17-year-old Tiler, from Keighley, West Yorkshire, is set to be one of the youngest athletes for Team GB in this Summer’s Olympic Games. She will go as reigning British Champion, having taken two British records at the most recent British championships. She is also the gold medal winner at the Youth Commonwealth Games. Sonny Webster is likewise the current British Champion and finished fifth at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, as well as being an U23 British Record holder.

On her selection for Rio, Tiler commented:

“I am so excited and honoured to be representing Team GB in Rio this summer; it’s a dream come true and something I’ve wanted ever since I got into the sport. The next few weeks of preparation are so important and…I’m 100% focused on ensuring that I’m in the best possible condition heading into Rio.”

Bristolian Webster likewise commented:

“The Olympics is undoubtedly the biggest stage for the sport. I’ve been training well and my recent performance at the British Championships has given me a fantastic platform to build on; the next few weeks of preparation are absolutely crucial.”

Former female favourite Zoe Smith was taken out of the running with a dislocated shoulder at the British Championships last month. Smith expressed her disappointmentto not represent Team GB at the Games in an Instagram post earlier today, but wished the best of luck to Tiler in the Summer Games.

Tommy Yule, the performance director at British Weightlifting, has expressed his pride at the selection of Tiler and Webster. In a statement, Yule lauded their recent progress and personal best efforts in recent national and international competitions, stating that all coaching focus will now be on giving their best chance of performing well in Rio.

Great Britain has won seven medals in Olympic weightlifting – one gold, three silver, and three bronze. The most recent was won by David Mercer in Los Angeles in 1984.

The 2016 Olympic Games will be held from 05-21 August in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The post Webster and Tiler Selected for British Olympic Weightlifting Team appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Many athletes now have solid individual coaching to help them navigate their nutrition.

But as more and more athletes sign up for expert dieting advice, there’s a few things I’ve noticed from the other side of the fence that need to be considered before jumping into personalised nutrition coaching of this kind. Because you can throw all of the money you like at hiring a great nutritional coach – and trust me, for the right one it’s worth the money – but there are a few things a nutritional coach won’t be able to do for you.

1. Give You Purpose

No matter how refined or individualized your nutritional plan is, dieting can be extremely hard.

Your sister will have a baby, and you’ll have to say no to cake at the christening. You’ll get slammed at the office, but won’t be able to take the edge off with a beer on the sofa when you get home. At the end of a long diet, the amount of food you can eat to continue to lose weight will become very little, and you will be continually hungry. These situations will thoroughly test your mental and physical resilience. To bulletproof this resilience, you have to have a solid and convincing purpose for dieting.

Think long and hard on your purpose before you take the plunge into overhauling your diet. Your coach can help you identify your goals, negotiate timelines to meet them, and be mindful of key milestones, but he or she cannot give you the purpose that’s at the base of it all. That is deeply personal and unique to you. Ultimately it’s up to you to pin it down, write it down, and make sure whatever it is, your purpose is tough enough to carry you through the dieting wilderness.

2. Provide a Final Nutrition Solution

Optimal nutrition is a moving needle. If you’re looking for a way of eating that means you’ll never have to think about your diet again, no coach can give you that. A to-the-letter meal plan that will keep you lean, sexy, and crushing it in the gym for life does not exist. In any case, a static meal plan won’t tell you how to eat when you’re stranded in an airport, or round the in-laws for a birthday dinner you can’t say no to.

What your coach can give you is guidance in the trial and error process of finding out what works for your physiology and your lifestyle. They cannot give you immediate and final answers.

Taking the time to learn about food will develop your skill and finesse of handling disruption, and knowing why you’re eating what you’re eating will enable you to make food work for your goals in almost any situation. That’s why the best coaches advocate habit-based strategies with simple portion guidance, macronutrient splits, and preferred food lists, with some nutrient timing strategies thrown in if you’re an athlete. It’s an empowering method that teaches you to think on your feet and for yourself.

You won’t get a catch-all answer after your first consultation, so don’t expect one. Be prepared to try, fail, adjust, and learn with your nutrition coach.

3. Cure Your Psychological Issues With Food

The majority of dieters – fat, thin, muscled, scrawny– have some sort of mental block or issue with what they put in their mouth. Whether it’s eating too much, too little, or drinking alcohol, either sporadically or all the time, everyone has a weak link to one degree or another. And there’s usually a pretty dark reason to explain it. Childhood trauma, a broken heart or bereavement, a chronically shitty body image, or a powerful aversion to boredom.

