The benefits of meditation... even when things don't go well

Okay okay, so I might not be the best person to try and sell you on meditation as a useful tool for sport performance right after I bombed for the first time, but I think you should still hear me out. I’m not the expert on this stuff, but I definitely follow some folks who are.

First, I want to start with the Yerkes-Dodson theory of stress and performance. Basically, it’s an inverted U which shows that at the far left, we cannot perform because we have minimal stress, in the middle with increases in stress we get increases in performance, but only to a point, because if we keep going and applying increasing amounts of stress we end up on the far right and have a decrease in performance again. Although I should probably cite this from an old textbook where I learned it, here’s a quick reference for information on this theory http://changingminds.org/explanations/motivation/yerkes-dodson.htm

The theory goes on to state that with simple, routine tasks that require less thought and skill, we can tolerate greater levels of stress and still perform, but with tasks that are increasingly complex, we can tolerate lower levels of stress before we get a decrease in performance. As athletes, we are often performing tasks that require some level of difficulty and complexity, but the simple task of practice increases our ability to tolerate more stress. I used to use this theory to explain high stress performance related to bowling. After 20+ years bowling, the movement was typically routine for me and I could tolerate very high levels of stress and still bowl well. However, when my timing was off or something wasn’t feeling “right”, those high stress levels would further impair my capacity (and any of my bowling buddies can understand this). It would be in those times I would need to employ alternate strategies to decrease my overall stress load in order to improve performance by allowing myself the ability to move into more “thinking” in the task.

See, arousal impairs our ability to think. Dr. Bruce Perry refers to this in his work with abused children all the time, but it’s neurology that we can apply beyond child abuse. Stimulus moves us up the arousal continuum. As you see in his graph below, the more we move up the arousal continuum, the less we are able to access cortex and given cortex is where we do our thinking, when we can’t access it, we aren’t doing much in the thinking department. When our complex task requires intentional thought, rather than relying on routine movement, too much arousal impairs our ability. (NMT training and www.childtrauma.org)

Of course, we all have individual factors that allow us to be more or less resilient to stress. We have different personalities and different inherent levels of anxiety. But, at the end of the day, we still have a choice to do something about it. The first thing we can opt to do it is the one we all love the most – practice more and practice better. Related to powerlifting, this will include more time gaining neural patterns that are efficient and effective for the lifts and practicing how you compete. Are we all perfect and able to bring the exact same flawless form to everything all the time... heck no. But, should we strive to practice well and practice as close to ideal as possible. Yes. Practice allows the complex to become routine and when it becomes routine, we can tolerate higher levels of stress and still achieve optimal performance.

Now, here’s a second strategy that I’m really all about the last year. I’ve been using this in my work and in my life for several years now (go back to the Dr. Perry reference – I’ve been following this idea of reducing arousal in clients and myself for a long time). Then I had a thought, if I use it in my work, and I apply it to the Yerkes-Dodson model, then this should work in sport. So, I went on a mission to find psychologists doing this and stumbled on Dr. Michael Gervais (https://findingmastery.net/). This guy is using meditation as a means of improving sports performance and his track record is pretty darn good.

How does meditation link to the theory above and improve performance. Well, one way is that it decreases our level of arousal overall. If we go back to the inverted U diagram, imagine you start at a slightly lower level of stress, now you have greater capacity to increase stress more before you reach the top of your inverted U and start to see a decrease in performance. Often sports meditations can also include tapping into a time when things felt “just right” – or when you had a sense of flow. The more you tap into this feeling of flow, the more you can pull on it in times of need and settle your system. I intentionally do this before my lifts. Squat is the most obvious example because my “hyped” behaviour is visible and not primarily in my head. While I’m getting my knees wrapped I start listening to my coach – typically he is giving me reminders and cues and I start nodding. I might start making positive remarks about completing the squat as well. I then approach the bar and often I will aggressively roll the bar into the rack as my intentional adrenaline surge. Then, I stop, stand still, close or focus my eyes and centre, both with my sense of flow and some physical cues. This all happens very quickly. The rolling of the bar and the settling is a matter of 20 seconds at most. I actually attribute bowling for so many years to my ability to do this quickly, but people who haven’t practiced this will need to go back to my first point – practice like you compete. In the gym, I typically just centre myself before my lifts, but when the weight gets heavier, I will practice getting a bit amped up and then settling. Even with the years of doing this, it’s always important to practice.

