Saumya's MindfulRunning

"The makeup of your social circle has profound implications for your own behavior"  Brad Stulberg & Steve Magness Fitness is contagious. Who impacts that the most? The least fit person in your group. Researchers found: "If half of your friends were to become among the least fit for reasons unrelated to you, your own fitness level would drop by nearly 20 percent…" It turns out that motivation can function almost like a disease. It is contagious and can work its way through your peer group in the same way that the flu potentially can. To coaches, teachers, managers, leaders or anyone who deals with motivating groups of people this shouldn’t sound too surprising. It’s referred to as “team culture.” In 2010, the US Air Force Academy set out to understand why some cadets increase their fitness while others do not. They tracked the cohort of cadets over 4 years. Cadets spent a vast majority of their time interacting with peers in their squadron where the squadron was

There are no magical workouts or magical zones. People always want to know how certain exercises impact and how one classifies them. Every time someone asks you a question about a workout, and you tell them exact details, then they’d say “you mean, a Vo2max workout” for example. In your head you think “No. There’s more than that”, but mostly agree. Training has become engrained with the idea of classifying workouts based mainly on distance and speed. It’s human nature to divide the world into neat and manageable pieces.  How can you break free from the grasp of classification and not lose your creativity? Getting “stuck” We have lost all creativity by making it more scientific and calculated. If we see 400m repeats, it gets automatically processed as “anaerobic” or whatever it is in our classification. In the words of Daniel Kahneman (psychologist, economist & author), we default to our fast system 1 thinking, never allowing system 2 to even have a check. In other words, there’s li

  “Being intentional about our surroundings is essential to eliciting our best performance.”  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. From his book ‘The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium’. You are tired after a long day’s work. When you sign off from work, you have intentions to exercise, but that nice comfy couch is calling your name. You can’t resist the pull of sitting down, turning on the TV or just eating and relaxing thereby skipping your exercise.  There is a battle between the goal (e.g. exercising) and your body’s natural pull towards the path of least resistance. Sitting is a lot easier than stepping out and burning calories or picking up the weights at home (since you can’t hit the gym in these times). Our bodies are made to conserve energy, especially when we feel drained. Your brain has tied that piece of furniture (couch/bed) to relaxation and areas in your brain related to taking that action begin to light up. This occurs well before you’ve made the actual decision t