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February 15, 2018

GROUP WARM-UP
100 Meter run
:30 Air Bike
:30 Row

PARTNER CONDITIONING
Every 3:00 minutes for 24 minutes
100 Meter run
15/12 Calorie Row
Max Calorie Air Bike
(One person goes at a time for 3-minute interval; the score is total calories from all sets)

MIDLINE
10 minute EMOM
Even :20 Plank
Odd 5 V-ups to Tuck-ups

Training Mindset 

The first Open workout is announced in one week. You’ve been consistent at the gym. Your nutrition is on-point. You’ve worked on extra skills. YOU. ARE. READY! Or are you? How’s your mental game? This is a HUGE element in your performance in the Open. Many athletes train their bodies, but neglect what’s in between their ears: the mind.

I will share here some tactics, some of which I’ve used, that may help you on game day:

  • Breathing. If you get nervous before you compete, try breathing exercises. This can be as simple as, before warming up, finding a corner of the gym where you can lay on the floor and breathe slow, deep, belly breaths. This will help to lower your heart rate and make you feel a little more calm and centered.
  • Anchoring. I spoke to a Sports Psychologist years ago who recommended a technique called “Anchoring.” Basically, think about a moment in your life where you were performing something really well. This could be as far back as childhood sports. Think hard about that moment and visualize exactly how it went: what you did, the sounds, the smells, what you could

    see. When you are vividly reimagining this scenario, devise a tactile cue

    that you will use to elicit the memory of this successful moment. For example, grabbing your wrist. Practice visualizing this positive memory and anchor it to grabbing your wrist. Then, when competition time comes up and you start to get anxious, take a deep breath, perform your tactile cue (grabbing your wrist or whatever works for YOU) and immediately you are brought back to the confidence of that memory. I used to use this in competition when muscle-ups came up because they are not my best skill, and I would get pumped up and really believe I GOT THIS! That confident mindset works! 

  • Visualization: when the Open workout is announced, visualize how you will perform the reps, how you will break up sets, rest tactics, etc. Visualization has been proved to have positive effects on performance.
  • Meditation: I use an app called “Headspace” that has many guided meditation tracks. There is a Performance Pack specifically for sport that gives some great techniques.

Now is the time to get your head right! It takes practice and experimentation to find out what will work for you. Truth be told, for 99.9% of us, the Open workout is another day at the gym and our first and only stop in

the “Road to the Games.” You’ve put in the hard work, so relax, have fun and you will probably surprise yourself.

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