Psychological Stages Of Fitness Training

Feb 25, 2011 by Tatianna

 

Fitness as with everything else requires a lot of psychological discipline. It is more than just the outside that builds levels of fitness.  Your mind is what’s really important.  If you train you mind, training your body will not be as hard.  Don’t get me wrong, it will still be hard,  but your mind comes first.  Let’s examine several different stages your mind goes through in training.

The first stage is the decision,  you decided to get in shape.  You don’t over analyze this stage,  you just make a quick decision.  You want to be fit and healthy,  your enthusiasm is strong and you are ready to go.  You begin to picture your self as being part of the fit group and how wonderful it would be.

The second stage starts hitting you after about two weeks of working out.  You begin to feel, OMG what did I get my self into.  This is hard, can I keep going?  Is it always going to be this hard?  Will I have to do that for the rest of my life?
To pass through this stage,  you have to not look too far ahead.  This is a very important stage to stay in the present moment.  Right about here your doubts begin to set you off track,  and you might start to break.  Here is where you have to ask your self a question,  how much does it worth to you?
Think about how great you feel after you completed your workout,  do you want to feel like that for the rest of your life,  or do you want to give up and be how you were before,  out of shape and unhappy.  This decision will begin to build your character a bit more.

If you made it pass the second stage,  you will be on the right track for a while.   About two month’s into your training,  you will hit the third stage.  You’ll begin to see some amazing results ( If you gave it your all in your sessions of course,  if you’re going to do it, do it all the way! ) ,  your mind will start to change, you will start to become more and more disciplined.  Your focus and determination will be at their peak.  This is the best stage to be in.  You are finally in a place where you always wanted to be.

In the fourth stage, you have the fitness level that you always dreamed of.  But you are starting to get tired psychologically.  You feel trapped, you feel why do I have to keep going?  You begin to get a little bit lazy with your training,  still pushing hard though but not as hard as you need to be. This is a very important stage,  it is ether going to make you or brake you.

I recommend to take three good days off,  physically and somewhat nutritionally.  I’m not saying eat junk foods for three days and drink a fountain of soda and milkshake.  Eat meaningfully,  but alloy your self a bit of slack.  Gather your thoughts,  gather your focus,  meditate,  get a lot of sleep, do something that feels relaxing.
I guarantee you after the three days you will feel full of energy to start understanding how much being fit really means to you.  Recharge and get back into the game!

From these stages,  you are more likely to jump from 3rd to 4th back and forth.  It is all about the pendulum,  like I wrote in on of my thought of the day articles earlier.  You will always have ups and downs, things are never going to be in the middle. You don’t want them to be. But wi  time you will train your mind to push you through anything.

Lately, I my self have been going through the pendulum of stage 3 and 4.  I started my work out and I was suppose to finish 3 circuits.  But my mind was skipping through so many different thoughts,  that I couldn’t concentrate on my workout.  You always have to be present in your body.  I gave up… I didn’t finish my last circuit ( Im not sure if I should evet tell you this,  because fitness people never suppose to give up,  but we’re all human after all )  I felts pretty ashamed of my self.  But it motivated me to come up with a fire blast workout for tomorrow.  And tomorrow, you bet I’m not just going to finish.  I am going to kick it’s ASS!!!

Tatianna

PS you might also like my post “Avoid Overtraining”