Psychology Tips for Endurance Sports
When it comes to sports endurance, the psychology of the mind is key; at times, it can prove more important than your physical training. Anyone with a fit and healthy body or the potential to build one can train themselves to handle the physical demands of almost any sport. What is most often the limiting factor is a person's mentality. A great quote from David Goggins regarding this is: “The most difficult part of the training is training your mind. You build calluses on your feet to endure the road. You build calluses on your mind to endure the pain.”
Around the time I was venturing into sports endurance, I was also heavily researching and learning about human psychology. After two years of panic attacks, I had a very weak and chaotic mind. I needed to understand what was going on inside my own head, and in doing so, I started unknowingly building a base of knowledge that I could adapt for sports endurance. For anyone wanting to understand human psychology, I would highly recommend the book The Social Animal by Elliot Aronson or listen to David Goggins’s first appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast.
What I was coming to realize during my hours of research was that while my mind could be my biggest supporter, it could also be my worst enemy. It knows every single one of my fears and exactly how to use them against me. By educating myself, I was slowly able to start to understand some of these fears and anxieties I had, what caused them, and what reactions they were causing within my body and mind. I finally understood what was happening physiologically when I was experiencing a “panic attack” or the “fight or flight response.” For reference, the following are definitions of both of these, written by someone much smarter than me:
Fight or Flight Response:
“The fight or flight response is an automatic physiological reaction to an event that is perceived as stressful or frightening. The perception of threat activates the sympathetic nervous system and triggers an acute stress response that prepares the body to fight or flee.”
Panic Attacks:
“A panic attack is said to occur when the 'flight-or-fight' response is triggered but there is no actual danger about to happen.”
Understanding how my brain was programmed helped me to distinguish between the real and imagined fears (Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real), and it helped me to override some of my brain's safety mechanisms that were becoming hypersensitive and detrimental. It also made me aware that the moments of discomfort I was experiencing were the exact situations I had to get my mind reaccustomed to. I had to become comfortable with being uncomfortable and realize that my brain was catastrophizing a lot of scenarios. I was callusing my mind, hardening it to endure the psychological pain that would be necessary to rebuild my mentality and also to keep pushing myself in my training.
At the same time, I also found meditation to be a valuable tool. This had become part of my day-to-day life as a way to cope with my anxieties, and again, I found that it had transferable use in my training. I started to use the Headspace app in an attempt to quiet the incessant negative thoughts I was experiencing in my mind. I remember a friend asking me, “Why would I want to sit for 20 minutes without any thoughts in my head?” At the time, I had no answer for him, but it struck me the next day: the whole point is that you can’t. I would be willing to bet that the average person cannot sit for 5-20 minutes without a single thought going through their head. Now, the point of meditation is not to remove these thoughts entirely but to practice not being swept away by them every time one arises in our mind. Headspace has a great video you can watch on YouTube that explains this.
There are numerous meditation apps of which I've tried two: Headspace and Calm. For beginners, I’d recommend Headspace over Calm as its meditations are a lot more structured, and it has entire courses dedicated to taking someone from a beginner to experienced. Calm is also good; it has a lot more standalone meditations but is more suited for those who have prior experience meditating. Everyone's preference is slightly different though, so I'd try the free trials offered by both and see which you prefer.
Meditation taught me that not all my thoughts were conscious; most were unconscious, and I had no control over them occurring. I learned that I could practice recognizing these and again choose not to be swept away by them. In training, meditating helped me to quiet the negative voice in my head that wanted to quit whenever a session was getting hard, and it allowed me to stop my mind from getting overrun by intrusive thoughts of some catastrophic scenario occurring if I pushed myself too hard. I could begin to train with a clear mind and see that I was, in fact, capable of a lot more.
Another key development I found in training the psychology of my mind was to understand the importance of feeding it with positive reinforcement. Having spent a good few years with a decidedly negative stream of consciousness, I realized this needed correcting. This can be quite hard on your own, at least I found it so. Consciously trying to think only positive thoughts is extremely tiring and probably inauthentic too, and your brain will recognize this. What I found helpful was to find role models online and listen to as much of their content as I could. David Goggins was a person whose message of discipline was something I really needed to hear at that point in my life. Another was Tyson Fury; listening to his struggles with depression, which I could relate to a lot, gave me hope that someone who had been at rock bottom like me could come out the other end. I also found a lot of motivational videos on YouTube with positive messages that I would listen to repeatedly while training. It meant I didn’t have to think positively myself but could listen to these resources endlessly until what I was hearing became part of my own psyche; I could repeat them word for word as I listened along. Your mind will start to believe what you feed it, so make that message one of hope and positivity.
On a similar note, I also printed off a bunch of motivational quotes and stuck them next to my door so I'd see them every day and give my mind a quick little positivity boost. It sounds corny, but it worked, and I still do it to this day. I have a whiteboard in my room, and every time I hear a quote that resonates with me, I write it on the board to give my mind a trigger to think about it and its message.
The final piece of my mental jigsaw puzzle was learning to understand and control my emotions. For me, training makes me happy; I love the feeling of confidence I get when aiming for a big objective, and I love the positive energy it builds within me as I push myself from week to week through harder and harder training sessions. In turn, I use this feeling and emotion to fuel my training. However, I also have to be mindful to keep my emotions under control. While it may feel nice to let happiness run wild and be consumed by it, the same cannot be said for fear, anger, or anxiety. Being in control of your own emotions is like a superpower both for training and in day-to-day life. We have to learn to use it to our advantage just as we do when we understand how our minds work. Jocko Willink has a great quote when it comes to the balance between the mind and emotion when training: “Emotion and logic will both reach their limitations. And when one fails, you need to rely on the other. When it just doesn’t make any logical sense to go on, that’s when you use your emotion, your anger, your frustration, your fear, to push further, to push you to say one thing: I don’t stop. When your feelings are screaming that you have had enough, when you think you are going to break emotionally, override that emotion with concrete logic and willpower that says one thing: I don’t stop. Fight weak emotions with the power of logic; fight the weakness of logic with the power of emotion.”
Understanding how your mind works, what to feed it, and learning to control your emotions are three key pillars to creating a strong mind. Not only will this serve you well in life, but when it comes to sports endurance, it’ll help you to take that step from beginner to the next level.