Barbell Shrugged - The Mindset Of Difficult Decision Making - with Dr. Sean - Active Life Radio #16

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up everybody? Welcome back to Active Life Radio on the Shrugged Collective Network. I'm your host, Dr. Sean Pastuch, and today we're going to talk about mental toughness. Yes, mental toughness. I can't tell you how many different versions of what that is I have heard from people like Rich Froning, who has been a client of ours, Samantha Briggs, who's been a client of ours, to people you've never heard of who are tougher than you would ever imagine. And I think that the reason I say those people are so tough is because the way that we define mental toughness

Starting point is 00:00:44 is probably very different than the way you've heard it before. And we're going to get into that on the show. Before I get to that, I want to tell you about some people I think you should buy stuff from. Let's be straight up. What a sponsorship is. You guys know this. I don't take sponsors of stuff that I don't use. I drop sponsors when I don't use their stuff for a long period of time and continue to like it. So go check out Organifi, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com, Organifi.com. Yellow, gold, whatever freaking color it is. I the gold juice i drink it before bed hot it's like drinking tea before bed but without the tea bag it's it's just natural solid easy to mix ingredients i don't have to steep it worry about spilling stuff all over my countertop i just

Starting point is 00:01:41 pour my gold drink into some hot water, stir it up and enjoy like a warm cup of tea before bed. That's going to help me recover, reduce inflammation, all that good stuff. So head to Organifi.com, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com and use the code shrugged at checkout for 20% off. I'd say tell them I sent you, but you can't tell them I sent you. And then, of course, if you're listening to this show on a regular basis and you're like, damn, I'm still dealing with the pain I've had for years. I'm still working out around it. I'm getting too old for this. If any of those things sound like you, head to activeliferx.com slash shrugged.

Starting point is 00:02:30 Activeliferx.com slash shrugged and request to be on a call with somebody from our staff to help you get out of pain without going to the doctor or missing out on your active lifestyle. Now, let's get to the show. And on the show, it's going to be me. And you, you're my guest. All right. Simple experiment. We're going to walk you through a visualization that I want you guys to be able to do. Maybe right now, it's not possible for you to do it.

Starting point is 00:03:05 So that's okay. Listen to the show. And later on, if this intrigues you, come back, listen to it again, and you'll have the opportunity to go through the full visualization. For now, if you have the opportunity to do that, shut off.

Starting point is 00:03:21 You can check how long this podcast was by looking at the duration of the show before you even start. So you'll know how long it is. It's not going to be that long. We're going to talk about mental toughness. So here we go. I want you to close your eyes. I want you to get comfortable. Take a moment. Get yourself into a position want you to get comfortable. Take a moment. Get yourself into a position where you can be comfortable. You can think clearly. There's no kids yelling in the background.

Starting point is 00:03:57 Your phone is out of reach in a drawer. Unless you're using it to listen to this podcast, in which case just turn it face down and put it next to you on silent. All right, here we go. I want you to imagine yourself in the heat of a workout. In the heat of a workout. Things are going pretty well for you. You're moving fast.

Starting point is 00:04:26 The barbell is in your hands. Your grip is still solid. And you're feeling yourself moving through rep to rep to rep exactly where you want to be. Then, that one rep comes where you have to push a little bit harder than you expected to have to push to get the rep done. You know the rep I'm talking about. Your grip starts to become something that you have to think about consciously. Think about your grip. Do you sink it back in? Do you squeeze tighter? Squats start to burn the quads. We're doing thrusters now and squats are starting to burn the quads. You're finding that you're coming out of the hole slower

Starting point is 00:05:27 and having to really push and extend for that last bit of shoulder flexion as you press the bar overhead. You have six reps left, and the one you just did felt like it could have been your last one. What do you do? What do you tell yourself?

Starting point is 00:05:57 Can you do one more? Go ahead. Do one more. What did it feel like? How was it? Did it burn? Did you tell yourself, I can't do another one? Or did you tell yourself, I can do another one? What does it take for you to do the next five? Despite the fact that you know, any one of these could have been your last one.

Starting point is 00:06:25 What does it feel like? What does it take mentally? What do you have to tell yourself? How does it feel to tell yourself that? Take a deep breath. Take another deep breath. Did you finish? That's all I want to know.

