Integrate mental skills training directly into your physical workouts. Each mental skills prompt below includes a suggestion for how to match it to a particular workout type. Mix and match to tailor to your unique circumstances.
Implement this mental skills training into your ENDURANCE workouts.
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MENTAL SKILLS TRAINING
Implementing Your Performance Standards
Performance goals are the principles that guide how you show up as an athlete during training and racing regardless of the obstacles you may encounter. Think of these as standards that you’ve set for yourself in terms of attitude, effort, preparation, and mindset. We have control over these if we train to implement them, but implementing them is not automatic without practice. So develop your performance standards and practice them every day during training.
If you have not yet set your own performance standards, see “Outcome, Performance, and Process Goals” and “Practical Application: Set Your Performance Standards” in the “Guide to Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training” (link below).
Your mental skills training during this workout is to work on those performance standards, whatever they may be. Do this by checking in with your standards before the workout, during the workout, and after the workout. Before the workout, remind yourself of your standards and your intention to implement them during the training session. During the workout, implement them. After the workout, run through the standards again and reflect on how well you applied them during the workout.
https://alpfitness.com/courses/guide-to-goal-setting-mental-skills-training/
Implement this mental skills training into your ENDURANCE LONG workouts.
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MENTAL SKILLS TRAINING
Practicing Attentional Control
Attentional control consists of three key elements: awareness, focus, and concentration. “Awareness” refers to a broad, general sense of what’s happening in and around us. “Focus” places that awareness onto something in particular. “Concentration” holds the awareness and focus in mind for an extended period of time.
Your mental skills training during this workout is to practice intentionally shifting your attention. Spend a few minutes on each of the four quadrants of attentional control detailed below before moving on to the next. Move from one to another with awareness.
BROAD EXTERNAL. Focus broadly on your external surroundings, noticing all of the various sounds, smells, and sensations around you.
NARROW EXTERNAL. Shift to a narrow focus on something from those external surroundings you previously surveyed. It could be a particular sound or smell or maybe the feeling of the floor on your feet.
BROAD INTERNAL. Next, shift your attention inward with a broad focus on how your body is feeling. You can scan through from head to toe to get a general sense of whether you’re feeling alert, fatigued, tight, etc.
NARROW INTERNAL. Now shift your internal attention onto one thing in particular, such as a niggle or twinge you may be having in your knee. Focus your attention there and just observe what’s going on.
For more background to help you apply this mental skill during your workout, see “Developing Mindfulness,” “Practical Application: Mindfulness Practice,” and “Choosing Where to Focus Your Attention” in the “Guide to Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training” (link below).
https://alpfitness.com/courses/guide-to-goal-setting-mental-skills-training/
Implement this mental skills training into your TEMPO workouts.
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MENTAL SKILLS TRAINING
Using Motivational Self-Talk
Motivational self-talk is your internal coach or cheerleader that uses self-talk to boost confidence or motivate performance. Motivational self-talk can be used to stimulate arousal (“Let’s do this!”), maintain emotional control (“Stay present”), reinforce mastery (“You did that well”), or facilitate drive (“Keep going, you can do this”).
Research on motivational self-talk has shown that it reduces perceived effort and increases time to exhaustion. Research has also demonstrated that addressing yourself in the second person (“you”) when using motivational self-talk is more effective than using the first-person pronoun (“I”).
Instructional self-talk is the verbal guidance you provide yourself on how to do something, talking you through the mechanics of a skill.
Your mental skill training during this workout is to use both forms of self-talk at some moment — and to be aware of when you’re using each form.
For motivational self-talk, create your own mantra or motivational phrase that you can use to keep your pace up during the tempo portion of the workout. This might even be a snippet of a song.
For instructional self-talk, develop instructions to guide yourself through, for example, a more technical section of the course, navigate the route effectively, or remember to hydrate/fuel.
For more background to help you apply this mental skill during your workout, see “What Limits Performance?,” “Developing Mindfulness,” “Practical Application: Mindfulness Practice,” and “Choosing Where to Focus Your Attention” in the “Guide to Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training” (link below).
https://alpfitness.com/courses/guide-to-goal-setting-mental-skills-training/
Implement this mental skills training into your THRESHOLD workouts.
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MENTAL SKILLS TRAINING
Using Mental Imagery & Implementing Self-Talk
Developing mental toughness involves a psychological flexibility to accept what comes up, a curiosity to explore what we can do to bridge difficult moments, and an optimism that we will get through them if we keep at it.
Your mental skill training during this lactate threshold workout is twofold.
First, take a few minutes before the workout or during your warmup to visualize the cruise intervals you will be doing. Use mental imagery to see, hear, feel how you want them to unfold. Imagine the moments where you anticipate difficulties and, in your mind, work through how you want to respond. With this mental rehearsal, now continue with your workout while focused on implementing what you visualized.
Second, during the cruise intervals, place your attention on task-relevant bodily cues to guide yourself through them. Use instructional self-talk to help you relax your jaw, shoulders, or other body parts that begin to tense up. Instruct yourself to breathe deeply, rather than taking short, shallow breaths. Use motivational self-talk to stay focused on each movement forward toward the end of the interval. Match your self-talk to the tactics you visualized before starting the workout.
For more background to help you apply these mental skills during your workout, see “Developing Mental Toughness” and “Choosing Where to Focus Your Attention” in the “Guide to Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training” (link below).
https://alpfitness.com/courses/guide-to-goal-setting-mental-skills-training/
Implement this mental skills training into your THRESHOLD workouts.
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MENTAL SKILLS TRAINING
Practicing Being Comfortable While Uncomfortable
Developing mental toughness involves a psychological flexibility to accept what comes up, a curiosity to explore what we can do to bridge difficult moments, and an optimism that we will get through them if we keep at it.
Your mental skill training during this VO2max workout is twofold.
First, during the high intensity intervals, place your attention on task-relevant bodily cues to guide yourself through them. Use instructional self-talk to help you relax your jaw, shoulders, or other body parts that begin to tense up. Instruct yourself to breathe deeply, rather than taking short, shallow breaths. Use motivational self-talk to stay focused on each movement forward toward the end of the interval.
Second, as you experience pain and discomfort during the high intensity intervals, use your presence and awareness to accept the uncomfortable feelings rather than trying to push them away. Be curious and explore the discomfort that arises to see what happens when you keep pushing the pace. Stay optimistic in your ability to weather the difficulties to the end of each interval.
For more background to help you apply these mental skills during your workout, see “Developing Mental Toughness” and “Choosing Where to Focus Your Attention” in the “Guide to Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training” (link below).
https://alpfitness.com/courses/guide-to-goal-setting-mental-skills-training/
Implement this mental skills training after key workouts or at the end of each training week.
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MENTAL SKILLS TRAINING
Recording This Week’s Positive Takeaways
Take a moment to reflect back on the week’s training. Consider the key workouts you did and what you accomplished.
Write down — in the TrainingPeaks comments or in a separate notebook — one or more positive takeaways. These might include a new milestone you achieved, a challenge you overcame to complete a workout, or how you effectively implemented your performance standards despite encountering obstacles.
Collect these positive takeaways so that you can look back on them during the more difficult weeks and before your goal race. These positive takeaways will help you rekindle trust in your training and abilities.
For more background to help you apply this mental skill, see “Race Day Readiness” and “Practical Application: Prepare for Race Day” in the “Guide to Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training” (link below).
https://alpfitness.com/courses/guide-to-goal-setting-mental-skills-training/
Check out the “Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training Plan” on TrainingPeaks, which provides prompts and activities directly in your training calendar to help you implement the ideas and skills found in the “Guide to Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training.”
