’s not a mindset, it is an attitude. The second case means that we have become very good at identifying mindsets that are unproductive. We have identified general trends and their negative consequences. In other words, we are better at understanding the commonalities among the mindsets of people with poor ones, than among those who have good ones. All together, this means that when it comes to Mindset we need a little bit of a Francine attitude in the world. We need to be positive and specific. Just tell people what to do! This post is for you Francine. Let’s do this.
