Yesterday during my ride, my brain was left unsupervised. The "Our Brains, Unsupervised” post gives a full recap. Post ride I took the opportunity to do my own personal self coaching to show up to today’s training ready for what might show up.
I wanted to share my process so that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you’re armed and ready.
As soon as I got home from my bike/ run training session, I grabbed my recovery drink and sat down with a notebook. I opened up to a blank page and just started writing. I wrote anything and everything that came up. Unfiltered, probably not grammatically correct. From brain to paper.
I refer to this as doing a thought download. It gives me the opportunity to see my thoughts. I mean really see them. And then I can become the watcher of them. Even if you think you can be objective and separate from your thoughts, the bridge of brain to paper is what really creates that effect. The magic is in the writing.
I wrote down things like: “I feel so inefficient on the bike” “I rode like a novice today” “why can’t I get comfortable and stay tucked?”
From there, I ran a few of them through the Self Coaching Model. What I found was that I was attributing my lack of strength/ speed/power (call it whatever you want!) to my bike experience, bike positioning and the wind. These are all circumstances though and they cannot be responsible for my results. What the Self Coaching Model teaches us is that our results ultimately come from my thoughts, by way of a feeling and actions. The root cause is always our thinking. And that’s the power of the thought download!
As soon as I got them down on paper, I saw it! Surprise, surprise most of the thoughts were directly creating what I did not want. And then I simply looked at my collection of thoughts and asked myself, which (if any) of these are useful? The answer was an easy one: none of them.
I had the opportunity to clean house. Clean up my brain in preparation from my next bike/run training session today. And that’s exactly what I did. I decided none of those thoughts were useful for me anymore. Instead, I consciously chose to believe “my strength is my strength” and “everyday is a new opportunity to learn something so pay attention.”
Both of these were far more useful then anything my brain drifted to yesterday. Because what I wanted today was to show up strong and learn something about my athletic progression. Guess what I got out of my bike/run training session today: I new level of respect for my strength and my ability to run strong in crazy wind. WIN.
I feel it’s important to add a disclaimer here. I am in the practice of self coaching very often because I am and always will be my first client/athlete. The more I do for myself, the more I’m able to share! So this may seem very simple for me. I always say…it’s simple, but not easy! Just like the idea of swimbikerun is simple, but the actual continued practice and adaptation is not easy.
The most important first step is awareness. The next time you find yourself if a downward spiral in a training session, take it as a clue that you’re brain is unsupervised and needs a little attention. From there, do a thought download and take a look at what’s happening in your brain. From brain to paper (a crucial step!). Observe what feelings, actions and results those thoughts are creating for you. And then get deliberate. Decide on useful thoughts and get to work making those the go-tos for your brain.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
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