Very recently I have noticed a seriously diminished ability to stop obsessing over things I see and hear and read in the news. I will not go into detail or rail about which side of the current political divide stokes my rage. Let's just say if you're not outraged, you're on the wrong side and leave it right there.

A side effect of this reaction is that my thoughts of rage often accompany me to places where they don't belong. They invite themselves in during the darkest hours of the night, they show up when I pass by houses of neighbors who choose to fly their ignorance from a flagpole. And they badger me when I'm faced with a hard workout on the indoor trainer.

Just recently, I had a long, challenging workout on my training plan that I wasn't exactly looking forward to doing. Long indoor weekend rides are just a reality of living in NEO, but they can be mentally taxing. For someone like me, who isn't overly fond of indoor riding, it's easy to bag a workout when it starts to grate on my nerves. This usually happens immediately before I decide that the workout is too physically demanding, which just makes me realize that my thoughts control my perception of 'too hard' way before my body decides when enough is enough. 

I made the mistake of doom scrolling on social media the night before my workout, and the horrible things that I read (from the fingers of people I used to like!) was festering in my mind. I found myself continuously having to pull my thoughts back from the spiral of disgust I had fallen into. I was literally thinking up responses to the hateful and misinformed comments I read the night before, even though I had no intention - zero - of ever engaging with the perpetrators through social media.  Although I have been practicing mindfulness strategies like meditation for long-term mental calmness, and visualization techniques in which I literally see myself swimming out of a turbulent river and watching the chaos from the shore, these don't help me when I need to short-circuit my mental chatter right now. 

The effect of my mental state on my workout was immediate and direct: the negativity loop was sapping my energy and will to continue. I felt exhausted and defeated physically, mentally, and emotionally. The worst part was knowing that I could have executed the workout as planned if it weren't for my inability to shut off the rage. I modified, then quit the workout early.

Frustrated by what happened, I contacted Dr. Scott Frey, a neuroscientist (and accomplished endurance athlete) who gave a talk at the 2023 Endurance Exchange about the brain and human performance. Scott owns Cerebral Performance, an organization that "leverages the science of brain endurance sports training  (BEST) to optimize brain function, reduce mental fatigue, and enhance cognitive resilience, allowing athletes to push through mental barriers and achieve peak endurance performance" (taken from the Cerebral Performance website).

I asked Scott if there was an immediate fix for my problem. What can I do on the fly to short-circuit the damaging thought process that is killing my mojo and making this workout impossible?

Turns out, he had the answer: Talk out loud to yourself.

The idea is brilliant in its simplicity: if you're talking to yourself out loud, you aren't able to hear (or create) a mental conversation that you can't completely control. It's like trying to listen to AM and FM at the same time - you simply can't do it. Your brain allows for one or the other signal input to process. It can process your thoughts, or it can process what you're saying/hearing - but it can't do both at the same time. So if you need your thoughts to shut the hell up, start talking out loud to yourself. 

I tried this technique on my workout this morning, and I can attest to its success! Of course, I didn't push the envelope by engaging in activities that are my  known triggers before I hopped on the bike, but I could see how this works. By engaging my brain differently, I was able to turn off the spigot o' shit that had derailed my weekend workout. And, as an added benefit, I found that I was a very good sideline cheerleader for myself during the tough sets of the workout!

If you're looking for a way to focus your brain on the task at hand, and away from the onslaught of distractions and mental diversions that have the ability to derail you - you might want to start talking out loud to yourself. 

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

And here's a link to Scott Frey's blog post describing how to use this technique to silence your inner critic:

https://cerebralperformance.com/silence-your-inner-critic-a-simple-brain-hack-for-confidence/