Additionally, sports meditations will sometimes include visualization and visualization taps into both the practice and the flow. We know that visualizing a task provides us with almost as much (about 90%) benefit as actually practicing, but one of the great benefits of visualization is we can visualize perfection and tap into that feeling of flow. The more we do this, the more our capacity to tolerate increasing levels of arousal and still adequately perform improves.

Meditation is excellent at improving mindfulness and improved mindfulness is one of the very important things that allow us to achieve improved performance. Mindfulness is the act of being present in the moment, without judgment. Mindfulness allows us to stop getting caught up in thinking ahead, causing ourselves stress and grief over what might come and stops us from being hung up on what happened in the past. Related to powerlifting, being mindful allows us to be in this present lift, without thinking about the last lift or the next lift, without anticipating things or getting ahead of ourselves. Worrying about what might come next increases our arousal and what do we know about increased arousal? It can sometimes put us over the top of our performance curve and cause reduced performance. This can be good and bad. How many people can relate to needing to pull a deadlift for the win or a record and the anticipation and thinking ahead (increased arousal) ends up biting us in the arse? We might not realize that’s what happened and maybe it isn’t what happened, but it sure might be. Or something I just got a taste of – fighting to get that third lift to stay in the meet and thinking ahead or worrying about what has just happened might be the thing that drives arousal too high and bam, now we’ve bombed. This actually wasn’t why I bombed and I can say that with confidence. At no point was I worrying about anything beyond the lift I was facing. But, meditation and in turn, mindfulness, gave that to me.

Meditation went so far as to allow me to bomb with grace. I knew I was facing a tough total after my second 2 squats didn’t go well, but I didn’t think about it and just went into bench unphased. I then knew I was facing my first bomb after my first 2 benches. At no point did I roll into “I wish I had” or “oh my goodness, what if...” I went forward into “let’s face this lift and only this lift”. I made one future oriented joke at one point and said I sure wasn’t helping myself not have to pull a crazy deadlift. But I wasn’t invested in a total or a number. I walked off after my third non-bench and simply said “well, that was disappointing” and I took my shirt off, had a realistic discussion about why it looked like a bad day to deadlift and packed my stuff and got some food. No tears, no drama, no worries about what might happen next or what I should have done. I learned some things and approached them with curiosity and inquisitiveness, not judgment and self-hatred. I will even go so far as to say that my ability to bomb with grace and integrity is one of my proudest moments in this sport. Meditation gave that to me.

**Of course, this isn’t a comprehensive list and I’m not a sports psychologist... if you have other benefits or things you think are worth adding, please leave a comment because I’m always about learning*

Changing narratives

The idea for this blog comes from a blend of the work I do with people, focusing a lot on the stories we use to explain ourselves. For a bit of context, "stories in a ‘narrative therapy’ context are made up of events, linked by a theme, occurring over time and according to a plot. A story emerges as certain events are privileged and selected out over other events as more important or true. As the story takes shape, it invites the teller to further select only certain information while other events become neglected and thus the same story is continually told. These stories both describe and shape people’s perspectives on their lives, histories and futures." http://www.narrativetherapycentre.com/narrative.html

We tell ourselves things about our world and our place in the world. We create a story and a context about events and situations. Sometimes these stories can be helpful and sometimes the stories we create can hurt us. Think of it this way, if you tell yourself the same negative thing over and over, you are far more likely to eventually believe it and create what we call the "self fulfilling prophecy". We believe something so deeply and intensely, even sometimes without realizing it, that we end up creating situations and events that feed that story and our beliefs.

