Don’t Give In.

As a high school cross country coach, I wanted to create a mantra that would take athletes minds off of the ever-growing discomfort that comes with distance training/racing and redirect it to a specific executable action. The best mantras are short simple phrases. As with anything, the more you utilize them in training, the more effective they will be on race day. The key to not giving in when “it gets real” is to refocus your attention to what you are doing at that moment in time. Legendary Ironman Dave Scott used the manta “Do what you can do in that moment.”

“Don’t Give In” was a phrase intended to be used both verbally from coach to athlete as well as silently in each athlete’s own head. This silent individual conversation can also be called self-talk. How you talk to/with yourself is fueled by your thoughts. This self-talk creates your attitude. Your attitude then influences your actions. Self-Talk, Attitude, Actions…This is a never-ending cycle that determines how you view the world and events around you. This self-talk reveals one’s self-trust. Self-Trust is belief in one’s ability to succeed in specific situations, also known as self-confidence and self-efficacy. Inputting good, positive thoughts from the beginning of this cycle is required for optimal Output. If you are going to create a self-fulfilling prophecy for yourself, why not create a positive one?

“Project on the Outside, How You Want to feel on the Inside.

It’s so important to understand the communication process between emotions and the muscles of your body. When you’re angry, sad, or fearful the muscles of your face, shoulders, arms, and legs become stimulated in emotion-specific ways. You immediately start looking the way you feel: angry, sad, or afraid.

Unless, of course, you’re a great competitor and it’s competition time. Great competitors have learned to reverse the stimulation process. To achieve this feat, which is essential to their competitive success, they use the same transmission channels that consistent losers use.

However, rather than allowing their emotions to stimulate their muscles in the losing way, they use their muscles to stimulate the emotions they want to feel in the winning way.

The link between emotions and muscles runs both ways.”

Jim Loehr from The New Toughness Training for Sports

Staying positive in the middle of workout or race is much easier said than done. Your mind begins to sense a growing physical pain from the completed exercise. As your mind begins to sense this pain, it brings your attention to it and eventually zeros in on this sensation. The feeling of discomfort consumes your conscious and you do not see a way out of it other than giving in and slowing down. The majority of the time, the brain gets in the way of the body. Quite simply, your brain gives in before your body does. So knowing that the focus of your brain can be the limiting factor, what can athletes do to refocus their attention? A mantra- Don’t Give In.

Scientific evidence for this:

Psychobiological Model of Endurance Performance: The study “Talking yourself out of exhaustion: the effects of self-talk on endurance performance.” demonstrated that self-talk significantly reduces rating of perceived exertion (RPE) and enhances endurance performance. The findings support the psychobiological model of endurance performance and illustrate that psychobiological interventions designed to specifically target favorable changes in the perception of effort are beneficial to endurance performance.

Exhaustion which limits the ability to sustain aerobic exercise is created by the conscious decision to terminate endurance task performance. The model suggests that perception of effort is a critical factor for endurance performance; hence, endurance performance might be affected by any physiological or psychological factor influencing perception of effort exhaustion (Marcora et al., 2008, 2009).

Why Don’t Give In?

The main objective with this phrase was to help athletes recognize this negative self-talk and separate themselves from it. By separating themselves, they are able to return their attention to the task at hand- making sure that their movements and breathing are both effective and efficient. This helps athletes not focus on how much further they have to go and speculate about how they will handle it, rather focus on that moment in time and their controllable actions. Life is made up of moment after moment. Success is made up of winning more moments than you lose. To win the moment, you have to be in the moment giving effort.

“One of the hardest but most important practices: realize that you are not the stuff inside your head. You are the awareness that decides what to do with the stuff inside your head. The ability to choose which thoughts to pursue and which to leave behind is key to everything.”

Brad Stulberg

The more you Don’t Give In at practice, the better you get at it and the better you can apply it on race day. Repeated behavior becomes habit. Not giving in over and over again leads to the automation of this behavior both in training and competition. Practice Habits lead to Competition Habits lead to Competition Results. Talent is a Gift, Greatness is a Choice.

So who should athletes not give in for? Most importantly, the Team. Knowing that if you do give in to that voice you are letting down your teammates is powerful motivation. Along with this, not giving in for yourself is powerful as well. I like to remind athletes that you did not train hard so that it would not hurt, you train hard so that you can handle it.

“If comfort is your top priority, then anything other than the easier options are emotionally filtered into the category of ‘too hard’. Once you favor the comfortable options and tell yourself the alternatives will be hard, your emotions attack the alternatives and your mind rejects them.”

Brian Kight

Above and beyond the world of running, I wanted to give athletes a phrase that they could use when life gets tough. A mindset that would help them delay the gratification that comes with choosing the quick, comfortable option and help them see that other choices exist. A phrase that would help them to focus, reflect, and choose the best option for their current situation.

Don’t Give In.