While on my flight home from sunny San Diego, I was lucky enough to sit next to a gentlemen named Cale that was not only highly involved with sports specific training, he was also highly involved with learning and teaching advanced techniques in mental toughness and mindset training.
It’s such a small world sometimes that you run into people like this that are so well in tune what you think and talk about. It was like it was meant to be that I sat down next to him on the plane.
Anyways, Cale and I got to talking and discussing different things about the importance of mindset as well as how in this day and age, there are way too many people, especially young athletes coming up the line that are simply “big wussies” as Cale put it.
I couldn’t agree with him more!
When things get tough, people go soft and it’s happening all too often these days. Don’t be one of the people that joins these “wussies”.
I often speak about training aggressive and in order to do so, you have to be able to keep going hard when things get tough. This is where some of your best results are waiting to be unleashed are at.
Cale was speaking about Bruce Lee and his abilities to use his mind to make his body do extraordinary things. I couldn’t have agreed more. While Bruce Lee was in phenomenal shape, I don’t believe he could have accomplished half the things he did without the amount of mind power and mental focus he had.
Bruce Lee was able to do some amazing stuff!
Anyways, I wanted to share a few ideas Cale shared with me I know will help you push your results forward.
1) Feed The Right Fire
There’s a few different fires that burn within your mind.
The “hot red” fire, which is a fire that wants to grow, burn hotter, and expand to help you push forward and ahead to more success. This fire isn’t afraid to burn out of control, but the only issue is, you have to feed it and unleash it yourself. This fire doesn’t grow in strength on it own and you must decide within your own mind to feed it.
The other fire is the “cold and contempt” fire. This fire wants to stay contained and under control and it doesn’t want to be unleashed. It would rather burn small and stay under control and contained then to grow uncontrollably.
These two fires represent both your fear and desire of overall growth.
I’ve heard this type of explanation used with “the two dogs” as well where one dog is a scared, weak dog, one that would rather walk away from a fight then run towards it while the other dog wants to be unleashed. The second dog wants to be challenged, but the tough part is, you must choose to feed the right dog just as with the right fire.
What many people do is feed the wrong fire and the wrong dog. We don’t have to make a conscious effort to feed the cold fire or scared dog. Our minds do that via default.
That’s where you have to train your mind to feed the right fire and dog. In tough times, like when you’re in the middle of a brutal training session, that cold fire and that weak, scared dog start wanting to be fed. If you don’t make the decision mentally to resist these two, they will win and you will ultimately lose.
Make sure to feed the right fire and unleash the right dog.
2) Win Small Battles
This thought is pretty basic and will help you with both longer duration workouts and bigger goals. The whole idea with this is to chip away at your goals with tiny hacks.
Instead of trying to eat the whole elephant in one bite, cut it up into smaller pieces and eat it that way. You accomplish more in the long run.
Use this same mentality when attacking your goals and workouts. For me, let’s say I have to get in 20 mins of a brutal circuit composed of different kettlebell and sandbag movements. I can A) look at it a say, damn I got 20 mins of this! Or B, say I’m going to attack this circuit 1 min at a time.
By simply breaking this workout up into smaller pieces, I’ve given myself more hope and confidence. Whenever you look at something and see it as a large daunting task, you’ll more then likely lose confidence and get overwhelmed. Instead, win small battles within the war. The war is the 20 min circuit. The battles are each of the 20 mins broken up into 1 min sections. Focus on winning all of the small battles and you’ll win the war in the end.
3) Always Be Ready For Your Fights
This is by far the most important and the simplest of all the 5 tips I’m giving away here. Before you go into any fight, you MUST have won the fight inside your mind first.
If you have any vision of losing or disbelief within your mind before you go into any type of fight (and by fight I mean training session), you had already lost.
You must be able to see yourself being successful in order to reach your full potential.
Always make sure you see yourself winning.
4) Only Accept The Truth – Never Lie
One of the worst things you can do is lie to yourself.
In a tough workout, only you can honestly answer the question of if you went your absolute hardest.
Did you give it your all in that session or did you take it off?
If you continually find a way to lie to yourself, you will be cutting yourself way short of what you’re ultimately capable of achieving.
Don’t be afraid to be a little hard on yourself and critical about your performances.
Recognize your successes, but also acknowledge your failures and setbacks as well. This will only put more pressure on yourself to improve and continually force you to make more progress overtime.
5) Don’t Be Afraid To Suffer – Gain In Loss
Now, with everything I’ve said above, this is one of the biggest keys to achieving success.
“Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion!”
One of the many great quotes said by The Greatest, Muhammad Ali.
You must be willing to sacrifice being comfortable in order to make gains in the end. Getting results isn’t always the easiest road. There will be rocky roads and extreme barriers to cross and the only way to get over it will be to step out of your comfort zone a bit and go through a little bit of pain.
Most people give up when things get a little tough and they have to get away from being in a zone their used to being in.
People that can consistently push through their pain barriers will be the ones that make the mot ground in the end.
Even when you don’t achieve what you are striving for and lose, you gain in the end.
As one of my biggest mentors Zach Even-Esh likes to say, “Get comfortable being Uncomfortable!”
This is the TRUTH and if you honestly want to make accelerated gains with anything in life, not just your fitness, you must be willing to suffer just a little bit.
Go ahead and drop your thoughts and comments below! Let me know which of these 5 tips resonates with YOU the most.
Live and Train Aggressive!