Whatever it is, your coach can help you become aware of a psychological issue, but they can’t wave a magic wand and cure it. You are the one who needs to be proactive and seek out the resolutions to your psychological roadblocks. If you identify that your self-esteem is low, for example, seek the reason why. Enlist the services of a counsellor. Hash out some sensitive topics with your parents. Private message an old bully on Facebook and let them know their teasing really screwed you up back then. Search the popular psychology section on Amazon.

Whatever your strategy, delve into your deeper psychology and make steps to resolving your emotional short circuits at the earliest opportunity. Ultimately, you’re the one who needs to ask yourself the hard questions, and you don’t want to be deep into a hard diet only to realise you’re not ready to address your issues yet.

Coaches Are Allies, Not Miracle Workers

Review this list before your initial consultation with a nutrition coach, and keep your mind open as they guide you through what will likely be a long, hard, but ultimately very rewarding journey.

The shift away from printed books pedalling overly general meal plans that don’t provide ongoing support is an unbelievably positive one. But in a “1-Click” ordering world, we need reminding sometimes that some problems will always be too complex for an instant solution. Weight management is one of them. Your receipt for your online diet coaching will appear in your inbox right away, but your results will not.

Recognize your coach for what they are: a powerful ally, but not a miracle worker. A body that’s in line with your goals and your values isn’t all that you could get in return. You might just experience greater independence, self-awareness, and personal growth too.

More on how fitness isn’t a “1-Click” trick:

There Are No Tricks in Fitness

The post 3 Things a Nutrition Coach Can’t Do for You appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Young, resistance-trained males were recruited for the study and divided into two groups. The first group had a lean body mass (LBM) of less than 65kg and the second had a higher LBM of more than 70kg. Each participant took part in two trials where they consumed protein after resistance exercise. In one trial, participants consumed 20g of whey protein and in the second, participants consumed 40g of whey protein after exercise. Scientists measured the muscle’s growth ability at an increased rate with metabolic tracers and muscle biopsies.

A member of the research team, Keith Tipton, highlighted the study’s use of whole body exercises as opposed to earlier studies which examined the response to leg-only exercise. These studies, Tipton claimed, are the basis on which current protein recommendations are based.

He commented:

“There is a widely-held assumption that larger athletes need more protein, with nutrition recommendations often given in direct relation to body mass. In order for nutritionists to recommend the correct amount of protein, we first need to consider specific demands of the workout, regardless of athletes’ size.”

The research corroborated Tipton’s point. The study’s findings found no difference in the muscle growth response between the larger and smaller participants. Their muscles were able to grow and recover from exercise better after a higher dose of protein – i.e., consuming 40g of protein after exercise was more effective at stimulating muscle growth than 20g – but this increase occurred irrespective of the size of the participants.¹

So Who Do We Believe?

Macronutrients and calorie recommendations are an inexact science. The most popular caloric equations used by nutritionists and registered dietiticians worldwide have an acceptable fallibility rate of around 10%, which rises to around 40% when treating obese populations.² Their use is as a baseline from which individual adjustments and ameliorations can be made. Experimenters with intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet also insinuate that traditional protein consumption guidelines (that stipulate intake should be regular, frequent, and at least 30-40% of our total caloric intake) overstress protein’s input to training recovery and general wellbeing. Their evidence at this time is anecdotal, but certainly provocative.

This study’s finding that protein intake is correlated to the type of exercise, not the exerciser, is a novel one. But the need for more research is clear. As the research sample was limited to younger and well-trained men, women and populations who are not acclimatized to regular resistance training may yet need protein adjustments according to their LBM distribution.

References:

1. The response of muscle protein synthesis following whole?body resistance exercise is greater following 40 g than 20 g of ingested whey protein Lindsay S. Macnaughton et al. Physiological Reports Aug 2016, 4 (15) e12893; DOI: 10.14814/phy2.12893

2.The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition. Berardi, John & Andrews, Ryan (Precision Nutrition, 2014)

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The athletically-inclined population worldwide have been glued to the coverage of this year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro since Friday, and the fierce competition between the planet’s most passionate athletes has had us all enthralled. But there’s a puzzled question on many people’s lips: what exactly are those circular bruises on so many athletes’ bodies?

