The Voices In My Head...
One of the most interesting parts of the OutSeason® for me is the repeated opportunity to convince my body to work harder than it thinks it's capable...especially on the bike. Sometimes I am mean, sometimes I promise nice rewards, sometimes my personal pride is on the line (I know you are all are watching!), but I think this is a critical resource to have on race day when your body starts to push back on what the brain demands.
I am curious what your "self talk" is like, especially during the bike intervals...the first person who just quotes Jens and says SHUT UP LEGS has to do saturday's ride 2x this week...
~ Coach P
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Don't laugh...every wko I find myself saying "I want to blow something up" or "blow it up" and "time to destroy something" or "let's destroy this." Maybe it's the imagery of all the power those activities take, I don't know.
Every single bike wko I will play a song by Rise Against called Satellite. There are 2 specific lines from that song that get me pumped.
“You have to cross the line just to remember where it lays
You won't know your worth now, son, until you take a hit”
A couple things from pros I’ll think about during at least one of my wko’s every week….
“If someone gets in my way, I’ll kill them.” Rinny during a pre-race interview for Kona 2013
One of the male pros during a Kona interview said something to the effect of “If I’m leading a race and hurting I know the guys behind me are hurting even more.”
A lot of my self-talk on the bike is actually playing games with numbers. For intervals longer than 10 minutes I never look at the whole interval. I break it down into 3 or 4 segments and try to get through one segment before focusing on the next one. A lot of times with 1 or 2 minutes left during my last interval I will see how many/if I can raise my NP for that particular interval. Sometimes if I’m doing 2 or 3 intervals I’ll try to build on each one so that the last one is the strongest.
Actually...I think about my goal. Last OS it was getting to Kona. It was telling myself that I had to endure more pain than my peers if I were to be stronger than them in September. Now that I qualified I'm looking forward to my goals in Kona which mean I must be stronger and faster than I was last year so I'm using last year as a validation that I can endure the pain and motivation to take it up a notch.
I believe that conscious thought is a distraction and a waste of neural energy which is better spent on doing the work at hand. I try to turn all my attention to that work - how fast is my cadence? where do I want to be putting my hands (bull horns, aerobars, elbow pads?), how even are my pedal strokes? how straight are my knees - purely up and down, or flopping from side-to-side? I try to focus on how strong and successful working this hard makes me feel. Things like that. I try to pay no attention to the actual effort involved - once I start doing that, it just gets harder, not easier.
Since I use an electronic trainer with my watts locked in, I don't have to pay any attention to my power numbers - as long as I keep spinning in the most efficient manner possible, I know I will get through the interval at the right effort level.
I also avoid thinking about the work as "suffering". EG, I avoid the concept of a "pain cave", calling my workout space my "Power Penthouse" (I'm on a covered upstairs deck, so I have daylight and fresh air around me.) Successfully completing each interval at a cadence of 90 provides continual positive reinforcement - that's what I'm working for.
Call it Zen, call it Mindfulness, call it the Power of Positive Thinking - whatever, it works for me.
Coach P, great thread to start. Although Jens is one of my favorite pro cyclist, I do not have his quote on my wall. I do have Rule # 10 posted. I also have a picture of my youngest son Avery when he was five years old. I took a picture of him at my parent's house. The camera was a real film camera. We told him to "just smile nice." As I took the photo, he held his thumbs up in front of him. It turn out to be the last shot on the film camera so there was no re-do for that photo. I was very angry with him and the rest of the evening was not very good.Well, when the pictures came back, That photo was one the best picture of him ever. His expression was total joy. I of course felt like total dirt for being angry. The image from that photo helps me through every tough spot in every workout and in every race. I can't help smiling whenever I think of it and I instantly have more power. So, when the workout is tough, it is rule # 10. When it is really tough, it is Avery.
Other than that... I never actually thought of what of what I am thinking during a wkout.
Its kinda corny , I forget where I got it, so its not original... When training and racing I think.
No matter how fast you swim, somebody swims faster.
No matter how hard you bike, somebody bikes harder.
No matter how strong you run, somebody runs stronger.
No matter how badly you want it, somebody wants it more.
I am somebody.
There is a lot to this mental game. It deserves its own training. Continuing education in this department 2 books I have recently read are Ultramindset and How bad do you want it....Also, Reference some of my thought process's I used while ultra training and mentioned in Simon's Ultraman Florida thread , REN while running.
When I'm starting to get worn down, I remind myself of a couple things: 1) Stopping is a choice that you make mentally; Your body wont stop until you tell it to (unless you black out, but I've never done that). 2) Good form is also a choice. When I'm pushing, I try to make sure to remind myself that everything happening is a choice I've made, and to make good choices going forward.
When I'm really pushing, and on the edge (zone 5, finish line push), I'm just extremely in the moment. I start to focus forward, and get a bit of tunnel vision. I've never actually blacked out, but I almost wonder sometimes on run tests, how close I can get to it.
