POP Your Way Through Workouts You Don’t Feel Like Doing

We have a real treat today, rockstars! Below is the first guest posting by our friend, Bob Calabritto.  He is a guest columnist for Cosmopolitan Magazine ("A Guy's Perspective") and has a very knowledgable athletic background.  Let's dive in!

POP Your Way Through Workouts You Don’t Feel Like Doing
Bob Calabritto, exclusively for ZenTriathlon.com

Every athlete has been there - facing a training session dead in the eye, dreading the thought of what’s to come, walking the psychological tightrope that separates getting it done from “I’ll make up for it tomorrow.”   Often times we are able to clear that hurdle and begin the training, only to have that monster of mediocrity continue to cast uninspired waves of dread within our heads, allowing even the smallest unplanned event - someone jumping in our lane, a red light that refuses to turn green, a foot plant in dog poo - to cause us to pull the pin on the session and think “it’s just not meant to be today.” 

Every athlete has been there, yes. Every athlete has also been in that place where we didn’t feel like getting to the gym, or doing that run or swim or bike, but we did it. We felt we were never going to pull it from within us to begin the session, let alone finish it and it turned out to be one of the better session we had. The lethargy turned to energy. The energy turned to enthusiasm and the enthusiasm turned into a high. You experienced what I like to call a SODA “POP”. 

All those wonderful ‘feel-good’ chemicals in your brain - Serotonin, Oxytocin, Dopamine and Adrenalin - which were previously suppressed because of your mental state, popped to life after you began and finished your work-out.  Finishing those training sessions, the one’s you didn’t feel like doing in the first place, are some of the most rewarding.

So next time you are on the fence, contemplating aborting a particular session or if things aren’t exactly going as planned during a session or even a race, think about that SODA POP feeling you will get when you finish. Imagine the words SODA POP written on a huge sign in your brain and feel that feeling whenever you look at that sign.   POP your way through that workout and pat yourself on the back for behaving like a champion. 

Comments

[Drew]

LOVE IT!!!!!