In cupping therapies, suction cups are applied to increase blood flow. [Photo credit: Amy Selleck via Flickr CC-BY 2.0]

The answer is suction marks from cupping therapy. Cupping therapy is a form of alternative medicine in which cups made from glass, bamboo, or earthenware are placed on the skin to create suction. Supporters of the technique believe the suction of the cups mobilizes blood flow, promoting the healing of a broad range of medical ailments, including muscle soreness. Cupping therapy dates back to ancient Chinese and Middle Eastern cultures. According to many historical texts, the ancient Egyptians were using cupping therapy as early as 1,550 B.C.¹

Empirical Treatment Reviews

But mere agedness does not a valid muscle therapy make. In a 2012 review published in the journal PLoS ONE, Australian and Chinese researchers looked at 135 studies on cupping therapy published between 1992 and 2010 and concluded that cupping therapy was only effective when combined with acupuncture or other relevant medications. A good deal of the research also only showed evidence in the treatment of conditions such as herpes zoster, acne, and facial paralysis – not muscle soreness.

With that said, there is some empirical evidence to support the technique. A 2012 study of 61 people with chronic neck pain compared cupping to a technique called progressive muscle relaxation, during which a patient deliberately tenses his muscles and then focuses on relaxing them. Both patient groups reported similar reductions in pain after 12 weeks of treatment, but the cupping patients scored higher on measurements of wellbeing and felt less pain when pressure was applied to the area.

Another experiment involving 40 patients who suffered from knee arthritis found that people who underwent cupping reported less pain after four months compared to a control group, but the cupped group knew they were being treated. This leads to inevitable speculation around a placebo effect. More studies were needed, in all cases.²

Popularity Amongst Elite Athletes

So why the sudden appearance of these marks on the athletes in Rio, most notably on Team USA’s swim team?

Anecdotally, the treatment has been found to be supremely effective. Michigan State University’s gymnastics team has seen incredible results with the technique, most notably with a member who suffers from compartment syndrome. The circulation issues of the individual caused her to be unable to participate in bars during her freshman and sophomore seasons, but the athlete has gone on to compete to an astonishing level on the bars in her junior year after experimenting with cupping techniques under the supervision of her trainer. Her teammates also report less muscle tension and soreness using cupping on a regular basis.³

In Rio, Team USA gymnast Alexander Naddour told USA Today: [It’s] the secret that I have had through this year that keeps me healthy…[cupping] is better than any money I’ve spent on anything else^.”2

A Final Verdict?

As with other alternative athletic therapies, it’s up to you to decide if it works or not. Empirical studies test measurable outcomes, but nothing does a treatment technique more credit than a trial limited to you, the athlete. For me, the body awareness of elite athletes is at such a level that their testimony alone is compelling.

And a placebo effect is still a positive. So there’s still a case for cupping to be the new vogue treatment for the perennial problem of athlete muscle soreness.

The post Cupping Therapy: The New Vogue Amongst Elite Athletes appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Toomey travelled to Rio weeks after securing second place at the CrossFit Games. [Photo credit: CrossFit, Inc.]

Roy Masters detailed Toomey’s 189kg total performance in Rio with clear negativity, listing her as “only the 14^th strongest” woman in the world and commented that “clearly all that exercise…does not prepare a woman for the snatch and the clean and jerk of Olympic weightlifting.”

Fellow CrossFit Games athlete Khan Porter came to Toomey’s defence on Monday night in an open letter to the Sydney Morning Herald on his Facebook account. He commented:

“I’m genuinely blown away by [the] bad mouthing of such an incredible young Australian athlete…particularly…when we should be a nation united in support of our athletes, rather than belittling their efforts.”

He tagged CrossFit and the CrossFit Games’ Facebook accounts in the post, believing Masters’ outburst to be driven by a negative opinion of the fitness movement.

Regardless of the source of his alleged bias, the coverage does appear quite ruthless in its assessment of Toomey’s performance. Masters accentuates her lower ranking in the Group B of her weight category, highlighting that there were nine other athletes “well ahead” who “bettered” her. Masters also outlines the gap between the Chinese world record totals in the snatch and clean and jerk and Toomey’s own efforts, despite his own admission that she has only been training in the sport for eighteen months.

At times it’s a little hard to believe the article was written by a fellow Australian and not another competitor’s national press. Either way, the tone of the piece is surprisingly critical, given Toomey’s performance on weightlifting’s biggest stage just a month after competing at another elite-level event.

