Feb 26 2019
Frustration: how to kill it with acceptance
frustration
Source: @fikowski (Brent Fikowski’s Instagram)

Frustration tolerance is our ability to accept a situation that is unwanted without it affecting us significantly. It’s one of those things that doesn’t seem to play that big a role. Maybe, on a smaller scale, that could appear to be true; but if you look at the bigger picture, we’re talking about something that will be directing our emotional state in one direction or another.

Why? Because we’re exposed to a ridiculous amount of frustrations (shocker). Ranging from minimal frustrations like banging your toe on the door all the way to serious frustrations like arguing with your spouse. All of them – big and small – can have a cumulative effect on you and if you don’t learn how to manage your emotional reaction, you can end up feeling like crap without knowing why.

Frustration is heavily rooted into CrossFit

Naturally, frustration has a VIP section in sports and, of course, CrossFit. We’ve been talking about this for some time: CrossFit is a sport that faces you with challenges on a daily basis. This goes hand in hand with frustration because there will be times when the challenge is too much for you. You won’t nail butterfly pull-ups on your first day. You won’t PR your back squat every week. You probably won’t get the hang of double unders for at least a couple of months. And that’s ok.

Frustration – well managed – is quite truly the best thing that can happen to you (both as a person and an athlete). When your faced with an obstacle you can’t surpass on your first attempt, you’ll learn to go looking for a solution. This will boost your frustration tolerance.

Talking shit about the obstacle itself and making excuses (“it’s too high”, “whoever put it here is trying to mess with me”, “it’s impossible”) is a symptom of low frustration tolerance. And if you want to learn how to fight it, you have to learn to accept the present situation in order to try and go change it – when possible –.

What if frustration is inevitable?

The good thing about CrossFit is that frustrations that happen during the learning phase don’t last forever. Our abilities slowly improve, allowing us to incorporate new and complex movements to our repertoire. Depending on the athlete’s ambitions, of course (not all of us want to learn how to do 12 unbroken ring muscle-ups).

But, what about those who aspire to the highest level? Those who want to compete with the big dogs. Those aspirations are flooded with complex and inevitable frustrations: injuries, failure in competition, pre-competitive anxiety and so on. It’s even more important to learn frustration tolerance.

There will be moments when you’ll have to just accept second place, or an execution error that keeps you off the podium by one point, or an unfortunate injury. You can’t argue with reality and, once you accept the present, you’ll be freed of an unnecessary weight that keeps you from moving on.

Frustration hates a winner

frustrations
Rich Froning dominating a rope climb event after bombing the finals in 2010. Source: CrossFit Games 2011.

Although frustration is sometimes inevitable, you can always “force” your way towards victories. There are a million goals waiting for you to go after them and, even though they may be out of reach (for now), you can still go chasing others.

The other day I wasn’t really feeling like myself in the WOD. When I finished, all I wanted to do was leave. But not like that. So, I decided to spend the next 15-20 minutes practicing max height box jumps. I had no plan and no expectations. I somehow managed to build up to new personal record – which I hadn’t anticipated – so my sensation changed. Instead of leaving a negative memory, I traded it for the satisfaction of a small improvement.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that frustration tolerance is nothing but the ability to accept “no” for an answer. Life won’t always give you what you want because the world doesn’t owe you anything. It doesn’t matter if you deserved it or not. It is what it is. Learn acceptance and keep walking forward.

Desiree Mejia-Naranjo 0 Comments
mental game
Feb 12 2019
How to improve your mental game

4 tips to build the mindset of a champion

In my experience in sports, I’ve seen this happen too many times. Athletes that have great potential. Potential they’re able to show in training, in friendly matches, ergo, low-pressure settings. However, when it’s time to perform under the bright lights…that potential is nowhere to be found. 

For too long, people have resorted to changing training methodology, coaches and what-have-you to no avail. So, this post is intended to show these athletes and their coaches that what needs to change is their mental game. 

I won’t be using those lame motivational quotes that are thrown around all over the place, no. I’ll be turning those into facts you can actually work on and improve. Because how the hell do I even know if I’m being mentally tough? So here are a few tips for you to practice on – the same way you would with your snatch – and stop crumbling under pressure.

