physical versus mental training
Today at the gym I prepped myself on the walk over to go towards the uncomfortable feelings and to think about the training as a mental training session rather than a physical one. It led to a very interesting workout, because where I usually focus on the feelings in my body, today I focused on the thoughts in my head, and the difficulty of the workout became about controlling my thoughts rather than controlling my body. I did a lot better on all the machines, and didn’t even feel as tired by the end as I usually do. But then, shortly afterwards, my body caught up and I became dizzy and had to sit down for a few minutes to avoid from puking or passing out. So I think I pushed myself a lot harder than I usually did, while not feeling as if I was doing that.
This is definitely related to the mental block I was sensing for the last couple months. Now, by thinking of this as mental training instead of physical training, I think that I have much more room to improve than I was able to before when I just couldn’t get my strength to improve even though I felt like I was trying as hard as I could.