It could be that Masters does hate CrossFit. Or maybe just doesn’t care for the Australian Weightlifting Federation. Either way, the piece and its insinuations are not the finest examples of high-level journalism, and that’s coming from someone largely unattached to the arguments that surround CrossFit and its validity as a sport.

To sneer at an athlete’s effort on a platform like the Olympic Games takes a prodigious ignorance of the achievement of even qualifying, to say nothing of a wilful rejection of the feelings of the athlete involved. Masters’ evidence of both puts this article in the running to be one of the most unsporting and downright ugly pieces of journalism to surface around this year’s Summer Olympics.

The post Outcry Over Newspaper’s Coverage of Tia-Clair Toomey appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The study’s findings are promising and indicate a new era in strength and conditioning research. [Photo credit: Pixabay]

In a joint effort between the University of Birmingham and Southampton Football Club, the study analysed the performance of youth players to observe the links between training and injury.

The researchers used a range of player performance data gathered by GPS equipment worn by the players in training, including: total distance covered; distance covered at high speed; total load/forces experienced; and short bursts of speed. This data was then analysed in relation to ‘recordable injuries’ – classified as mild, moderate, or severe – that caused the players to have to take time off from training. The injuries’ timeframe ranged from a couple of days to several weeks.

They found that high levels of acceleration over a three-week training period was the strongest indicator of overall and non-contact injury risk. It also found that a high amount of distance covered (in excess of 112km over a four-week period) and high weekly total loads significantly increased the risk of overall and non-contact injuries. Moderate-to-high levels of distance covered at high speed resulted in higher overall and non-contact injury incidence respectively; and very high weekly total loads and intense levels of short bursts of speed were significantly related to a higher risk of contact injury.

This study’s findings are promising and indicate a new era in strength and conditioning research. All athletes who can safely train harder can develop a greater tolerance for increasing intensity and the inevitable fatigue of competition. With this in mid, GPS technology could pave the way to a new and more resilient generation of athletes.

Lead researcher Laura Bowen commented:

“Our research has huge practical and scientific application. It expands on a recent body of literature in rugby league and cricket which has proposed that the prescription of workloads may be more indicative of injury than the load itself.”¹

The specificity of the findings from the GPS technology can also be used to provide a set of thorough guidelines to help reduce the occurrence of injuries in elite youth football and beyond. The researchers have already been able to recommend that training should be organised so distance covered at high speed and total load experienced fluctuate across a four-week period, with more to come as the technology’s net is cast wider and more GPS studies become available.

References:

Laura Bowen, Aleksander Stefan Gross, Mo Gimpel, François-Xavier Li. Accumulated workloads and the acute:chronic workload ratio relate to injury risk in elite youth football players. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2016; bjsports-2015-095820 DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2015-095820

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The headsets in question are manufactured by Halo Neuroscience and claim to send pulses of energy to prime the athlete’s brain and increase overall performance. This improves the athlete’s response to training and enables the motor cortex to send stronger signals to muscles. Allegedly, this results in more motor unit recruitment, more muscle fibre activation, and greater skill acquisition. For athletes, these headsets are basically purporting to be the Philosopher’s Stone of training.

The track and field athletes aren’t the first on the US Olympic Team’s roster to have tried Halo Sport’s headsets. A case study promoted on the company’s website shows a 13% improvement in propulsion force in US Olympic skiers using the headphones compared to a control group. That said, the study is miniscule – totalling just seven subjects, with the internal organizers also having a clear bias.

For interested functional fitness athletes, some of the team at CrossFit Invictus also tried the headset prior to the 2016 CrossFit Open, reporting a 5% increase in weight lifted in training when performing 20 minute “neuropriming” sessions with the Halo headset on. The write-up specifically touts Maddy Myers’ response to the Halo technology, enthusiastically listing the Junior American records she achieved after using it. I would speculate that this was more to to do with Maddy Myers being an incredibly dedicated (read: consistent) 19-year-old (read: super adaptable) lifter, who had no trouble breaking records the year before without a pair of £495 headphones. But that’s just me.

The retail price is alone is enough reason to be sceptical, and the need for independent studies with bigger samples and less bias is incredibly clear. Nevertheless, the headset and its results are compelling. If the athletes in the Halo test groups come back from Rio with medals, we may just see a new vogue amongst affluent athletes in 2017.

And you thought those goofy electric muscle stimulators were bad.

Teaser photo courtesy of Pixabay.

