An interesting thing happened over Christmas vacation.  My son, nine at the time, began coaxing me into the weight room.  I use the term loosely; part of my office is taken up by an inexpensive weight bench, along with a a barbell, a few dumbbells, and a set of ankle weights.  The room is so small that the bench itself remains folded in its upright storage postion most of the time.  I’m quite aware that, if it were to beckon to me fulltime in a state of readiness, there would be more occasions when I’d simply interrupt whatever I was doing and spend anywhere from a few minutes to a good while lifting.  That kind of spontanaeity doesn’t occur, however, when I have to move my office chair, release a holding pin, carefully set down the main chassis of the bench, load weights onto it, etc.  Nope, spontaneous weightlifting, an odd notion to begin with, does not often happen at my house. 

But I digress.  For whatever reason, my son has been urging me to do more lifting.  Perhaps he’s caught a sneak peak at me shirtless, noticed the redistribution of my body weight patterns, and thought it was high time I did something about it.  I don’t disagree in the slightest.  Middle aged spread is trying to find its way onto my admittedly middle-aged body, and I don’t like it a bit.

So I took his advice.  Not only did we lift together (I’d bought him a few weights of his own), but in the weeks since, I’ve gotten back into a routine of regular lifting.  And I have other motivations other than my own vanity and the frustrating self-knowledge that I am physically weaker now than at any time in my life since probably about age seven.  An obsessive runner with increasingly balky knees, I’m fully aware that decrepit joints can be protected by assiduously developing stronger quads and hip adductors.  So those are the two muscle groups that receive the most attention.  Last night I did over 300 repetitions of leg extension, and nearly a hundred sideline leg lifts; again, light weights, high reps, yeah, that’s the ticket.

With this renewed strength in my quads and hips, I’m finding that I’m able to increase the distances I’ve been running for the first time in a while.  It’s gratifying to feel my cardiovascular strength returning, as well.  It’s been humbling being limited to running thirty or forty minutes at a pop; I used to regularly do two-hour long runs.  It was the knees that were the limiting factor.  Now that they’re behaving better, I’m having some success at strengthening my running muscles and lungs.

But what about the mind?  I’m rather certain that most adults do very little to strengthen and sharpen the mind.  Time spent in front of the idiot box watching moronic reality shows do nothing but deaden an organ that, much like the muscular tissue in our bodies, responds positively to being stimulated and challenged.  Our brains, left to sit fallow, untested and unaroused, can simply turn into so much mush, able only to perform rote function.  Conversely, a brain that is regularly called upon to seek out new answers to previously unposed questions, to rise above the mundane sameness of Monday-to-Friday nine-to-five routine, is able, like the long forgotten muscle spindles in the adductors of the hip, to once again leap into action, transcending the pitiful state to which it’s been relegated and not only be proficient, but outstrip and outshine anything it’s done in recent memory.

Since I returned to writing several years ago, my vocabulary has been broadened, my willingness to engage in meaningful discourse renewed, and my ability to perform abstract thinking developed far beyond anything it had done since college.  Clearly, regularly reaching inside forgotten recesses or previously unused corridors of one’s own mind has a similar effect to periodic returns to the weightbench.

But can it go further?  How can this pertain to the highly trained athlete?  How can a marathon runner, a duathlete, or an Ironman qualifier find lurking unsuspectedly in his own mind the capacity to use his brain, long reputed to be utilizing less than ten percent of its capacity, to enhance and expand the limits of what his body is capable of doing? 

At a distance-running camp many years ago, a noted sports psychologist stated that visualization can be a key to ultimate running performance.  His suggestion was that, in addition to the interval training, periodization, and long runs that are key to a training program, equally important is to take time, especially immediately preceeding a key race, to visualize oneself in the throes of unparalleled success.  His conviction was that the ultimate difference between two competitors of relatively equal physical skill was the mental preparation that empowered one for victory, the lack of which relegated the other to that of also-ran.

But how does this preparation, this separation, occur?  The psychologist suggested that, on a regular basis, the athlete must set aside time for mental training, equally essential as the physical training in which we all routinely engage.  In a process not unlike meditation, the athlete should sit quietly in a place of comfort, close the eyes, shutting out all distractions.  Visualize driving to the finish line, passing even the most feared competitors, crossing the line in victory.  Imagine the thrill, the satisfaction, the ultimate high of just such a performance.  And see yourself as the recipient of all this glory, this blissful runner’s high, this sense of ultimate achievement.  Not only do you fully believe such a set of circumstances possible, but expect it.  See it.  Make it happen just exactly as visualized. 

We learn relatively early in our training to fight off the mind-deadening effects of lactic acid, of burning lungs, of discouragement and the threat of defeat.  We learn to accept that perhaps we will not finish in first place, and to take equal satisfaction from a performance well-done, a personal best, or a surprise defeat of a vaunted foe. 
Thus we clearly have already begun our mental training, and come far along the highway toward using our mind as a trusted ally.  Now take it to the next level.  Visualize success.  But don’t make it an idle daydream; make it part of your training regimen, and don’t be satisfied at anything less than realization of your visualization. Create your own reality.  It may take some practice, but, hey, that’s what we, as athletes, are all about.  Train your mind to be a valued part of the training that enables you to be the best you an be, using your entire body, not just an isolated collection of well-trained muscle fibers.  Continue training those muscle fibers, yes, but begin a new training program for your hidden ally, the training partner that can enable you to emerge on top.  Much like practicioners of martial arts, engage a discipline of mental powers to focus and heighten physical strength, and bring your athletic prowess to a level of which you have only dreamt previously. 

It’s all in your mind…