CrossFit Mental Game Skill #5: Stay focused!

Its time for you to learn how to stay focused, even when it hurts like hell, your body screams to give up, something unexpected happens and the negative thoughts are fighting their own battle inside your head. Today its about how to stay focused!

One way of practicing staying focused during a workout/performance is using Q-words. Simple words you can focus on to get you through the reps, a skill or your max. The words can be related to your direction of the movements, your technique, or something that keep you motivated. An example could be  - doing a deadlift only thinking ‘up’, or ‘legs’ or ‘heal’. Another example is running focusing on ‘left’ ‘right’, or ‘one’ ‘two’, or if longer distances, breathe ‘in’ out’.

So the whole point is to narrow down your focus to specific words telling you what to do!

This video is  a short demonstration of how you can do it (Please dont pay attention to the fact that my voice is saying the Q words slower than the athletes are working My mistake)  Dont imitate that!

The Q words are your way of quiet your mind from other thoughts. If the rhythm says, ‘up’ ‘down’ – your mind is telling you what to do. And since we know for a fact that the mind-body connection is a truly powerful one, this will work! This will keep you focused!

Start practice. Before every workout, you should pick out your Q-words, narrow down your mind, and start working. In the beginning a good advice can be to ask a teammate to say the words out loud during your workout, this will help you remember even when it starts to hurt. After doing this several times, you will have the ability to do it by yourself. The ability to stay focused when needed!

Let me know how it goes!

/Janne