Mental Skills for Ultrarunning-Part 1 with Dr. Justin Ross | KoopCast Episode 167
Episode overview:
Dr Justin Ross is a clinical psychologist in Denver, CO specializing in athlete mental health and performance psychology.
He is a recreational amateur athlete himself, completing 11 marathons, 6 Boston Marathon qualifiers, and is a recent finisher of the Leadville 100 MTB. He's also completed 2 Ironman 70.3 distance triathlons, and too many shorter running, cycling, and triathlon distance races to count.
Episode highlights:
(41:46) Dealing with unexpected challenge: should coaches deliberately create challenges to test mental toughness, Michael Phleps example, additional interval example
(47:11) Executing when it counts: having a mental training plan, shifting from external and broad skills to internal and narrow, psychological flexibility
(59:16) Mental TrainingPeaks plan: application, accessibility for athletes, Justin’s twelve-week plan, overview of skills, caveats, post-race reflection, how to adapt the program to your training
Our conversation:
(0:00) Introduction: introducing mental skills with Justin and Neal, highlighting mental framework and key skills
(2:12) Demand for mental training: the fourth wave of training progress, individuality of mental skills
(5:51) Mental training across sports: monetary resources of team sports, yet endurance sports need mental training the most, different skills are required for endurance versus team sports
(9:35) Start mental skills now: mental skills impact your training every day, regardless of whether you are aware of it, skills take practice to develop
(10:58) Mental skills during training: identity and core narrative, practicing awareness as a starting point
(13:35) Mental skills framework: your mind is a trainable skill, four categories of trainable skills including identity and core narrative, emotional regulation, self talk, and attentional control, building foundational skills first
(17:01) Foundational skills: pre-workout, mid-workout, post-workout, building self-efficacy, mental toughness
(19:29) Post-activity comments: a tool for the coaches as well as a tool for the athletes to reinforce self-efficacy, overcoming anxiety by building trust
(21:31) Taper tantrums: using your training to build confidence and honest expectations, pre-race anxiety is normal
(22:57) Trust and racing: trust something specific about your training, trust yourself as an athlete, trust yourself as a person, be specific with motivational tools at aid stations that build on past experiences
(26:08) Goal orientation and motivation: performance standards over outcome goals, enjoying training and racing, the problems with “PR or ER”
(29:30) Performance standards versus process goals: performance standards are qualitative nuances to process goals
(30:47) Self-talk: organic and strategic, motivational and instructional, dealing with technical terrain, using “you” versus “I” voice, cognitive appraisal and interpreting data
(33:46) Interpreting data: example, contextualizing data with feelings, the data is not more important than your own experience
(37:37) Mental toughness: self-efficacy, cycling test where the data disappears, mental toughness is tested when challenging goals are put at risk, testing self-control, ability to focus
(41:46) Dealing with unexpected challenge: should coaches deliberately create challenges to test mental toughness, Michael Phleps example, additional interval example
(43:42) Hiding data from athletes: metric mix-up, examples, RPE
(45:42) Mental exhaustion: lower energy levels and depleting self-control, Pressure Makes Diamonds research study
(47:11) Executing when it counts: having a mental training plan, shifting from external and broad skills to internal and narrow, psychological flexibility
(49:13) Dissociative and associative skills: difficulty of application, attentional control, internal versus external and broad versus narrow, training exercises, race day example
(53:21) Mental skills and recovery: can you do too much, cognitive overload, practicing in small amounts every day adds up to very powerful mental tools
(55:32) Training errors with mental skills: physiological analogy, awareness and goals must always come first, attentional control on long runs and self talk and mental toughness on hard days, recap
(59:16) Mental TrainingPeaks plan: application, accessibility for athletes, Justin’s twelve-week plan, overview of skills, caveats, post-race reflection, how to adapt the program to your training
(1:04:27) Banter: when Justin will write a book, an audio-visual medium for learning mental skills
(1:05:46) Wrap-up: where to find Justin, website, discount code for TrainingPeaks plan
(1:06:31) Outro: giving thanks, show note links, check out Justin’s TrainingPeaks plan, take notes, share the podcast
Additional resources:
Performance Mindset training plan in training peaks
Article Justin discussed on mental toughness- Mental toughness in sport: testing the goal-expectancy-self-control (GES) model among runners and cyclists using cross-sectional and experimental designs
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible
Information on coaching-
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