How does this apply to sport? And more specifically, how am I applying this to my personal lifting? Well, see, I have created a narrative about some of my lifts that is incredibly unhelpful. I was initially applying this just to my bench press, and I will explain that here, but I can also apply it to squat and I'll even be able to show how I believe these narratives might have limited me.

See, the story I tell myself about bench is that I'm weak. I use the hashtag #povertybench... okay, I did until about a month ago. I have this story in my head that tells me that bench is my weakest lift and it is the hardest for me. I have lots of reasons (excuses??) for this, but ultimately it all feeds the story in my head that I have this unremarkable, weak bench press. What might happen if I stopped telling myself this narrative? What might happen if I started telling myself that I work hard at bench and that it is getting stronger? What if I tell myself that I'm competent in a shirt and can manage and control the weight? What if I simply stop the narrative of "poverty bench" and just eliminate that altogether? Will I magically bench 10kg more? Probably not. But, am I far more likely to make solid increases on my bench? YES!! And what I know about the power of narratives is that I'm far more likely to make solid increases on my bench with little to no changes in my training.

Now, a narrative can be developed by our own defenses, like my bench narrative was - I created a narrative about how weak I am to help my ego compensate for lack of growth and it's likely limited me. But, a narrative can come from others and become something we invest in. I've been told my squat is crap. I've been told I let myself get too bent over. I've learned to take my coaching advice on this lift from a select few people to help me resist this encroaching narrative, but all to often, I find myself accepting it. Worse yet, I often find it running in my head right freaking before I get under the bar. There's no worse time to run the story of how crappy your squat is :) Guess what? It's my choice to accept this or not. I may have limitations on my squat, but in the big realm of it, I don't have a "crappy squat". I've seen some crappy squats and I've seen some great squats and I accept that mine is somewhere in the middle. This day I choose to dismiss this imbedded story and discard it for what it is. I am bigger than any narrative that is placed on me. I choose to maximize MY squat and the way I do it. And I will make progress and I will accept the challenge to make it better, but I will not allow this damaging narrative another moment of space in my head.

Now, know what's really cool? I've never told this story about my deadlift. I've also never accepted it about my deadlift when I've gotten unhelpful comments from the peanut gallery. I had this confidence about my deadlift that came early on, maybe for several reasons. Ultimately, it's also the lift that is my strongest, probably naturally (long arms hurt the bench, help the deadlift) but I bet, if I'd let it, I could have created a story that would have limited me. At Worlds in Nov 2016 I was tanked... I had nothing left after my first deadlift. I pulled 190kg on my second attempt and I'm completely convinced that the only reason I locked it out was that I had zero shred of doubt that I would pull it. I went into it with a narrative that this was solid and it was there and there was no moment that I stopped believing that. Though I'll admit, when I went to lock my knees I was thinking "wow, this is harder than I expected" (I was also thinking "just like Rhaea does" with the knees then glutes) but I never doubted it and it showed.

Now the question is.... what's YOUR story? Is it limiting you or is it helping you thrive? How can you recreate your own narratives to change the way you enter and interact in the world?

Stress, perfectionism and cutting ourselves some slack

This one is inspired by a lady I’ve gotten to know over the last 10 years, and most of that in the last year or 2. Now, Lisa is no stranger to time off the gym. She had a major surgery not long ago and had to take a good chunk of time off before taking her time coming back slowly. But more recently, Lisa lost her father after spending an enormous amount of her time and energy caring for him in his final weeks. She posed the question “How do you quell perfectionism in times of high stress?” Okay, so that wasn’t the direct quote but I am pretty sure that’s what she meant.

“Perfectionism, in psychology, is a personality trait characterized by a person's striving for flawlessness and setting excessively high performance standards, accompanied by overly critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others' evaluations. It is best conceptualized as a multidimensional characteristic, as psychologists agree that there are many positive and negative aspects.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectionism_(psychology)

Perfectionism can be the thing that makes us do stuff really well. In lifting, it can be the driving force that helps us be a stickler about form or always following a program exactly as the coach writes it. This isn’t always a bad thing and I often try and have folks identify how striving for perfectionism can work in our favour. The drive for perfectionism though, can have deleterious effects when it causes us grief and heightened stress, because perfection is ultimately not achievable.

