Today join me but watch out today’s blog we will discover how and what is behind coaching runners’ and using mental techniques My name is Heiko 35 years of running coaching runners but join me but first the into
Ha Ha hey I tell you what, have you gone out for a run today? If you haven’t done it. You wont regret it.
I didn’t or never do. Especially today, I felt like I was running in the summer . Early in the morning I went out for a run and saw my car covered in frost. It looked like a frozen statue. I thought nope , let me run in the afternoon, a dangerous move. You know what happens you might skip the run, or forget about it.
Well, I didn’t. I didn’t forget I went Especially since I am on the 112th day of running this year. Not that I am counting. Just saying I usually go out every day anyway and run, so I started counting again. What the distance depends on if I do a run streak I like to keep at, or lets say: for me it should At least be a 5K. That’s a distance I can squeeze in no matter how long my day is. Or how busy I am. A 5K is a good distance for me in my situation. That also allows me to run when or if and I hope it doesn’t happen, if I feel a bit weak, might be coming down with something but I don’t Oh, and the best thing this year in January the furthest run so far was a 50K. It actually let me make that a blog episode. Why run a 50K in January (means winter).
And am I enjoying it especially coming through the usual German dreary winter.
I talk a lot about perseverance, or last blog remember the diamond episode one what’s the process from carbon to a diamond excessive pressure.
So maybe you didn’t like that example. You don’t like the word pressure pertaining to your running if that’s the case pay attention to the rest of your inner dialogue. I am pretty sure you are not the runner you could be. There seems to be a bit more potential lurking there
And this happens to a lot of runners’, especially as we grow older some think automatically to go slower.
Asking me whether a 21-year-old won’t be faster than a 40-year-old is the wrong question to ask. It’s not about comparing strangers or different ages.
It’s comparing your abilities and talents. And of course, as I mentioned in Season 2 Episode number 8 you are actually obliged; you owe it to yourself to activate your potential. If you haven’t listened to it yet please do, or if you think hey, my friend needs to hear this, then share it.
And if you are wondering how on earth, you will do that to activate your potential, hey just listen to that blog. You might just pick up on some details that are helpful to you.
Today I will talk a bit about a psychologist who really explored and shared those revelations in a way that is understandable, easy to relate. And actually, he was the founder of these philosophies, of these different human functions.
And I said I want to dive in a bit deeper, because most of these findings are watered down. Are re-written, and rephrased, into magazine selling headlines. PREPARATION IS HALF your RUN. Or MENTAL CONFIDENCE Busters.
And if you have bought that magazine or listened to some watered-down version of MENTAL CONFIDENCE you most probably find that it’s not really helping you a lot. Obviously. Drinking a coke hang on drinking a can of coke or let me rephrase that . drinking an ice cold can of coke is (to some of us) mmmmh perfect.
Drinking an ice cold can of water with a small amount of coke isn’t the same thing.
If you want a coke, you expected it full in my example, yes? Not a watered down portion.
That’s why today we are going to bypass all the facebook and youtube “Get faster by doing this every day” – hyped up videos. Look, if they really would make the effort, and explain go deeper but just grabbing the headline and working off from that will produce bad experiences. IF all you have to do is affirm a strong finish time and you try it and fail. Your brain will associate brain training as: didn’t work.
But actually you never trained your brain. You tried something that wasn’t in the correct context and obviously it failed.
Welcome to overwriting that bad experience, and thanks for reading so far.
So here goes. Some fundamentals. You ready, champion? Give me a high five come on
Ok there are five pillars that stand out whenever we talk about mental or mind training for runners.