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P-synephrine is an alkaloid found in a wide variety of citrus fruits such as oranges, mandarins, and grapefruits. Because of its chemical similarities to ephedrine, a nervous system stimulant, it has become a popular food supplement and is included in many weight loss products despite very little existing research that proves its effectiveness.

This study determined to examine the effects of p-synephrine on energy metabolism and the rate of fat and carbohydrate oxidation during rest and exercise. In a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind, experimental study, 18 subjects underwent two experimental trials. The first group consumed a dose of p-synephrine, whilst a control group took a placebo. An hour after ingesting the substance, energy expenditure and arterial tension were measured before and after physical activity on a static bike.

It was found that acute p-synephrine ingestion had no effect on energy expenditure, heart rate, or arterial pressure. However, the p-synephrine did increase the rate of fat oxidation at low and moderate intensities.

So wait a minute. Weight loss pills do work a fat-burning miracle after all?

Not exactly. The data suggested that p-synephrine supplements could be useful to increase fat oxidation by 7 g (0.07kg) per hour of exercise. The maximum rate found for fat oxidation during exercise was 0.7 g/min. That would suggest that in a very best-case scenario, an individual could burn 42 g of fat after an hour of exercise at that level of intensity with p-synephrine. But that is really hauling your ass in a workout by their measure, and the data merely suggests that p-synephrine was behind that and not different individual differences in metabolism between the study’s subjects.

The researchers themselves remained convinced that there was no case for the substance increasing fat loss without exercise, especially not for more extreme weight loss goals. As one of the lead researchers commented:

“[This] should be the aim: to lose a kilo [of fat] per month. It’s less attention-catching than miracle diet slogans, but scientifically speaking, effective change would be at that rate. The rate of loss could increase with p-synephrine, but always [when] combining the substance with exercise.”¹

The authors also highlighted the need for further study to determine the long term effects of p-synephrine in the future.

References:

1. Jorge Gutiérrez-Hellín y Juan Del Coso. ‘Acute p-synephrine ingestion increases fat oxidation rate during exercise’. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (2016).

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What Are Antioxidants Anyway?

Science tells us that humans use oxygen to produce energy, and with oxygen comes the potential to generate free radicals in the body which can cause oxidative stress and disease. As athletes tend to have a higher consumption of oxygen in their training, oxidative stress risk is seen of particular significance to fitness enthusiasts and competitors. And for good reason.

Markers of oxidative stress have been correlated with cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and many other serious health conditions. The nutritional market soon recognized this, and the rise of “anti”-oxidising foods and big “High in Antioxidants!” stickers on the front of every punnet of berries known to man began. Antioxidant supplements in particular are taken by millions, though none tested in randomized clinical trials have demonstrated any benefit to human health or performance.

The leaders of this review sought a clear verdict for the role of antioxidants in human health. They could find none, and even noted that existing research provides more evidence that a diet high in antioxidants can cause harm to health levels, rather than boost them. They also point out that free radicals perform many important functions in the body such as immune defence and hormone synthesis, and antioxidants can actually interfere with these process by targeting healthy and disease-triggering oxygen molecules.

This corroborates previous studies done on athletic populations that suggest antioxidants’ negative effect on our bodies’ adaptation to exercise in controlled performance tests. The professors chairing the review finally note that oxidative stress can be of significance in some conditions – but only in a small proportion of patients, and alternative therapies that just target the triggers of disease are available in those cases.

If you’re concerned about free radicals and their effect on your health, oxidative stress tests are available from health professionals. But it seems that for athletes in general, the jury is still out on antioxidants and their role in supporting your training.

The post The Case Against Antioxidants appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

A report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency found the majority of urine samples from Russian Olympians tested from late 2011 to August 2015 had been tampered with. The International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s decision whether to provisionally ban Russia is due imminently as they explore their legal options ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

An independent commission was set up by WADA to look into claims by Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia’s national anti-doping laboratory. Rodchenkov claims he doped dozens of athletes, including at least fifteen medalists, in the build-up to Sochi and and the 2012 Olympics in London. He is now in hiding in the United States.

Dr Richard McLaren led the commission to examine Rodchenkov’s allegations and found that 580 positive tests were covered up across 30 different sports. WADA now wants McLaren to identify all the Russian athletes who benefited from the programme in a full report and is pushing for the IOC to ban all athletes associated with the Russian Olympic Committee. Russia’s track and field athletes are already barred from competing at the 2016 Olympics in Rio after IAAF voted to ban the Russian athletic federation in June.

