Mind of an Athlete

By Priscilla Tallman

I’m in the middle of a battle between my mind and my body.

I’ve struggled in this department before maybe in a more traditional sense where the mind is the one I’m trying to overcome. In the past it may have been finding every excuse to stay under the warm covers instead of waking up to hit the gym, or perhaps letting the rowing machine spin out the last several seconds instead of getting in a couple of last pulls.

Situations like these are things I might consider part of my “mental game,” areas where my mind wants to quit and, therefore, so does my body.

That battle is all too common, but this current conflict is different. This time, it’s my mind that won’t let me off the hook. My body is saying “not today” but my mind is saying “get up, let’s do this.” Now, I’m not necessarily complaining, the mind is a powerful thing and, so, this works mostly to my benefit. But when I signed up for the CrossFit Open three months after tearing my meniscus and only two weeks after being cleared to full-range squat, even my own body was like “you have got to be kidding me.”

My brain? It’s all “aw, come on. You can scale it.”

It’s less mind over matter and just a full dose of only the mind matters. And it’s an interesting time for me because as my body feels less and less capable, my mind is calling in the big guns to keep me moving regardless of the excuses my body is trying to feed me, and believe me, I’ve got a few.

Honestly, I blame it on years and years of playing sports and I call it “the mind of an athlete.”

Starting in elementary school, I played competitive sports through high school, college and beyond. I learned some valuable lessons and developed character traits that are often only found in athletes, like mental fortitude, the ability to push physically when everyone else has given up, the persistence it takes to master a skill or movement and many other valuable life skills that have carried me through more than one season (literally and figuratively).

But as I grew up and lived through the ups and downs of my journey, my athlete brain was also doing some undercover work. It was developing neural pathways and creating mental memories I could cash in on down the road and all through my life. It’s these habits and memories, I believe, that won’t let me off the hook in my current season.

See, while my body may not be fully capable of doing the things I want it to do, my brain has been forming habits all my life. Teaching me that not every workout or training session is backed by my 100% undying motivation, not every practice or lifting session is enjoyable, nor do they always produce the desired results I am hoping for and despite these things my brain still tells me to show up and do the work.

What I love best is that when my brain is in charge, my body doesn’t really have a choice. So, I can continue through life (and the aging process) walking around with a list of things that are broken or failing and I can keep that list in my pocket as a reminder of what I can’t do or what I’ve lost…

…Or…

Or I can glance over at the list and say, “Wow. I enjoyed those things to their fullest and now look at all the new things I can try, play, lift and do. Look how much I have left!”

Look how much I have left.

That’s a much better approach to life, to fitness, to relationships or any other thing I hope to accomplish with my time here on earth than the alternative of giving into my excuses.

For now, I’ll thank my many years as an athlete. I’ll thank my brain for developing AND remembering the neural pathways that tell me to move my body because it’s better for me in the long run than focusing on what I can’t do. I’ll thank my brain for the ability to recognize and differentiate between soreness (keep moving), exhaustion (restore and recover) and pain (rehab).

And though I have the body and athletic prowess of a giraffe, I’ll be thankful I have the mind of an athlete.