Number one:
Preparation breeds confidence: Preparation is the foundation of confidence. How is that supposed to work? I mean isn’t preparation supposed to be inside you have it or not? Think about it, if you are lined up for a race and you have prepared like never before, how do you feel regardless of the distance? Confidence. This preparation includes the physical, technical, tactical, equipment-related and mental parts of your sport, and it means putting the necessary time and effort into every aspect of your training. It sounds so obvious doesn’t it? But how often do runners’ fail EXACTLY at this point? See you know this if you don’t have discipline to ensure your gear is ready, and assigning time away from family, social events, to go and run then you failed at STEP one of mental training. Unfortunately this is such a popular tagline. Hey and if you have this part of your run life figured out, CONGRATULATIONS. Let’s move on, next one Oh how about I give you the HEADLINE Version FIRST. YOUR BRAIN THE CONFIDENCE BUILDER. Ok and the real point is
Mental Skills reinforce confidence: Inspirational thoughts and images will bolster your motivation, positive self-talk and body language to fortify your confidence, intensity control to combat confidence-depleting anxiety, what are your keywords to maintain focus and avoid distractions, and emotional-control techniques to calm yourself under pressure. Hey and this pressure can mean getting prepared to go out and run. It doesn’t relate to pressure experienced by pro athletes on the track. No, this can mean for you pressure to get changed into your running gear, pressure to run up a hill you never ran up before. Pressure to run further than you usually run. All these pressure moments need to first be experienced, and then proper mental processes need to be learnt so that you then not only see yourself running with purpose and pride, but that you DO it. Which leads to the next key point. The headline would be HOW TO BUILD UNBREAKABLE CONFIDENCE. The real headline is again these are points that at Advanced Endurance Coaching we specialize. Because hey it’s such a pleasure to see runners succeed with this training philosophy.
Adversity ingrains confidence: Athletes can’t always train or compete in ideal conditions, sometimes, we are tired, it’s not the right weather, the mood isn’t right whatever so you as a runner have to be prepared to overcome adversity. The challenge is to maintain your confidence when you’re faced with the worst possible conditions, situation or opponent. And here if you mention the word streak running streak it is one of the most powerful methods to overcome procrastination. In all my dealing with athletes I still need someone to blog to me about a more effective technique than this. A streak running every day hey and this once I am done would be my 4th 365 day run streak and yes I am sure there are people that have done more, or run further again it’s not the point. Point I want to make is even if it is a 90 day run streak, not everyday will be perfectly aligned for you to go out and run. But you will develop a solution oriented mindset.
Support bolsters confidence: You know this social support. It’s difficult to achieve success on your own. The very best athletes in every sport have many people supporting them. There will be times when things are just not going well, and it helps to have people to whom you can turn for support and encouragement. I can tell you I have had the best time on a long slow run and one of my daughters cycling next to me sometimes even encourages me as they noticed, hang on he’s slowing down. That seems such a harmless example, doesn’t it? But you know what it’s a truthful example, what good the Instagram likes do, I have no idea. Unless you really know all the people personally I can see that then ok. But I doubt most followers know the person. So find a truthful supporter. One is better than 100 you don’t know and took 10 selfies to upload the best one.
Success validates confidence:
You ever tried to go on a diet, or change some habit, the chances are that you succeeded because you had someone there supporting you. All the previous steps in building confidence will be for naught if you don’t then perform well and achieve your goals. Success validates the confidence you have developed in your ability; it demonstrates that your belief in your ability is well-founded.
OK those were the 5 principles
Preparation breeds confidence
Mental skills reinforce confidence
Adversity ingrains confidence
Support bolsters confidence
Support validates confidence.
As I said in the beginning, these teachings made an impression on me, or they left a long-lasting impression on me. And I have seen to it that elements of this training philosophy is present in Advanced Endurance Coaching methodology.
And where did I get this from? The concept of self efficacy Bandura 1977 hangs on what is self efficacy? Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997). Self-efficacy reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one’s own motivation, behavior, and social environment.
The self-efficacy theory holds is that people are likely to engage in activities to the extent that they perceive themselves to be competent. Actually there are 4 sources of self-efficacy so called Performance Accomplishments, Vicarious Experience, Social Persuasion, and Physiological and Emotional States
What is the difference between self efficacy and self confidence?
confidence = belief in self ability although have zero knowledge with what they need to deal with but willing to try. self efficacy = belief in self ability to do a specific task after have some knowledge about what they need to deal with and willing to try. If you believe that you could run a 10K under 50 minutes, but have never done it, that’s confidence. If you have a training plan, and you are following it, to complete a 10K under 50 minutes and you just know it you just YES, that’s self efficacy.