Starting point is 00:07:01 Did you finish? Now, what did it feel like inside your gut to know that no matter what was going to happen, you were going to bang out those last five reps. What resistance did you feel? How did you push through it? Okay, open your eyes. Good. That was your first mental toughness experience. Were you able to do what it took for you to move through that workout? If you were great, that's one type of mental toughness and you were able to use it to get through the work. Now we're going to talk about a different kind of mental toughness. Go ahead and close your eyes again. Get nice and comfortable. Take a deep breath. Take another deep breath. Let's go for one more.

Starting point is 00:08:35 Let's really make sure that you're nice and relaxed. Beautiful. Okay. beautiful okay you have been on fire lately you've been working out almost every day you're finally starting to feel the way that you believe fit people feel. Finally. You're on a roll. You've started to develop the habit of going to the gym on a regular basis and working out even when it feels difficult. Good for you.

Starting point is 00:09:26 Good for you. Good for you. Tomorrow's workout is one that you have been looking forward to. Last time you did it, it absolutely crushed you. The weights were too heavy. The weights were too heavy. The reps were too many. The time was too short. You didn't finish. And you've been working on everything that stopped you from finishing

Starting point is 00:10:00 for the last three months so that now, tomorrow, when you go into the gym, you can crush this workout. You wake up in the morning, you text your coach, you say, hey, I woke up this morning with a little tweak in my lower back. Is there anything that you would recommend I do during the day today so that I can come to class tonight and crush that workout? Your coach responds by saying, Oh, you know what? I was meaning to tell you.

Starting point is 00:10:50 You've been doing great lately. I want you to take this week off. The whole week. I want you to avoid the gym altogether. I want you to skip the workout today. Your back bothering you is just a sign that it's time for us to deload in a big way, and we're going to do that both physically and mentally

Starting point is 00:11:21 by keeping you out of the gym. No gym time. I want you to take the whole week to avoid exercise altogether. No running. No swimming. No rowing. You can go on a walk once a day for up to 60 minutes. That would be your exercise.

Starting point is 00:11:54 Outside of that, no exercise. Not for the whole week. Open your eyes. How did that feel? How did that feel as compared to you being in the thick of it, having to push through to do something really difficult? What was the difference? How did you get through the second exercise? Second visualization? What did you have to tell yourself What I want you guys to understand is that both of those situations

Starting point is 00:12:53 represent mental toughness. They do. The second one is what separates good performers from exceptional performers. That is what separates them. It's the ability to make difficult decisions. Tough athletes make tough decisions. People talk about mindset all the time. It's the new hot buzzword. How are we going to develop the appropriate mindset to get you where you need to go? And there's the idea of getting into a cold bath so that you can deal with stress intentionally. There is doing your breath work and your meditations every day. There's a million things out there that speak to the idea of being able to develop the effective mindset. What I want you guys to start focusing on is as much as you focus on the mindset of performance, I want you to push through the workout, why you would feel like I have to push through this is because you are running from the pain of failure. If you don't, you're running from the idea that tomorrow, you know how you're going to feel about the moment that you were in when you decided to quit, if you decide to quit and

Starting point is 00:14:26 you're unwilling to accept the way that that is going to feel. So you push through. One of my mentors who I worked with for a while, Jesse Itzler likes to say, remember tomorrow. That's what you're doing. The reason you push through that workout is you know, I've been here before. I can do this. I will remember quitting today, tomorrow, if I quit right now. So you push through. The second visualization, take the week off. The problem that you run into with that one is that you have started to associate, if you struggled with this, you have started to associate physical hard work with value. And you've neglected mental and emotional hard work that needs to go with it. The main purpose that we exercise is so that we can afford ourselves the opportunity to recover.

Starting point is 00:15:35 All of the gains happen during recovery. They don't happen when we're working out. When we're working out, we're tearing muscle tissue down. We're tearing soft tissue down. We're tearing soft tissue down. We're building bone. Actually, we're breaking bone down while we work out. After the workouts are over, all of those systems do an assess, essentially a debrief, and they go back in and rebuild everything stronger than it was before. That's why training works. We exercise so that we can recover. If you neglect the recovery part, what happens is after the workout's over or after you find

