Even the most motivated person has periods during a tough workout or race when he or she lets the monkey brain take over under stress and feels like abandoning the goal. By using a successful brainwashing technique, you can use the resources from past successes to pull yourself through these negative thoughts and feel like a champion at the end. By attaching key words or phrases to past successes, you can pull yourself through future challenges.
Think back and identify the problems that you face in your tough workouts or races. These are the ones that are most likely to challenge you again. As you go through a series of speed sessions and long runs, write down the ones that cause you to slow down or want to quit. Go back in your memory bank and pull out instances when you started to lose motivation due to these but finished and overcame the challenge.
Note: This process activates your human brain to recognize the approach of problems, take action sooner to prevent or cope with it, and find resources.
My Three Magic Words: Relax…….Power……Glide
In really tough runs, I have three challenges that occur over and over:
I become tense when I get really tired and worried that I will struggle badly at the end. RELAX is the antidote.
I feel the loss of the bounce and strength I had at the beginning and worry that there will be no strength later. POWER is the magic word.
My form starts to get ragged, and I worry about further deterioration of running form and muscle capacity due to wobbling. GLIDE has pulled me though.
The problems themselves are almost never serious. The key word is “worry.” When you focus on the negative possibilities, you stimulate negative hormones and build anxiety. This adds stress to the reflex brain, which will trigger more negative attitude peptides. So by focusing on problems, you will lose motivation.
My big motivational breakthrough was learning to counter these three problems with the magic words, “Relax…Power….Glide.” The visualization of each of these positives shifts mental control to the conscious frontal lobe of the brain. The real magic comes from the association I have made with hundreds of successful experiences when I started to lose it in one of the three areas but overcame the problems. Each time I run through one or more of the challenges, I associate the experience with these magic words and add to the magic. Positive peptides are released, attitude improves, stress is released, and confidence improves.
Now, when one of these situations begins, I repeat the three words over and over. Instead of increasing my anxiety, the repetition of the words calms me down and shifts action to the frontal lobe. Even though I don’t feel as strong in the last mile as I did in the first one, I’m empowered just by knowing that I have a strategy and can draw upon my past experience (more positive attitude hormones are secreted). And when my legs lose the efficient path and bounce, the right brain is empowered to take over and make adjustments and find inner strength to go on as it has in past successes.
When I say magic words that are associated with successful experience, there are three positive effects as the conscious brain takes over:
The saying of the words shifts you into the human brain which triggers the release of positive memories and the confidence from overcoming the problems before. The monkey brain stops the production of the anxiety and negative hormones.
The second effect may be more powerful. The words directly link you to the right brain, which works intuitively to make the same connections that allowed you solve the problems before (e.g., shortening stride, adjusting pace, lower lung breathing).
You may get down the road a mile or three before the challenges come on again.
To be successful on any day, you must first finish the race. Most of the time, you can get through the bad parts by not giving up and simply putting one foot in front of the other. As you push beyond the negative monkey brain feelings and the negative hormones go away due to use of the human brain, you create the confidence to do this again and again. Each time you use the magic words and feel the results, it gets easier and more efficient.
Each time you have another success with the magic words, debrief yourself as you ride home:
“What a great run today.”
“I started to lose focus and slow down at 5 miles; monkey brain made me feel I couldn’t maintain pace.”
“I said, RELAX, POWER, GLIDE, probably 15 times.”
“With each saying, I felt a bit stronger, and my form felt smoother.”
“It took three other episodes of using magic words, and I ran better than I have in years.”
“RELAX, POWER, GLIDE worked again on the beautiful Nordic trails at our Tahoe running retreat.”
Feel free to use my magic words or develop your own. The more experiences you have associated with the words, the more magic.