I mentally enter a virtual fantasy world where I am chasing Coach P, DJ and Cronk......some days I get a little closer than others but, so far, I never catch them......when I wake up, my legs are beyond tired, my chain is stretched and my interval targets have been hit....... #hidingundermydesk
SS
BUT, I do talk to myself during the recovery intervals. They're very 'off' and I get a chance to relax and shake it out, both physically and mentally. The rrecovery interval starts to close and almost always, during the last 15 seconds before the green light, I pause and remind myself "If you're going to do this, do it right" and I put my game face on.
Other visuals for me have to do with the Spring/Summer/Fall local world championships. I like to ride with the Eddie's, the Hansons, Juan & Juan, Ed the Rock, some others, and if I don't have my legs primed, it makes for some very uncomfortable miles on some very angry rolling hills. So, I can Hurt now to make it better later or I can wimp out early today and pay immensely for it later.
Oh my, lots of thoughts on this one. Some semi-serious, some not so much. Full disclosure: Some may feel my opinion may lacks validity because truthfully I'm having a hard time hitting those 4x4s. So, take that for what it's worth. In any event...
1 - Punching Rich in the face (only 1/2 kidding)
2 - Not thinking about it at all. Disassociation but not (hopefully) in a mentally unstable way. I feel that this is somewhat learned. When I hear "don't work too hard now so you can really focus when it counts" I cringe. I think you need to train yourself to work hard! http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/25/why-athletes-can-handle-more-pain/
3 - A mantra along the lines of disassociation: "I am a machine. I am a machine" and just envision the legs as pistons w/o any feeling that are just doing their job.
Now, to take all the fine advice here and actually heed some of my own more consistently....
Great topic, thanks!
I endorse this as a good example of dissociation. I do this about 5-10% of the time on my very hardest bike trainer or running track intervals. I consciously try to "save" it as a tool of last resort, relying on process focus (technique, cadence, etc) until then. When form starts to break down, counting seems to help return control to my non-conscious motor functions, and I can get through without breaking down.
For me on longish bike intervals (15-20min) i kinda have two levels of focus running in parallel. On the physical side i know the first couple minutes are usually not too bad. I try to keep myself from overreaching early on more than anything. From about 3-6 minutes for me it gets really hard as the lactic acid starts to accumulate, but i know from experience if i can get to about 6 minutes RPE will start to equalize and at that point i feel like i can get to work. From there the intensity steadily builds and the last 5 minutes are just about making it through. I compare the time i have left to my 200 times in the pool or my 400/800 times on the track. I swear i don't feel like i have the interval in the bag until i'm under 10 seconds to go!
My secondary focus is on music. I equate the interval to how many songs it will take me to complete. For FTP tests i have a 5 song playlist that is exactly 20 minutes. I try to make it through as many full songs as i can during the interval, but sometimes when the set is really hard i make a deal with myself to just listen to a song for 60 seconds and then skip to the next song and repeat the deal. There is something about breaking the interval down into 60 second increments timed to music that makes it go by faster on those days when i'm really struggling.
for me it is twofold
one - peer pressure, this WILL be on Strava.
two - it's personal, deeply personal, to achieve at the highest level I am capable of and knowing that I am working at my highest levels. on a long run, I like putting myself in a place where i HAVE to finish. It's 25 degrees out, I wanted to do a 10 mile run, now I am 5 miles from home, no cell phone, no one to pick me up, have to get it done.. same on long bikes..
but, that is not the question you asked. On the trainer, part of it is, "ok, you can do this..." the other part is just knowing that I CAN get through this, but that it WILL hurt & it WILL be hard, so I take it one minute at a time. Get to minute 4, 5, 12, 18, etc.. "that wasn't so bad...." then do it again.... On harder intervals, it may be every 30 secs... on a VO2 interval of 2 mins, it might be every 15 secs... hold power steady... work hard... "you've done worse..." "HR ain't so bad..."
Basic setup is I use counting as a dissociation tool when things get hard or painful. Sometimes when it isn't too bad I count to 20 or so. Don't really need to count but it can help if I am mentally weak that day. The harder it feels, the sooner I restart from 1.
A 12 count for running is my marathon pace pushing the threshold of discomfort in route for a PR. Something I can maintain for long periods just on the verge of too hard.
An 8 count is approaching red-line on the bike or running. FTP intervals, 10K run, last 10K of a half marathon.
Counting to 6 or 4 is excruciating, seeing sparkles, uncontrollable slobber and drooling. VO2 sets, 200 sprints and hill workouts.
I have run several marathons where I counted nearly the entire way. Boston in '12 in the heat, Kentucky Derby also in the heat, and several times at MDI including my PR in 2013 when I counted to 12, 10, or 8 for over 3 hours of running.