Any decision made by the IOC will cause upset. Clean athletes will be unable to compete under a blanket ban if it is decided to bar Russia from the event entirely, but many commentators have argued that a doping program of such a scale requires a strong return message from the IOC. The committee’s president, Thomas Bach, has promised the “toughest sanctions available” and called the findings of the report a “shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games.”

The findings of the report are far more shocking than anyone could have predicted and appear as damaging to WADA and the IOC as they are to the Russian government. As BBC sport editor Dan Roan has pointed out, it is tough to fathom how such an elaborate scheme could take place in a WADA-accredited lab – and why it took a whistleblower to unearth the corruption in the first place.

The Russian government continue to deny the claims, though it has been reported that they have fired the deputy sports minister named in the report. Regardless of what happens, it has been decades since such shade has been cast on the integrity of the athletes at the Olympic Games.

What do you think? Should Russia face a countrywide ban or should athletes outside of the allegations be allowed to compete? Post your thoughts in the comments below.

The post Russia Faces Countrywide Ban From Summer Olympics appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The complaint given to me and many other coaches out there is:

“I’m not seeing the pounds off the scale/boundless levels of energy/ flexibility/strength gains/ general growth of athletic prowess of my peers. Help me fix that.”

The problem isn’t the question, or even the answer. Athletes tend to be aware of what they might be doing wrong, and they’re always open to hearing what we say they might do about it. The problem is that many athletes don’t take any action on what I or any other coach says to them.

Now. The answers to this question they ask – sleep, nutrition, and mobility – are likely the most well-covered topics here on Breaking Muscle, and I’m not exactly writing the seminal article of the century by briefly addressing them here. Yet they are still the three things that hold 99.9% of all athletes back.

So if you’re an athlete with this question, humour me for a brief moment. Before you continue your quest for The Answer to your training problem, take a look below and see if there’s a very common training truth or two that you know, but aren’t actually doing.

1. Get Enough Sleep

If you are crushing five CrossFit classes a week and sleeping four hours a night there is no intervention that will work for you, nutritional or otherwise. It’s that simple.

Sleep is the most important part of recovery. If you’re not making it a priority, you won’t lose weight, get strong, or generally get much healthier. And when studies estimate you need 7-8 hours of sleep a night, they don’t have the athletic population in mind. Those doing hard training will need 9 hours of sleep a night at a minimum, including on weekends.

2. Eat Well – Consistently

This one is like a broken record for a lot of coaches. The athlete spends £100 or more a month on supplements, is frequently on an extreme but short-lived elimination diet, and spends weekends getting shitfaced and eating takeaways. After a month of rinse and repeat, they then wonder why this formula is not resulting in a 200kg squat.

There are any number of real food fundamentals around that can give you guidance on eating wholesome food to fuel yourself properly. Fad diets and movements aside, decent nutrition is general, simple, and repeatable. That’s not the issue.

The issue is that a lot of athletes don’t eat well consistently enough to see results. You need to be eating whole foods within an appropriate macronutrient ratio at least 90% of the time to effectively support your training, and if you’re trying to lose weight, that margin for error decreases significantly. So grub up.

3. Do Mobility Work

You have no business – none – trying to snatch, clean, or squat heavy weight if you can’t perform those lifts to an appropriate range of motion with an empty bar. And I will stress this until I’m blue in the face: you will never get more mobile, stable, or supple without doing some general maintenance on your body to compliment your training and increase your movement capacity.

It’s pretty easy these days, so there’s not much excuse. The frantic “can’t squat now what” search on YouTube isn’t necessary anymore. Pull out your credit card, pay a few quid to a site like ROMWOD or MobilityWOD, and do a led class online for 20 minutes a day. It’s like falling off a log.

Hard Work Isn’t Exciting Or Easy

Listen: I’m not a demi-goddess of fitness living in a gilded ivory tower myself. This stuff is what I do most of the time and what I’m educated in, but it doesn’t exactly blow my skirt up either. These rules and habits aren’t exciting or easy. But the reason you keep on being told them is because they’re the simplest, cheapest, and most effective ways to your training goals. And before you try anything else, you need to give these three simple truths a good run first.

Teaser photo courtesy of Rx’d Photography.