Starting point is 00:16:16 out that you're not supposed to go back into the gym tomorrow from your coach or today from your coach or this week from your coach, you run down the mental anxiety loop of, am I going to lose the habit? Am I going to be able to go back in in a week? Am I going to lose my flow? I was in such a good rhythm. I'm going to feel fat again. I was able to burn off all of my stress in the gym. And all of those are good reasons to go in. The mentally tough person finds a way to replace the gym as the only outlet for those things with something else. The mentally tough person builds versatility in their arsenal against anxiety, in their arsenal against difficult times. Guys, it's going to hit the fan. It is going to hit the fan. What I want to make clear

Starting point is 00:17:23 to you is this. I'm going to tell you a brief story after I'm done with this point. The mentally tough person who wakes up in pain might skip the gym that day. They're not tougher for it going. So I'll give you the example. I was working with Lindy Barber in 2017. I believe this happened in 2017, whatever year it was. It's fairly irrelevant. Lindy found herself in a situation where I told her she needed to deload squatting in a big, big, big way. Everything she did that included a squat had to be with an eccentric control in the rep. So that means everything she was squatting was going to be three to four seconds

Starting point is 00:18:13 down every rep. No bouncing out of the hole. That means no wall balls. It means no squat cleans. It means no power cleans. It means no rowing, no flexion extension of the knee without an intentional and controlled eccentric phase. So we started working together in December. She was on CrossFit Mayhem at the time. Their ambition was to win the CrossFit Games. It just so happens this is the year that they took second. I told her, if we're going to work together,

Starting point is 00:18:50 I need to make sure that you understand this. This year, during the Open and Regionals, you are not going to be the Lindy Barber that you're used to being. You're just not. It might be your first time ever not qualifying for regionals as an individual. Are you okay with that if your team still qualifies? Yes. Great. When you get to regionals,

Starting point is 00:19:22 you are going to be pain-free, but fairly deconditioned because it will have been a while since you cycled heavy or even moderate weight squats like you're going to have to do at regionals. Are you okay with that if your team can still qualify for the games and you don't hold them back? Yes. I said, okay. If you truly mean that, I need to know that you're going to be able to do everything I ask you to do. And at the games, I promise you, you will be the fittest version of yourself that you've ever been and the most durable. She said, okay. She trusted me. We had a lot of come to Jesus conversations between December and the CrossFit Games. Don't get me wrong. There was some back and forth. There was some explaining that needed to be done. There was some expectation setting that needed to be done.

Starting point is 00:20:26 And it was all done. But I remember after one of the open workouts, Rich, who ended up being a client after this season, said, and he posted on Facebook, we're about to do, CrossFit Mayhem is about to do 1,000 wall balls for time. The ball never touches the ground amongst the is about to do a thousand wall balls for time. The ball never touches the ground amongst the six people who were doing the wall balls. Tune in and watch. I believe they had two balls going at the same time. So it was like 500 for the women

Starting point is 00:20:54 and 500 for the men. And I texted Lindy as soon as I saw it. And I said, not you. She knew exactly what I was talking about. She laughed and she said, nope, they know. I'm not doing that with them. That is a mentally tough athlete. The following year, Rich had to hold back for eight weeks after the games in 2016 or 17, whatever year it was. He had to hold back for eight weeks after the games in 2016 or 17, whatever year it was.

Starting point is 00:21:25 He had to hold back for eight weeks before he went back to full training. He made the difficult decision that I asked him to make. That is mental toughness. I want you guys to understand that being mentally tough does not necessarily mean that you just show up and grind it out. Oftentimes that is the mentally weak thing to do. It is the default thing to do. It is the easy thing to do. You've convinced yourself that that's what's necessary, that that's the only way to be great. So of course, you are going to go and do it. It doesn't take mental toughness

Starting point is 00:22:14 to do that. It takes mental toughness to acknowledge that there might be another way, that you might not be doing things the best way you possibly can and to pivot. I'll give you another Rich and Lindy story. I went out to visit Rich and Lindy. And at that point I was working with Tasia as well. I went out to visit them between the open and regionals, believe could have been before the open the following year whatever it was doesn't really matter um and i'm at rich froning's house like the barn that the place that like you know you saw in videos for years but the new one at his house. I'm at CrossFit Mayhem. It's basically like being at Wonderland for a CrossFitter. There I am. We worked out so much during the day on Saturday that I think it was the equivalent of what I would do in about two weeks.