1. Leave no room for doubt

What I mean by this simple yet appallingly accurate statement is that you need to free your mind of useless information. The so-coveted “laserlike focus” is nothing more than concentrating solely on the task at hand. Not even the competition at a larger scale. What movement should be performed? Who do I need to stay in front of? Automatic negative thoughts such as “What if I miss the catch on the jerk?” What if I burn out too quick?” will never come in handy. NEVER.

Think of what you can do, what you can control. Make sure your inner monologue is useful for what you need to be doing. Paradoxically, thinking about not being nervous, will make you more nervous. 

2. Believe in yourself

Possibly one of the corniest sentences ever built in our language, but it’s the most important. You can work as hard as you want. Train more than anyone ever. Because, guess what? I KNOW there are athletes that train more than you. To the point where they’re burnt the fuck out. And they’ll never win the Games. 

At that level, all athletes have the physical capability to win the Games. It can only come down to personal differences, the ones that are dictated by the mind. You need to become 100% sure that you’re more capable of overcoming obstacles than any other. You need to know, deep down, that you are the home-run hitter. If there’s an event that has your name on it, you have to go for the win. You’ll have plenty of events to be conservative, identify potential situations for you to shine and go for broke. 

Performance follows confidence, and not the other way around. You have success stories in your past; use them to boost the self-esteem. You’d be surprised how motivation peaks when it’s headed toward a powerful goal. That’s the magic of competition. You’re so focused on winning or beating whoever’s in front of you that you forget about the pain. Use your own self-worth as a motivation booster and run away with it!

mental game

3. Actively set yourself up for failure 

Don’t do this in competition, duh. But do it in training. A lot. You need to find the things you suck at and do that most of the time. Not only to earn explicit knowledge that will improve your performance and movement, but also to learn how to cope with failure. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do. 20 unbroken ring muscle-ups and running a 5k in under 20 mins is a piece of cake in comparison. 

Mat Fraser learned how to sprint, training with high-school track athletes. He got his ass beat. Repeatedly. What happened in the Games? He smashed the Suicide Sprint. Before that, he had been ridiculed in 2015 in both sprints. And went on to be ridiculed even more by 14 year-olds. People that stay in their comfort zone and do more of what they’re great at instead of improving their faults, will never be good enough. Not just physically. But mentally as well.

4. Find the coping method that works best for you

Over the duration of a competition, you will undoubtedly be faced with curveballs. It’s happened since the dawn of time. Given the unpredictable nature of the Games, you might crash and burn in an event and need to find the optimal mental state right away to perform at the next one. You need to be efficient when mentally transitioning from one event to the next. 

Some people need humor. Others need social support. Maybe you need to be alone for a while, wallowing in self-pity. Whatever strategy it may be, get it done and do it fast. Because if you throw that crap under a rug and expect it to disappear, have I got news for you… You’ll inadvertently be weighing yourself down with the weight of past mistakes and things you could have done differently. Those people that say “I just didn’t feel like myself”, “Something was off but I didn’t know what it was”? Clear symptom of inefficient coping. If you suffer any kind of setback. Deal with it emotional and rationally as soon as possible to continue on. The competition won’t stop for anybody. 

Desiree Mejia-Naranjo 0 Comments
Feb 5 2019
Performing under pressure: choke or clutch?
choke under pressure

What is commonly known as “choking” in sports, has been extensively studied in Psychology. The cognitive, physiological and behavioral mechanisms underlying breakdowns are of interest when trying to peak performance in elite athletes. At some point, any athlete will be faced with poor performance in competition. Understanding the mental aspects associated with failed execution will make the difference between coming back stronger or slowly falling into mediocrity.

In this sense, we find that the psychological consequences of that first setback is what makes or breaks an athlete (Sutton & McIlwain, 2015). Let’s take for example Rich Froning’s epic fail on the rope climbs in the 2010 CrossFit Games. Or Tia Clair-Toomey’s strategic error during the finals in the 2016 CrossFit Games. Both individuals misjudged the situation at hand and dropped the ball under pressure.

After a much needed period of self-pity and frustration, they bounced back in notorious fashion. Both went on to win several CrossFit Games’ titles in a row. Froning made rope climbs one of his best movements. Tia went from being consistent near the top, to being alone at the summit for any and every event.

The goal of this article is to immerse in the psychological aspects that explain breakdowns in performance. Then, with that knowledge, I’ll discuss how to control the effect of these mechanisms to our advantage, leading to improved execution under pressure.

choke under pressure

Why do we choke under pressure? 

