When you decide to pick up a sport that involves a lot of physical discomfort, you need to find a way of dealing with it that works for you.
This goes for any challenge in any sport really, not just physical discomfort, but that’s what I’m focusing on today. I (Chloe) am going to share a bit of my own experience and how I have used psychological principles to improve my own running journey.
When I talk about physical discomfort in this context, I am referring to the shortness of breath, burning in your legs and the feeling of stiffness and heaviness that can come over you when you're running hard. Some people take to the experience of physical discomfort like a duck to water and have absolutely no problem with it. That's not to say they find it pleasant, but they feel confident tolerating it and are able to focus in a way that is helpful despite the discomfort. For others however it is a different story - people who choose activities like running can still struggle with that discomfort, and this can happen to people of all levels, ranging from complete beginners to elites. And I was certainly one of those people.
I started running because the idea of learning to persist at something physically uncomfortable just appealed to me, and as I became increasingly competitive my desire to see how fast I could go while feeling uncomfortable only grew. However, the way in which I dealt with the inherent discomfort absolutely did not grow with my fitness...!
I always found the experience of physical discomfort that comes with high-intensity training and racing aversive. I noticed that unhelpful thoughts and feelings came fast and freely, and I had to work hard not to drop out (which did not even pay off half the time - I used to be a habitual dropper-outer).
In an attempt to combat this, I tried doggedly for years to force positive thoughts into my head and motivate myself through those periods of discomfort. I thought if I just practised, I would eventually develop the ability to control the contents of my mind....
It did not work. The "positive" thoughts I tried to introduce simply would not land and had nowhere near the compelling nature of the unhelpful ones, plus they couldn't even make a dent in the emotions I would typically feel.
BUT, things changed for me after I explored a psychological approach called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as a trainee psychologist. ACT is all about developing a different relationship with your thoughts and feelings - not seeking to control them, but to reduce their power over you so you can do what you want to do more freely. Through a process that ACT calls creative hopelessness, I realised that the energy I was putting into wrestling with unhelpful thoughts and feelings was completely wasted, and in fact made things worse as I consistently failed to have the impact I wanted on my mindset and performance. So I arrived at the realisation that I had nothing to lose in trying something radically different.
So I experimented by taking the principles of willingness (otherwise known as "acceptance") from ACT and creating my own strategy. Willingness describes the state of deliberately being open to experiencing everything that is going on in the present moment. This includes things that you experience internally (e.g. thoughts, sensations and emotions) as well as external aspects of the situation around you. Willingness does not mean that you like or want whatever is going on; rather it means you are ceasing your attempts to avoid or suppress it, and therefore not only refraining from engaging in futile psychological battles but also changing the impact of whatever it is on you.
I called my version of this the "embrace” - I would actively acknowledge the presence of uncomfortable thoughts/feelings/situations, and then deliberately scan my consciousness for more of them, seeking them out with the aim of exposing myself to them. I would also open my palms out slightly to signal to myself that I was allowing whatever was there and embracing the entire experience. It might sound odd but that physical cue seemed to reinforce it for me.
The effect of this might seem completely paradoxical. It didn't magic any thoughts or feelings away, but it made the experience strangely peaceful. I would even go as far as to say I felt serene, despite having thoughts about wanting to stop, my legs burning up the hill and my pace being disappointing. They were just there, and that was it. I was no longer engaging with them and no longer acting according to them (i.e. slowing down/dropping out or spending energy trying to change them). Instead, I just got on with my run and even enjoyed the fact I was persisting despite discomfort, which was my original aim with running.
I took this further when it came to middle-distance track sessions, which I always hated due to the lactate build-up. When I arrived at the stage in a session where everything felt very hard and painful, I used the "embrace" idea but added the aspect of daring my brain and body to throw more at me - a "do your worst" or "bring it" imperative. This came with the realisation that I am not in fact on the back foot when it comes to unwanted thoughts and feelings - I may not want them but I contain them, rather than the other way round. This is a clear example of how our actions can feed back into how we feel about ourselves; if I act as if my thoughts and feelings are an obstacle or a threat to me, I am simply reinforcing the belief that they are bigger than me and must be avoided. And the problem with that is that if we're not careful, we end up acting out of avoidance rather than pursuing what we care about. So there is an interesting question raised here: "what are the implicit messages I communicate via my actions?"
BUT, now we come onto the real point of this blog, which is that this is what I did, but it won’t work for everyone. The relevance or efficacy of any psychological strategy depends on you as a person and what your challenges are. While there are without a doubt some universal principles that apply across all humans and concepts that are helpful across the board, there are also individual idiosyncrasies that mean the best strategy for you is the one that you can resonate with, personalise and shape with experience.
So if nothing seems to be working for you, my advice would be do something completely different, particularly if you notice you're reluctant to do that. Then regardless of how well new strategy works, you are still breaking a pattern that has become obsolete and creating new experiences and insight, even if what you do needs developing from there.
I have run two research studies evaluating ACT strategies in endurance performance now, and the findings told me that not only do these strategies land differently on people, but people use the same technique/principle in different ways, and that personalisation is key to the strategies working. But this requires patience - something like willingness demands a new perspective and a somewhat counterintuitive approach which makes it a tricky skill to train, and the same can be said for all sorts of other psychological strategies. Therein is the challenge - having the patience to maintain openness to new things, whilst learning to use your own creativity to shape them to optimise your own experience.
Chloe
Psychology of Movement
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