Coach

A simple trick to improve mental toughness and therefore performance.

Plenty of characteristics set me (and other recreational runners) apart from the pros. First, I’m not super fast or winning races. Second, I’m a health and fitness editor who writes about running, but sadly, the actual act of clocking miles doesn’t take priority like the full-time job of pros.

It’s easy to spot these external differences between me and elites, but the internal or mental ones are less obvious.

After talking with Brant Stachel, mental performance coach at CEPmindset, and USATF-certified endurance coach at Fast and Free Performance Coaching, who has worked with more than 25 athletes on national teams across the U.S. and Canada, I’ve learned there’s one distinct difference between how elites and I handle the mental side of training and racing.

This difference comes down to how we deal with negative thoughts. And the best way to approach your negative thinking is to treat it as you would an annoying salesperson, Stachel says. More specifically, if a salesperson comes knocking at your door, you might acknowledge them, but that’s it. You’re not inviting them in.

Learning this mental skill can help you improve your performance. “Acceptance and commitment therapy [ACT] is an action-oriented psychotherapy tool that involves flexibility in accepting emotions or thoughts that might be difficult, rather than just trying to avoid them,” Stachel says. Trying to avoid negative thoughts often just causes you to think about them even more, he explains.

For example, once I noticed I was running much slower than my target pace during my last speed session, I started to second-guess my ability to run a 2:30 half marathon. Not hitting my pace target was all I could focus on for the majority of the run, until I voiced my frustration. (I named the feeling.) I realized I was frustrated because I want to get faster (the why). But I came to terms with the fact that I was running as fast as I could, and I committed to figuring out why I was struggling to increase my pace. As I thought about it, I realized I didn’t get enough sleep the night before, and I didn’t properly plan my fueling strategy for that run.