Head Games- Tapping into my Sub-conscious

We've entered the phase of Ironman training that feels like perpetual mono. Luckily, I'm feeling inappropriately good and my nagging ankle injury finally took an uptick toward the "new and improved." I have to admit, the last six weeks have really weighed on my team morale and challenged the depth of my mental and physical training. But yesterday, after my bike ride, I was able to run 4 miles pain free-- I felt like I was on top of the world! Cha-CHING! With yesterday's minor triumph, I am finding it much easier to adopt a hopeful attitude toward the even tougher training to come (16-20 hour training weeks). I've reached a critical mass of hope.

Although I feel a bit behind in my training schedule, I am confident I can pull my shit together. And I am going to incorporate any and all "tricks", no matter how seemingly wacky, frou-frou, psycho-spiritual, or "out-there" they may seem.

In fact, from footballers to golfers, many professional athletes bank their success on the advantages their off-the-field coaches and brain-training brings to their game. In some half-remembered book about Lance Armstrong, I recall the author asking one of Lance's trainers if Lance represented the upper limit of human performance. He enthusiastically predicts, "No way. We haven't come close!" He points to the power of the mind, meditative trances, the mastery of breathing, just to name a few.

Trick1-Nutrition
If the peleton's performance enhancing drugs can improve performance, why couldn't radical nutrition? Is the price of radical nutrition too high for most athletes? I'm hoping yes, as it pertains to my competitors. Preeminent to this year's training plan has been my radical commitment to learning about and then eating nature's absolute best stuff. Have you ever heard of a slow cheetah? Aren't all cheetahs dang fast? Yes! If they eat as nature has taught them to eat over the last millions of years, they end up racing pretty fast. Although my diet rubs against our relatively nascent culture (a blink of an eye compared to the evolution of our GI-system), there is so much evidence to suggest that fruits and veggies in their raw, organic, home-grown, and nurtured forms are an optimal nutrition sources for human performance...and more importantly, for optimal off-the-field living, which performance enhancing drugs can't very well deliver on in the long-term.

Trick2-Subconscious re-programming
Many studies on the power of the subconscious have similarly inspired me as possible untapped (and low cost) advantages. Even though we think of ourselves as being a species with free will, over 85% of our "decisions" are made in the subconscious. And with the kinds of messages that we surround ourselves with, it's a miracle we have any self-esteem or creative energies left at all. In a single day, we're exposed to literally 1000's of advertisements calling attention to all of the unimportant things we don't yet have. So, I asked myself what might my inner-world look like if I could actively participate in the design process that feeds into a more healthy subconscious.

Tulips are pretty-- duh. But, FYI, they are the same flower my beautiful bride decorated our wedding with. We planted zillions of bulbs just to find the ones that were the right color and blooming at the right time. They are the sexiest flower and one of the first signals that the darkness of winter is over. They feed my soul. It's important to me that they are in front of my house. 

The sight of someone wearing a white coat is enough to make my uncle faint. He spent much of his youth in the hospital undergoing hernia surgeries. In an equally powerful but opposite way, I have begun staging my surroundings with feedbacks that I want coming my way. Most people seem to stop with that nice refrigerator magnet.

That's very nice, but I'm leaning toward a larger dose of bad-ass (like my tulips). I'm not exactly playing the role of every defensive lineman littering his house with pictures of Tom Brady that say "Must Kill Quarterback", but I'm not far from that.

Subconscious messages also motivate me to keep my car, bedroom, and office clean even though I have no time or energy for that. Chaos stresses me. My goal is also to fill my world with lush overgrowth, warm light, kind people, fresh perspectives, abundance, clean energy, feelings of freedom, and of course, successful race results.

EVERYTHING = food
Drinking fresh squeezed OJ was one of my first and most important "messages" to feed myself. Not only is the juice the friggin delicious doge in itself, but the fact that I'm darn special enough for something my family only drank on Christmas morning-- that feeds me in another way--yeehaw! In fact, having cornucopias of tropical fruits all over our house actually helps feed the subconscious vacationy thoughts of joy, relaxation, and vitality-- way different than the messages that we tell our subconscious when we surround ourselves with hermetically sealed, processed, dehydrated, reconstituted, pork rindy niblets. Is that why we succumb to working in stale cubicles, wasting away in traffic, and then bliss-out with reality TV?

Trick3- EFT
My amazing aunt turned me on to Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), with a forewarning that is was "out there". Of course, that piqued my interest. But since it is a combination of acupressure, conditional response building, positive-reinforcement, and mediation, now I almost consider it not out there enough. (Just kidding). It's simple, quick, and it works. And if it doesn't work, then the placebo effect helps. I've been doing it on my 1 hour commutes up to Dayton for my ankle and general workout recovery.

Trick4- FINI technique
In training, as in home construction, sometimes the insanity of lofty goals and excessive planning is too burdensome in itself. We can only take so much elevated consciousness. The FINI technique comes in handy when your brother-in-law asks, "Is this two-by-four level?" And you simply have to respond, "Fuck it. Nail it."

It also works with diet... when I'm on a date with my honey and I've been 100% raw all week, but they've got a killer veggie burger at Green Dog Cafe. For a second, I think to myself, "Should I ask for a big made-to-order concoction that's not on their menu and that they'll just turn into an underwhelming salad?" Sometimes the answer is simply "FINI" (as in, "get the darn veggie burger.") Stress, whether, chemical, emotional, physical, or even perceived, can be counter-productive to training.

World Cup champion skier, Bode Miller tried to live exclusively by this alternative approach. Drink beer, party hard, and ski fast. Even so, after Miller's disastrous showing at the Turino Olympics, where he admitted to skiing wasted, Miller changed his training regimen to include going to bed early and waking up early enough to always be the first skier on the slopes. In 2010, he won gold.