Fitness Journal October 2016

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Connecting with your workout I’ve been an enthusiastic participant of high intensity workouts for the past ten years, but in saying this, give me a mat or cushion and ask me to sit for an hour and meditate and I can EASILY tap into this rejuvenating space. You might ask what mindfulness mediation and high intensity exercise have in common, the answer is alignment of our body and mind. I often see fellow gym-goers struggling and often giving up, or pushing themselves far too hard and failing to enjoy the experience. Exercise should be something that we do for our body, not to it. It should be considered something that allows us growth and contentment, something that nurtures not only our body but also our mind. I have recently noted an increased awareness from the media on maintaining good mental health, which is both fabulous and so incredibly necessary. Without a healthy, constructive mindset, we will struggle to reach any goals that we make for ourselves and that also stands for goals around our physical activity. What we think we create therefore what we think about exercise has a massive influence over how motivated we are and the outcome. To ensure that your next workout is both enjoyable and productive, there are a few tweaks that you can make to your experience. I call them tweaks because they’re not a massive overhaul of how you approach exercise, they’re simply little things that you can put in place to connect your mind with your body. The ‘tweaks that I propose will allow you to get out of your head (with all its negative self-talk, skewed beliefs, preoccupied thoughts and worries) and into the moment where enjoyment and gains are made. TWEAK ONE: Make the time to connect with your breath. Your breath is your life force so naturally, we want to become BFFs with it while we are working really hard. Connecting with our breath and allowing it to be an anchor for our concentration takes our attention away from any unhelpful thoughts and allows it to find a stable rhythm for us to feel grounded and in control. And of course it also assists with a speedy recovery after an intense round of exercise. When we connect our attention with our breathing it will slow it down and we will adjust to a steady rhythm with greater ease. TWEAK TWO: Become attentive to your body’s clues. When we connect with the sensations in our body we are much more aware of when we need to adjust our posture, scale back or increase our load. By noticing when our bodies are struggling we can pull back before injury occurs. Ignoring our body’s clues does us no good, they are there for a reason, so make time to connect with them. . TWEAK THREE: Bringing attention to your environment. Personally I find that connecting with my environment using my senses really helps me to again, get away from any self-defeating thoughts in my head and connect with my surroundings that I love working out in. Next time you’re out for a run or a walk, take time to connect with what you can hear, smell and see. How your skin feels as the crisp air skims the surface or how your feet feel and sound pounding the footpath. This simple act of tapping out of your head and into your environment not only helps you to work smarter and harder but it also helps you to enjoy it more. TWEAK FOUR: Employing the power of intention setting. Setting an intention at the start of your workout is a really powerful way to frame how your session will go. Intentions are your thoughts directed towards a desired outcome - remember the mind affects the body and its performance. Next time you get ready to hit the gym, the footpath, or the mat, take 30 seconds to create a powerful intention that you can keep coming back to when you need to during your BY VICTORIA HOOD Victoria Hood (BA(Hons)Pysc) is a mindfulness coach and practitioner in schools. She is passionate about holistic health and a wellbeing advocate. She also facilitates mindfulness-based workshops for mums and is set to run a joint collaboration with Les Mills Hamilton; a workshop series on rebooting and re centering (October 29). “This special workshop series is not only aimed at parents but also those who are passionate about achieving amazing things,” explains Victoria. “Those who strive to be the best version of themselves and who work hard every day to get to where they want to be.” The series is comprised of three 90 minute workshops: meditation for gogetters, mindfulness for parents and exploring mindfulness with your kids. Victoria also shares her refreshingly honest views on parenthood and life on Facebook (Mindful Mum Aotearoa). workout. Training goals give you great direction and something to work towards but if you don’t come into each training session with the right mindset you’re not setting yourself up to achieve. Start your intention with “during this workout I intend to achieve (xyz)” and really visualise it taking place. The visualisation part is important! So go forth! Connect your mind with your body and watch as it transforms your whole experience of working it. If you would like more information around mindfulness or mediation jump over to my Facebook page -Mindful Mum Aotearoa. • Specialised Chiropractic-Applied Kinesiology Centres linking Structure, Function and Biochemistry for improved Health, Performance, Learning and Behaviour 11950 Rototuna Shopping complex 07 8557687 20 Peachgrove Rd Ham East 07 8560205 www.healthperformance.co.nz 28 FITNESS JOURNAL OCTOBER 2016 www.fitnessjournal.co.nz
