Why it is important to work on your mindset to improve pain and performance
The journey of rehabbing an injury while maintaining a commitment to your resistance training is one of the most frustrating and fatiguing challenges. From addressing the painful body part to managing your training program…there is a lot to juggle.
It is during this process that your mindset plays a crucial role in helping you overcome challenges.
Mindset is the powerhouse that can either help or hinder your rehab journey. Adopting the right mindset during rehab forces you to embrace the complex nature of being human, which gives you the resilience to best navigate the journey.
We’d like to share some essential mindset tips that can help you manage your resistance training and injury rehab - empowering you to push forward with resilience and grit.
Thoughts of fatigue and doubt creep in when dealing with pain and injury during training. Through all of the successes and failures that you will experience on this journey, you always have a choice to make.
A fear of failure will hold you back from success on this journey - exactly why it is important to acknowledge that our thoughts and emotions affect our behaviors. You may have heard the phrase “control what you can, accept what you can’t” - this is a way of saying there are things that are in your control and others that are very much not.
We love this phrase - here are some practical tips to help with adopting this mindset to help you reach your goals:
Journal
Commit to your thoughts and write them down. Get them out of your head. Doing this will allow you to see the negative thoughts that impede your success. Oftentimes, negative thoughts are not based on truth and instead are ways that we try to make sense of the unknown. Try to manage these negative thoughts by labeling them and then turning them into productive thoughts. A big first step to help you remain resilient through the ups and downs of rehab.
Create a centering phrase for yourself
A phrase of four words or less that will always push you forward during the harder times. When anxiety and doubt show themselves in the rehab journey it is extremely dominant. So think… what can you say to yourself to stay grounded and rational during those downs? Failures and successes can be fleeting and having the ability to center yourself through both is HUGE. Remember, the successes and failures of today do not guarantee they will be present tomorrow - center yourself and continue to move forward.
Track your emotional state before, during, and after training
Do this by writing the emotions you felt while training and labeling the intensity of each. Continue to mark if the intensity was helpful or unhelpful for you to help you reach your goals. Emotions are a helpful catalyst for your performance so take time to understand the optimal levels of your emotions during the process. Over time, you will identify the ideal intensity of your emotions that best support you - then learn how to get yourself there.
Remember, you do not control your thoughts and emotions, they happen to you! This is why you should worry less about controlling them and focus MORE on managing your response to them.
Utilizing these practical steps will help you manage your response to your emotions and your response to the successes and failures that WILL occur on your health and wellness journey!