Blog Post
FOCUS ON THIS TO 10x THE EFFECT OF YOUR WORKOUT
- By Jonathan Cawte
- •
- 23 Jun, 2017
Exercise is part physical and part mental. This concept, to use your physicality to increase your mental output is one of the guiding principles of the Executive Athlete. The physical benefits are obvious and automatic. The mental benefits can be obscure and require your focus. When you learn how to derive the mental benefits of exercise you will dramatically increase the effectiveness of your workouts.
First, you need a goal. You need to make exercise a game. A game that you can win or lose. The goal you are striving for must mean something to you. When you create this game you open up an opportunity to feel elation when you attain it or disappointment if you fail.
The biggest mistake that executives make is that they don’t play the game. They don’t set exercise goals. They don’t open up to a new pathway for pleasure or achievement. They are either afraid of the potential loss or they don’t understand the mental side to exercise.
RESILIENCE
When you strive for a goal you learn how to build resilience. This is one of the fundamental skills of leadership.
When you exercise your body, you exercise your mind as well. The mental side is defeating the little voice inside your head that says, “I’m tired. My lungs are about to burst. I’m hurt. I can’t continue.” This little voice makes you want to quit.
When you learn how to defeat this voice in your training you’ll not only be improving your health, you’ll also be training to persevere when things get hard.
RISK
The amount of success that you achieve is related to the amount of risk you can tolerate.
Executives don’t win by playing safe. When you strive for a goal, when you narrow your focus on lifting a weight or making it to the finish line you learn how to build your risk tolerance.
In no other element of your life do you frequently get an opportunity to ‘go all in’ for the achievement of a goal? When you first lift the weight or start the run, you might make it, you might not. That is the risk you take.
SELF CONFIDENCE
Your level of self-confidence proportional to the quality of your experience.
In your training, if you regularly preserve when it gets hard, defeat the voice inside your head that tells you to quit and are pushing yourself to place where you risk failure..andwin..take a moment to think what the quality of your experience would be.
They say that winning is a habit. Exercise is an opportunity to establish a winning habit that an executive can into their professional and non-professional lives. Wins pile upon wins until the domain of the possible stretches beyond the horizon.
When you don’t play the game. When you don’t set a meaningful exercise goal you don’t get to experience these mental benefits to exercise.
The executive who is just ticking it off, going through the motions or who exercises out of guilt is on the defence. Their exercise with a mentality “if I don’t exercise something bad might happen” — they don’t develop a winner’s mentality.
This is displayed to me recently after I just missed my half marathon goal. The person I was talking to quizzed me “why set a goal, now you will have to do it again”. She doesn’t get it.
She is on the defence. She is playing it safe. This is a value that she lives her life by and one that she has passed onto her children.
First, you need a goal. You need to make exercise a game. A game that you can win or lose. The goal you are striving for must mean something to you. When you create this game you open up an opportunity to feel elation when you attain it or disappointment if you fail.
The biggest mistake that executives make is that they don’t play the game. They don’t set exercise goals. They don’t open up to a new pathway for pleasure or achievement. They are either afraid of the potential loss or they don’t understand the mental side to exercise.
RESILIENCE
When you strive for a goal you learn how to build resilience. This is one of the fundamental skills of leadership.
When you exercise your body, you exercise your mind as well. The mental side is defeating the little voice inside your head that says, “I’m tired. My lungs are about to burst. I’m hurt. I can’t continue.” This little voice makes you want to quit.
When you learn how to defeat this voice in your training you’ll not only be improving your health, you’ll also be training to persevere when things get hard.
RISK
The amount of success that you achieve is related to the amount of risk you can tolerate.
Executives don’t win by playing safe. When you strive for a goal, when you narrow your focus on lifting a weight or making it to the finish line you learn how to build your risk tolerance.
In no other element of your life do you frequently get an opportunity to ‘go all in’ for the achievement of a goal? When you first lift the weight or start the run, you might make it, you might not. That is the risk you take.
SELF CONFIDENCE
Your level of self-confidence proportional to the quality of your experience.
In your training, if you regularly preserve when it gets hard, defeat the voice inside your head that tells you to quit and are pushing yourself to place where you risk failure..andwin..take a moment to think what the quality of your experience would be.
They say that winning is a habit. Exercise is an opportunity to establish a winning habit that an executive can into their professional and non-professional lives. Wins pile upon wins until the domain of the possible stretches beyond the horizon.
When you don’t play the game. When you don’t set a meaningful exercise goal you don’t get to experience these mental benefits to exercise.
The executive who is just ticking it off, going through the motions or who exercises out of guilt is on the defence. Their exercise with a mentality “if I don’t exercise something bad might happen” — they don’t develop a winner’s mentality.
This is displayed to me recently after I just missed my half marathon goal. The person I was talking to quizzed me “why set a goal, now you will have to do it again”. She doesn’t get it.
She is on the defence. She is playing it safe. This is a value that she lives her life by and one that she has passed onto her children.
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AUTHOR
Jonathan Cawte
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