Strength and conditioning for the mind Physical fitness is one of the most common forms of personal development which many people invest in and actively work on, on a daily basis. People engage in sport and fitness activities for a variety of reasons, but largely they all relate to the want to ‘better oneself’ in some way, shape or form. Engaging in physical fitness and exercise takes physical strength of course, but it is also a huge mental game. Many people’s sporting success is limited by their self belief and mindset, more than by their actual ability to run the distance, or push the weights. One of the biggest mental challenges both in sport and everyday life, is our self talk. Self talk is essentially the way we speak to ourselves in our heads, and this can be both positive and negative. All day we chat to ourselves internally; debriefing situations and thinking our thoughts. In fact, we do it so subconsciously that we often don’t recognise what we’re saying to ourselves. Identifying what kind of things you tell yourself and your body is incredibly important, as the words we use in our heads are very persuasive. We are our own biggest critic and therefore our self talk can get quite negative – for me, specifically when I’m exercising. On my daily run, my self talk will tell me all kinds of things along the lines of, “you’re so unfit”, “you can’t do this”, “you’re never going to get fitter”, “you should give up now”. I suspect you can relate… and I bet you know how hard it is to keep going when your mind is telling you these things. Being aware of your negative self talk is the first step to being able to change, or challenge it. Once we become aware of what we saying to ourselves subconsciously, there are a number of ways to change it, so it becomes positive. First, it’s interesting to identify where our self talk is coming from. Our bodies hate being uncomfortable and so do our minds. When we’re out of our comfort zone, both our body and our mind do all they can to get us back to that comfort zone. So essentially, negative self talk is simply our body and mind wanting us to stop because it recognises that we’re pushing our own boundaries – which is actually a really good thing, because it means we’re challenging ourselves and growing. Knowing this means that we can challenge our negative self talk head on because we know that what it’s saying isn’t true. The issue with self talk is that we’re very persuasive and we tend to believe BY NICKY FELTON Nicky Felton is a young entrepreneur, personal and career development coach, and founder of the personal development website ‘Go-Getters’. Passionate about personal development, communications, and helping others, Nicky is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging others to push their limits and live their lives based around their own passions. Nicky works one-on-one with individuals in the areas of personal, business, and career development. www.go-getters.co.nz. whatever we tell ourselves, even if it’s total rubbish! One great technique to tackle negative self talk is having the ability to externalise it. Imagine if someone else was saying out loud what you’re saying to yourself in your head – would you believe them? NO.! You’d probably stand up for yourself and argue with them…which is exactly what you need to do with your self talk. Building mental strength is incredibly important for all aspects of our lives, and limiting negative self talk is an essential part of this. Start identifying your negative self talk, and challenge it – that kind of negativity doesn’t deserve a spot in your mind and doesn’t serve a productive purpose. • 80003 Hair Analysis in just 15 minutes Receive your own profile Know what foods you shouldn’t eat • Amino acids indicators • Essential fatty acids indicators • Antioxidants indicators • EMF/ELF indicators • Dietary environmental indicators • Microbiology indicators • Minerals indicators AVAILABLE AT Sale price $80 INQUIRE TODAY! 07 958 3845 Health Stores and Clinics 106 London Street, Hamilton 07 958 3845 FREE ON-SITE PARKING AVAILABLE 419 Grey Street, Hamilton East 07 958 3846 OUTLET STORE fitnessjournalwaikato FITNESS JOURNAL OCTOBER 2016 29
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Fitness Journal October 2016

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