Starting point is 00:23:24 Maybe a week. It was a week's worth of workouts during the day on Saturday. And I didn't say no all day. Then, and by the way, I was not fit to do that. Then that evening, we go back to Rich's barn and he says, uh, what do you want to do? I'm like, uh, go to sleep. And he's like, no, I don't work out wise. I'm like, uh, okay, let's bench press. Cause I can lay down if I'm bench pressing. Okay, cool. Bench press. And what else? And I'm like, Oh, I thought we were just going to bench. And Lindy chimes in and she goes, how about bench press and sandbag that's a good idea like that's not a good idea which says it's a good idea so they design this workout five rounds with

Starting point is 00:24:14 a partner but you do all the work then your partner does all the work five rounds five benches 225 five sandbag over the shoulder sandbag 150 then eight reps no no excuse me then it was yeah eight reps eight reps of bench press um eight sandbags over the shoulder for four rounds, same weight on the sandbag. The bench press was two Oh five. Then it was three rounds of 10 reps on the bench press, 10 sandbag over the shoulder. The sandbag is still one 50 and the bench press at that point, I believe was one 85 for the men. Okay. I can't bench two 25 for five. I can bench two5 for like two. So five by five was not going to happen, especially not with sandbags in between. So I'm like, I'm going to scale the weight on the bench.

Starting point is 00:25:10 I'm going to go 205, 185, 165. By the way, that quickly became lighter than that. We did not end up doing those weights. I go to Rich, I'm like, Rich, I've never put a 150 pound sandbag over my shoulder. He looks at me. I'm like, Rich, I've never put a 150-pound sandbag over my shoulder. He looks at me, and I'm exhausted, by the way, from the day. He looks at me, and he goes, what do you weigh? I said, like, 155. And Rich Froning, four-time CrossFit Games champion individually and two-time team champion or three-time team champion at the time looks at me and says,

Starting point is 00:25:47 you'll be all right. Well, fuck, I guess I'm going to do this. I made a mentally not tough decision in that moment and did every single thing that I was supposed to do. I scaled the weight on the bench press because I had no choice and I used 150 pound sandbag. I had never gotten over my shoulder. I ended up doing five by five. So 25, four by eight, another 32. So that gets us to 57 and three by 10. So 87 reps. I went to dinner that night with my friend Tyler McBride, who was there with me. He was coaching Lindy on her fitness at the time, or he was about to be, whatever. I order a sweet tea at dinner. I felt like I could order whatever the hell I wanted. I'd worked out so much. I kid you not, I go to pick up the sweet tea,

Starting point is 00:26:44 and it slams on the table as if I had just chugged a beer and I was slamming the drink down to announce that I had won. I had absolutely zero power left in my left arm. Zero strength. Zero. I couldn't pick up a tea cup. The next morning was a swim workout and then we worked out the rest of the day. I didn't tap out until the workout that was 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 with a partner, muscle ups, handstand walking for a hundred feet, followed by a 2k row while your partner holds heavy dumbbells. When that came up, I said,

Starting point is 00:27:27 you know what? I can't bend my left arm, so I can't do 75 muscle-ups. I have to tap out. But I worked out all day, the rest of the day, the next day. Another irresponsible, physically tough, mentally weak decision that I made. So I understand when those of you out there who are listening to this decide that you want to push through it. I understand why I understand what it takes. I understand what goes into it. I understand the decision-making, the peer pressure, the opportunity that's in front of you. What I'm telling you is tough athletes make tough decisions. Mentally tough people make mentally tough decisions. They do physically difficult things, but most of all, they make mentally difficult decisions.

Starting point is 00:28:19 I've been on both sides. I've made the mistakes that many of you guys are making, and I've made some of the many of you guys are making, and I've made some of the tough decisions to opt out of them. And I just want you guys to know you're not alone in either case, but now you have a little bit of different perspective as to what it might take to get where you want to go. I hope you guys enjoyed the show. I'm going to end this one off with a real simple term pro. That's going to be a wrap for this episode of Active Life Radio on the Shrugged Collective Network. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please head to wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a five-star rating as

Starting point is 00:29:00 well as a great review. If you really love this episode, make sure you're sharing it with the people who need to hear it. Value unshared is value wasted. And of course, if you're looking to get more from us, whether it's coaching courses, one-on-one coaching from one of our staff members to help you get out of pain

Starting point is 00:29:21 without going to the doctor or missing the gym, head to ActiveLifeRx.com slash shrugged. We'll see you there. Turn pro.

Barbell Shrugged - The Mindset Of Difficult Decision Making - with Dr. Sean - Active Life Radio #16

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