Mental Barriers

There is no shortage of information on how certain health and fitness practices will benefit you.

The majority of people are aware of behaviours they should be implementing that would benefit them greatly.

The issue lies in overcoming the barriers preventing them from consistenlty implementing these behaviours.

The most common barriers are not having enough time, not being able to find the motivation, and simply just not enjoying the feelings and mental challenges during exercise itself.

I wish I had an easy solution for the time constraint barrier, however this may just come down to the individual placing greater priority on their health and fitness. Unfortunately improving your health and fitness is time consuming, and any well-marketed gadget or supplement that claims otherwise is taking your money and giving you nothing back in return.

For the two other barriers, I hope there is something of value here that helps!

Finding Motivation

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Those moments when you get a burst of motivation are great.

You decide you’re going to start implementing a behaviour that will change your life. Maybe you read a motivating book, watched a motivating video, or the new year came around so this year was ‘the one’.

Sometimes that burst of motivation can last a little while, but it usually ends with the familiar feeling of being a few days in and back to your old behaviours with little motivation remaining.

If you rely on motivation to get you doing the things you should be doing, you’re going to be pretty inconsistent as motivation is transient. Without consistency, you’re missing what could be the most important piece of the puzzle to achieving anything health and fitness related.

What isn’t transient? Habits!

Building a habit is a whole challenge in itself, but it’s also the solution to performing a behaviour consistently, and making a change in your life. When it comes to building a habit, here are some worthwhile strategies to consider:

• The behaviour you’re choosing should have some context. Give it a time and place. Eg. “I’m going to do the Strength Synth workout at 7am at on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before the work day starts.”

• The new behaviour should be a small change, not a complete overhaul of everything (for example, “I will start with a 20 minute workout 3 days a week” instead of “I will start a 6-day a week program where you train for 1 hour each day”.)

• Know that it will get easier over time. If you’re doing the behaviour daily, you can expect it to take around 10 weeks to become a habit. It may sound like a long time, but it will continue to get easier to implement.

• Try to focus on the small changes that are happening because of your new behaviour (enjoy the process). For example, you may notice that you sleep a lot better or are more productive on the days that you train. Celebrate the small wins on the way to your end goal!

• Have a way to monitor the new behaviour. This way, when you see that you’ve been doing it consistently, it reinforces the fact that you’re able to achieve this goal and should bring you some satisfaction. You could set up something like a streak tally.
  

As with most things, creating a system or plan that incorporates strategies and builds a habit is going to set you up for a much greater chance of success than relying on transient bursts of motivation.

Mental Discomfort

Some people love the feeling of ‘the burn’ and pushing their body to the limits. Others can’t stand it. I always assumed that everyone could get to love this feeling of pushing themselves however my clients have taught me otherwise.

I’m a big fan of treating the periods of discomfort within training as almost a meditative state. During meditation/mindfulness etc, you notice your thoughts, accept them, and let them drift away.

The same can be applied when you’re in an uncomfortable training session/exercise. You notice the discomfort, know it’s not doing you any harm (quite the opposite), and just accept it and know it’s advantageous for you. I personally find this helps me push further than I’d be able to otherwise, and it’s just great embracing the suck and knowing that I’m improving.

I thought surely everyone could learn to think about it this way and enjoy training the same way I do?

Instead, it wasn’t until I watched a great presentation by a guy called ‘Alex Viada’ when it clicked. As with all things in the health and fitness world, some individuals probably need a different way of approaching it.

In his presentation, and after reading some relevant literature, there is the concept of ‘associative coping strategies’ and ‘dissociative coping strategies’.

Essentially, ‘associative coping strategies’ is what I discussed above (embracing the pain) while ‘dissociative coping strategies’ is about distracting yourself from the task, focusing on the landscape, separating mind and body and so on.

This dissociative coping strategy may be a lot better suited to those who don’t like these feelings of discomfort during training.

You could still view this as a form of mindfulness meditation, but you’re focusing externally (eg. an object) rather than internally (the feeling of your body). Interestingly enough, there is more being written about this in the scientific literature and the use of mindfulness protocols for athletic performance:

“…Seasoned runners and experienced meditation practitioners appear to cultivate a capacity for sustained, essentially nonjudgmental attention that can be directed at will toward a wide range of internal and external experiential cues…” (Salmon et al., 2010)

So how would this ‘dissociative coping strategy’ work when your legs are on fire during a training session?

• You could direct your attention to how your arms or other body part feels.
  
• You could find something in the room/outdoors to place your focus on instead.
  
• You could think about how good you will feel once the session is over or once you’ve achieved your goals.
  
• It’s a little less meditative in nature, but you could also continue chatting to your chatty trainer and get lost in conversation (as long as you still have enough focus on completing the task the correct way).
  

Now obviously it’s not as black and white as using either ‘associative coping strategies’ or ‘dissociative coping strategies’, as there is lots of variability and fluidity in what you may think or focus on during physical activity. However, I think it offers a nice little framework for the fact that people may need to find their own way of focusing within physical activity and not necessarily ‘embrace the burn’ which seems to be a firmly held belief in the fitness community of how to deal with uncomfortable sensations during exercise.

In Summary

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• Using some of the habit building strategies, develop a plan to make a health and fitness behaviour a lasting habit rather than trying to ‘find the motivation’.

• When exercising and beginning to feel some discomfort, start playing around with different ways of focusing your attention/feelings/thoughts and practice getting into a meditative state. Exercise may just start becoming your meditation practice too.

References

1. Salmon, P., Hanneman, S., & Harwood, B. “Associative/Dissociative Cognitive Strategies in Sustained Physical Activity: Literature Review and Proposal for a Mindfulness-Based Conceptual Model.” 2010. The Sport Psychologist, 24(2): 127-156.
2. Cleo, Gina et al. “Habit-based interventions for weight loss maintenance in adults with overweight and obesity: a randomized controlled trial.” International journal of obesity (2005) vol. 43,2 (2019): 374-383. doi:10.1038/s41366-018-0067-4
3. Gardner, Benjamin et al. “Making health habitual: the psychology of ‘habit-formation’ and general practice.” The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners vol. 62,605 (2012): 664-6. doi:10.3399/bjgp12X659466

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