Before jumping into the how, we need the why. Pressure exerts a strong influence in performance but what are the specificities? The body of literature in this regard strongly supports two streams of models: self-focus theories and distraction theories (Sutton & McIllwain, 2015).

Self-focus theories

The main premise of self-focus theories is that situations where performance is evaluated lead to self-consciousness. This makes the athlete try to control motor processes that must be left automated, resulting in impaired performance. Other models (Baumeister & Showers, 1986) have added mediating factors to this theory: reward and punishment contingencies, task complexity or skill level, among others. Masters (1992) went a step further and claimed that explicit knowledge of the skill is what interferes with proper execution. When the athlete considers that it is paramount that he performs well, attempts to control execution using explicit knowledge (the how-to) surface.

The cornerstone of these theories is that self-consciousness is induced by pressure. When in early stages of skill acquisition, controlled processing is necessary to monitor and perfect the skill. Slowly, the mastery evolves to the point where it is no longer necessary to exert this level of attentional processing; it becomes an automated skill. Self-consciousness brings you back to stage one. Paradoxically, consciously attempting to execute an automated skill produces an unwanted effect: failure. 

Distraction theories

“Performance pressure generates worries about the situation which compete in working memory with the control operations that govern task performance, impairing those processes and, consequently, performance.” (Sutton & McIllwain, 2015) For these theories, the fundamental aspect is the limitations that restrain our working memory. When executing any task, our working memory will be under heavy demands. We need to analyze the information we receive from the competition at the same time we are executing the movements. Resources for our working memory are limited as it is. If we try increase the demands by introducing negative thoughts or self-focus, resources are spread too thin, distraction ensues and we hinder our performance.

choke under pressure

From choke to clutch

Now that we know what happens when we choke under pressure, it’s time to switch our focus. What are the psychological characteristics of “clutch” performances? The kind of athlete that hits a winning 3-pointer in the last second or the one that nails the top lift in the last attempt.  Swann et. al (2017) investigated these mechanisms to build an integrated model of the mental states that occur in clutch performances. I’ve selected but a few to keep it short and concise.

Trust your training

Pretty sure you’ve heard that before. But science supports the statement. Both automatic and controlled processes are required for optimal performance and you need to know when to put your working memory to the limit and when not to.

As we know, sports skills that take up a lot of space in working memory, will be more subject to failure. “Chaos” (2018 CrossFit Games) is the kind of event where you need to rely on your working memory and hope for the best. You know not the rep scheme or the movements, you will be needing to come up with strategies non-stop if you wanna make a run for 1st. That means your working memory needs to divide its resources between task execution and problem solving along with decision-making. It’s a calculated risk that you must take in order to go the extra mile.

In contrast, motor skills that are controlled by automated processes will only be likelier to fail in the event that pressure-induced attention impairs these processes. An example of this would be a 1RM event. You already know how much you’re able to lift. You’ve practiced said lift a couple million times in a variety of settings. Of course you gotta play the numbers game, but you need to just stand up to the bar and rip it off the floor. Your brain knows damn well how to perform the movement, just let it do what it needs to. 

Stay optimistic and avoid negative thoughts

Easier said than done, right? I know. But it’s still important to keep it in mind. Self-talk, as discussed in another post, will guide our emotional processing and monitor our performance. If we keep it safe from negativity, self-doubt and so forth, our rate of success will increase significantly.  

Perceive control of your execution in training and competition

Another aspect that is seen among athletes who had a clutch performance is a higher perception of control. Successful task execution is in their hands. It depends on their level of focus. No distractions. So, point your locus of control inside in training and competition. You will reduce feelings of uncertainty when competition time rolls around. If you know your worth, you performance will be up to par with your expectations.

Christensen, W., Sutton, J., & McIlwain, D. (2015). Putting pressure on theories of choking: Towards an expanded perspective on breakdown in skilled performance. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 14(2), 253-293.
Swann, C., Crust, L., Jackman, P., Vella, S. A., Allen, M. S., & Keegan, R. (2017). Psychological states underlying excellent performance in sport: Toward an integrated model of flow and clutch states. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 29(4), 375-401.
Desiree Mejia-Naranjo 0 Comments