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Your mindset is critical to your training success. (Photo: Rx’d Photography)

In her groundbreaking book, Dr. Carol Dweck outlines decades of research that proves mindset is a fundamental requirement to expressing our true athletic potential. Dweck identifies two discrete mindsets in which humans approach tasks, goals, and achievement: the fixed mindset, and the growth mindset. The fixed mindset is characterized by the belief that characteristics and qualities in a person are set in stone and can’t be changed or improved. The growth mindset, on the other hand, believes that qualities are cultivated by effort: they can be changed, so human potential is limitless.

There are five acute stumbling areas for athletes that best show the expression of the two mindsets. Let’s take a look at them together – and see if you can’t recognize yourself amongst them.

1. Challenges

Athletes in the fixed mindset tend to avoid challenge, as they feel it risks discrediting their natural ability. Being in a fixed mindset means that failure is absolute. Getting pinned under heavy weight isn’t just a missed lift – it’s evidence that the athlete is not naturally strong, and therefore never will be.

Conversely, a growth-minded athlete sees a challenge as an opportunity to get better. When Michael Jordan got cut from his high school varsity team, his mother challenged him to go back and discipline himself. Jordan responded by rising before 6am every day to practice before he went to school. And I think we can all agree that his response to that challenge turned out pretty well for him.

2. Obstacles

When confronted with a setback, a fixed-mindset athlete becomes very anxious. They meet their fear of inadequacy in obstacles and tend to blame their failures on them, rather than any shortcomings on their part. Dweck uses the example of a young John McEnroe blaming his biggest losses on the tennis court on everything from crowd noise to not feeling well and being a repeated victim to outside forces.

Dweck then stresses that an athlete with a growth mindset doesn’t let obstacles slow them down, and points out that there are examples dotted throughout sporting history. For example, despite pneumonia, scarlet fever, and a bout of polio partially paralyzing her leg, Wilma Rudolph won three Olympic gold medals and was hailed as the fastest woman on earth in the 1960s.

3. Effort

There is nothing a fixed mindset athlete hates more than effort. Effort means that the task doesn’t come naturally to them, which is an affront to their natural capabilities. Fixed mindset athletes like tasks they can complete right away and with ease.

A growth-minded athlete sees effort for what it really is: a necessity to the path of mastery. They recognize that they may be the most naturally gifted athlete the world has ever seen but they won’t rise to the top without effort.

Endowment will only take you so far until you need to forge effort to realise it to its fullest potential. Look at Chris Spealler. He was 5’5, weighed 143lbs dripping wet, and demolished hundreds of other athletes twice his size to qualify for the CrossFit Games seven times.

4. Criticism

Criticism produces one of two reactions in the fixed mindset athlete: internalized feelings of uselessness, or an aggressive denial of the criticism or the person providing it. Spoiler alert: neither are terribly useful in the long run.

A great Russian dance coach named Marina Semyonova used criticism as a way of selecting her school’s students. She devised a trial period for her dance school in which she measured students’ responses to praise and correction. If they reacted positively, they stayed. If there were any tantrums or kickbacks, out they went.

Semyonova and many other coaches like her recognized that the best athletes grow from both positive and negative feedback and adjust their training accordingly. They climb the ranks quicker, as they address their weaknesses and move past them.

5. Success of Others

The success of others should be inspirational, not demotivating. But that’s exactly how an athlete in the fixed mindset feels.

When I started weightlifting, I would trawl Instagram for training videos of weightlifters like Mattie Rogers like it was my job. Seeing Rogers lift heavy weight with ease and grace should have fired me up, but all I could feel was how it reflected on me. What I failed to recognize was how hard she worked to get there. Rogers has only recently stopped living at her gym, and freely admits she does nothing else but train. I didn’t see that. Like so many others, I saw incredible performance and assumed she was just born like it.

After reading Mindset, what I see now is an incredible amount of work on Rogers’ part. And through that, I see my own opportunity for growth. That is the growth mindset encouraging motivation via the success of others.

Your Mindset is Your Choice

It’s up to you. You can either see the athletic population as a series of mammals who won or lost a genetic lottery, or an enormous testament to the value of self-belief and determination. I know which one I prefer.

Do you have a growth mindset, or a fixed mindset? A seemingly small adjustment to your training approach could be all that stands between success and failure in your sport.

More on mindset, goal-setting, and the psychology of training:

How to Build an Indestructible Foundation for Training

References:

1. Dweck, Carol S. Mindset. (Robinson, 2006)

The post Do You Have a Fixed Mindset Or a Growth Mindset? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.