Quite awhile back I wrote about stress and how insidious it is and how our bodies cannot distinguish between physical and psychological stress. It was more of a personal reflection on how stress in my life just slowly kept piling on until it essentially crushed me. The point of this, though, is to acknowledge that stress is stress. Psychological stress, like caring for an ailing parent, is just as tough on our bodies as physical stress. Actually, maybe even more so given psychological stress tends to hold on longer. While that heavy equipped deadlift session ends, that ailing parent doesn’t just magically get better after a few hours. Yet, we think that somehow, in the midst of chaos and stress, we should just be able to keep going with our bad selves. Worse, when we struggle with perfectionism, because striving for perfectionism causes increased psychological stress.

How can we manage stress? 1) Be honest with yourself about what is causing all the stress in your life. If some of it can be changed, then change it. I know that’s not always possible, but it’s worth looking at. Often, just naming it can help as well. 2) Voice it. Tell others. Talk about it. Find a confidante or, if necessary, a professional (a certified one please... another rant on that another day). 3) Meditate. You don’t have to become the next Buddha but just take 5 min a day, open YouTube and search for a guided meditation. Some will suck, some will be awesome. Headspace is another good app, as is Stop, Breathe, & Think. 4) Modify your activity. Now, most websites are just going to suggest that you exercise, but knowing that my friend Lisa is a powerlifter, I am going to phrase this as modify your exercise. That means, if you aren’t doing any, start doing something active. It also means, if you are training at a fairly high intensity (#stinnsystem4life... anyone??) you should probably back off a bit. 5) Find something you enjoy doing and schedule it into your current availability. This should not cause increased stress trying to find time and if it does, then skip it... there’s a reason it’s last.

How do we merge this with perfectionist tendencies? 1) Be realistic and honest with yourself. Does this task require “perfection”? What will happen if it’s not perfect? Will you really shrivel up and get super weak if you modify your program and take 1 extra day off per week for a little while? 2) Challenge the thoughts that drive your perfection. This is some basic Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) thought challenging stuff here. Are you really lazy if you don’t complete every set at exactly a 9.5 RPE? What would actually happen if you didn’t get 100% on that exam? 3) Decide what matters most. Decide on the tasks that accomplish this. Do them, even when the anxiety tells you otherwise. What this means is that if you don’t want to challenge your perfectionist thoughts, you won’t face the anxiety that comes when you do challenge them and you will “cave”. It is hard work and you need to have a reason for doing it. If being healthy and reducing the impact of stress and perfection in your life is a priority, then decide what tasks will make this happen. Things like, taking an extra day off the gym each week, reducing my working set weights by 10%, allowing myself to only reread a report once before signing it, etc. Then do it!! This is the hard part. This is where the thoughts creep in and the doable becomes difficult. Do it anyway and remember why you are doing it. 4) Take a look at this awesome resource https://www.anxietybc.com/sites/default/files/Perfectionism.pdf

You’ll more than likely notice that the tips and strategies are specific, but when writing it’s difficult to completely separate these things. Ask any perfectionist what drives their perfection and it’s typically maladaptive, unhelpful thoughts and anxiety. Those things are stressful. Stress tells us something needs to change – that’s why we have it. Face to face with a lion, stress tells you to change this situation. Face to face with a major project due tomorrow and you’ve barely started, stress tells you to change this situation. It comes down to our ability to listen to stress, determine if what it is telling us is valid (I’m caring for my ailing parent and there’s so much to think about vs. this project must be perfect or else unidentifiable bad things will happen vs. if I can’t squat “perfectly” – whatever model I deem as perfect – then there’s no sense in doing any squats at all) and then decide on a course of action for change. Challenge yourself if you are saying “What if I make a bad change? What if my change isn’t perfect?” Is the change you are considering permanent or can you just change your change? And once again, just do it...

For now, I’m off to meditate