How Important is it to Get Into the Right Frame of Mind Before a Workout?

I’ve always felt your mindset was one of the most important elements of a good workout. If you have an outlook of “I’m tired, I’m just going through the motions, or I’m not breaking any records today,” your workouts will suffer. However if you can get by these thoughts in your head, you will be surprised by the outcome. Put a goal in your head difficult or not, focus on it and you will accomplish it.

Before baseball seasons in high school my entire team would have to do physical tests. For the three weeks before, one of my friends, Eric, and I were going back and forth on who would break the push up record. When the test day finally came our coach posted the order of how we would test. Just so happened, Eric was second to last and I drew the last spot. No big deal, you do as many as you can whoever goes first or last or before you or whatever the record is can’t affect your muscular endurance. Eric ends up smashing the previous record by at least 5. All I thought was, if I do one more, I have the record. I wound up being completely exhausted right around the number Eric finished up with, but I was able squeeze out that one more because I had that number set in my mind. I to this day, still rub it in his face.

Conversely, I’ve been running quite a bit lately, and usually go anywhere from 6 to 8 miles. I usually just get on the treadmill see how I feel, I go for at least my half hour for cardio, I’m not looking to run a marathon only keep my heart healthy, so I don’t have a specific distance goal. This particular day I decided I would scale it back to let my legs recover a bit. I decided I’d go 4. By the time I got to 2.5 miles, I started getting extremely tired. I couldn’t get past it and as soon as I hit the 4 mile mark I had to cool down. This was odd considering I run twice as much on a given day.

What’s my point? Your mind is constantly setting goals and expectations for you whether you realize it or not. You can and need to use this positively to have better workouts. Consciously tell yourself, I have a lot of energy, I’m going to have a great workout, I’m going to beat my best time today. It sounds cheesy, believe me it works. Stay positive and you will achieve your goals.