Have you ever found yourself during a workout where you feel like you have no lungs or you keep missing a specific weight where you’ve hit it before? If not, then you are lying to yourself.
No matter what skill level you are at, you will have your good days and you will have your bad days. It’s very easy to fall into a negative mind when you’re having a bad day but you cannot let one bad day affect the other six days of the week. Every day is a day where you get to choose whether you focus on the negatives or the positives.
The mind is a powerful tool that we tend to forget to train. We can train the hell out of our bodies with weightlifting and aerobic capacity but if you have a negative mindset, you’re not going to see the results you work so hard for. Ben Bergeron, coach of Katrin Davidsdottir, who is 2x Fittest Woman on Earth, teaches his athletes to change their mindset of how to look at their workouts or their situations as challenges instead of burdens. As athletes, you need to focus on all the positives that occur to you and whenever you have a negative moment, learn from it, then continue to move forward.
Every time a professional boxer steps into the boxing ring to face his opponent, will he stop throwing punches after the first hit? No! He keeps throwing punches until that bell rings or his opponent is on the ring floor for the knockout. When you come into the gym, your opponent is the workout. If you focus on the negatives, then you’ll end up being upset with yourself instead of fighting for yourself. There have been countless of times where I, as an athlete, have felt the negatives of a bad day such as missing a specific weight for back squats but guess what, I kept trying and fighting to hit the weight. The ending result, I hit that weight feeling strong and confident with myself.
If we all just focused on the negatives moments, we never would be able to grow as athletes as well as who we are outside of the gym. Everyday is a new day to challenge yourself and become a better version of your previous self. Yes, you will have your bad days but guess what, life does not stop and you shouldn’t either.
– Coach Angie
Comment (1)
Very well-written article! I really like how she broke it down and discussed how powerful the mind is both positively and negatively. I also liked the boxing analogy and including her own specific experience dealing with a tough workout. Any individual can greatly benefit from the positive cues she listed in this article! Great job, Coach Angie!