And rather than just keeping this to yourself just imagine you can share this. Just think the same way you share what types of shoes you have bought, how great they are you can actually become a enforcer by vicarious reinforcement
What that is , it is the process whereby a person becomes more likely to engage in a particular behavior (response) by observing another individual being reinforced for that behavior. See also observational learning.
If you start to run up that hill. Ok let me put it into perspective if you and your other runners’ all share the same dislike for a certain training element hills for example and you suddenly decide to really excel at the training. You actually run up and do the drills exactly as they are in the training plan that leads to the vicarious reinforcement.
All this is by a famous psychologist Albert Bandura, you might have read something about or written by him. A watered down version, a coke with water this was the real deal just to summarize
Preparation breeds confidence
Mental skills reinforce confidence
Adversity ingrains confidence
Support bolsters confidence
Support validates confidence.
Thank you for joining me, check out our hyponrun.com courses that we offer and I want to add this, you know it’s a verse from the bible So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. Don’t throw it away, build it and become a better, stronger and smarter runner. My name is Heiko, share the blog, give us a like or drop me a mail makeeverystep@gmail.com and remember please do Take it Easy.
Now usually I prefer including or mentioning dedicated thesis or studies in the world of sport And yes he worked as a sports coach.
But with Bandura, he actually traces his interest in human psychology back to when he was a youngster working on the Alaska highway. And it was in the Yukon that he got exposed to as he called it gambling and drinking.
Then as a student and no don’t worry this blog isn’t about him it’s about you but I am getting there. Setting up the context sticks with me. It will make sense.
Bandura came to support a style of psychology that sought to investigate psychological phenomena through repeatable, experimental testing. His inclusion of such mental phenomena as imagery and representation,
Now here comes Representations. That sounds complicated, but it’s not Mental representations (or mental imagery) that enables representing things that have never been experienced as well as things that do not exist.
For example, if you and I am sure you are a good runner, if you imagine yourself approaching the finish line of the Boston Marathon and you know what just picture it for a second you see the rolled out ribbon hear yourself breathe extremely hard and as you take powerful strides towards the FINISH, you look up at the watch 2:04 not a World Record, but still you accelerate even more heart rate is close to a explosion, you are crossing the line as the winner. Cheers all round.
the social cognitive theory can be applied to motivation and learning for students and teachers.[26][27] Bandura’s research blogs that high perceived self-efficacy leads teachers and students to set higher goals and increases the likelihood that they will dedicate themselves to those goals.[26][28] In an educational setting self-efficacy refers to a student or teacher’s confidence to participate in certain actions that will help them achieve distinct goals.[29]
According to Bandura1, sources of self-efficacious beliefs, namely the perceived capability to execute a given course of action, are a product of complex cognitive processes of self-appraisal and self-persuasion. Similarly, sport confidence beliefs, that are the degree of certainty in one’s ability to perform successfully in sport3, rely on the cognitive processing of diverse sources of sport confidence information. Sources of sport confidence are central to Vealey’s 3 Integrated model of sport confidence
This model comprises of nine sources of confidence that are represented by three higher-order dimensions; (1) achievement: gaining confidence from goal attainment (e.g., mastery, demonstration of ability), (2) self-regulation: gaining confidence from effectively regulating cognitions, emotions and behaviors (e.g., physical/ mental preparation, physical self-presentation), (3) social climate: gaining confidence from a positive and achievement nurturing environment (e.g., social support, vicarious experience, coach’s leadership, environmental comfort, situational favorableness).
Make Every Step Count, a running guide that changes your attitude?
And if your first thought is “I doubt it” then definitely you should get the book.
Doing the basics, is the best place to go to once you are in a negative rut once your minds cruise around the same negative thoughts. Make Every Step Count keeps you focussed on what matters.
And if that doesn’t help, then do what it says in the bible
Colossians 3:2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
Today I had a lot on my mind. Thanks for your patience. Thanks for your interest. Do leave me a rating and share the blog to someone who needs to hear it. My name is Heiko thanks for reading.
God Bless You and remember, take it easy.
