Threshold Performance Club | The fitness newsletter

Threshold #7 | Performance starts with mental strength

Mental strength should be a core pillar in your training plan.

I’d never swam in the ocean before Ironman for an actual serious swim. Sure I’d jumped in, paddled, snorkelled, but there’s a substantial difference going from that to 1.9km in a potentially rough British sea.

Fear of swimming for me is real, especially the prospect of being 1km out in the sea and the only way back is another 1km swim.

However for IM Weymouth I knew I was fit enough. That took care of my brain questioning if I was even capable of swimming far enough.

The only thing left was to get over the mental hurdles of uncertainty being in the middle of the sea.

So how did I improve my mental strength.

The power of 3 words

Dr Jim Taylor - look him up here and digest everything he writes.

I won’t rip-off his work, but share how I interpreted his tips & mental frameworks to work for me.

I broke the swim into 3 parts. The first 700m to the first buoy. The 2nd leg between the two buoys and and final leg from the final buoy back to the beach. This gave me three digestible chunks of work and broke the daunting swim into 3 simple parts.

Next I came up with three words which together generated a powerful emotional feeling my brain could always reset and focus with. These three words together should amp up your motivation. My three were:

• Strong

• Powerful

• Success

These three words in a sentence came out as “I am strong. I am powerful. I am succeeding.”

For stage one of the swim I would repeat over and over “I am strong”. The second leg after I passed the first buoy “I am powerful”, and the final leg back to the beach “I am succeeding”.

This repetition achieved two things. 1, it kept my mind focussed on the belief I am good enough to get through the swim. Secondly it kept me distracted from thinking anything negative.

Mental visualisation

Mental visualisation is an extremely strong exercise. Over the past 2 months, I’ve swam <10km (not much for full Ironman training) but I’ve watched and studied extremely detailed swimming videos and my pace per 100m has reduced by 5-10seconds.

I’ve soaked in what a good technique should look and feel & repeated it mentally over and over again.

This is not magic or as crazy as it may sound. There is strong research showing an athlete who performs mental visualisation everyday for an hour vs a similar athlete who performs no visualisation will perform better.

The science behind this speaks to how your muscles react to electronic pulses through your body. As your brain processes thoughts on a body part moving - e.g. your arm stroke swimming - if you imagine your arm moving, but don’t move it, muscle fibres will still fire. Mental training is training your body.

For Ironman Weymouth I consistently imagined the race. How I entered the water, transition, put my cycling shoes on, rack my bike, remember to pick up my energy gels, put on my running shoes, finishing the race strong with maximum effort.

I’m positive imagining the perfect race beforehand - everyday for 100 days - massively improved my ability to perform as I had a huge wave of positive thoughts behind me.

Daily priming

Daily priming can sound wacky - I’m well aware. That’s because until this year I’d never really believed in manifesting, ideating the future and having “beliefs” - my ethos has always been to do things and physically improve.

However, as I delved into mental sports psychology, I started to learn how connected the mind and body are and it makes sense, right? Hands up if you’ve felt better (more positive / more energy) after working out or going for a fresh air walk - these actions release dopamine. Physical actions spark mental reactions.

Language also has a mental reaction - as referenced above with the power of 3 words.

I started a routine found online by coach Tony Robbins. A deep breathing exercise which involves 30 sharp inhales, repeated 3 times. If you’re a fan of Wim Hof, this is similar. Deep breathing can activate your body. The science is detailed, but essentially you wake your body up for the day with sharp inhales, deep breathing and like me throw in cold water showers.

In short, making your body go through extreme changes - yes deep breathing can be classed as extreme - signals to your mind you are in control. The mind is designed to keep us safe. It’ll tell you to turn the hot water up when the shower is cold, tell you to not push harder in the gym as you might injure yourself, tell you to slow down as you run to lactate threshold. Your brain wants to protect you, but it will limit you.

The simple act of starting the day with something which shocks you - and you persevere through - signals to your brain you are in control.

If you don’t believe me, try it.

So, that’s how I improved my mental strength.

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Judging the heart rate: learning to understand your HR

Warm up:

• 2km Z1/Z2 run

Main set:

• 10 minutes @ Z2

• 5 minutes @ Z3

• 10 minutes @ Z2

Warm down:

• 2km Z1 run

Thanks for tuning in to week 7. The above are genuine routines and exercises I use - sometimes daily.

They have been a game changer for my ability to focus on the positive and push my limits.

As always you can follow me on Strava here.

Have a great week,

Robert