The Coach Amy and Coach Liz Show
Promoting a healthy and positive experience for endurance athletes.
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The Coach Amy and Coach Liz Show

Created with endurance athletes in mind

Created with endurance athletes in mind. Coaches Amy and Liz have a combined thirty years of coaching and seven decades of competing in endurance sports. They cover topics relevant to athletes at various levels of participation: those training for a personal challenge to those competing for an age group placement or race qualification.

 

Getting the Ghosts out of the Machine: Brain Training for Athletes

What is this episode about?

INTRO 0-2:00

Amy, despite producing a podcast, does not listen to podcasts!  However, she did briefly listen to Smartless where they were interveiwing Jon Bon Jovi who talked about the mental side of a 2 year recovery from a vocal cord injury. He had a great quote relevant to our podcast today about mental training:  "I gotta get the ghosts out of the machine. The ones in your head. Your mind still has to remind your body you are fixed".

The Importance of Self Talk

How we talk to ourselves matters. Our Nervous System doesn’t know if it’s ourselves yelling at us or someone else. Speaking negatively to ourselves has real impact on how we feel and what we do in life. How athletes manage their head is what separates good from great athletes.   Using sports psychologists is becoming more normalized - but even it’s still not necessarily available or accessible to everyone.

Reds did a book club The Brave Athlete a few years ago and Liz has wanted to do more around developing the mental skills of endurance athletes.

Internal Family systems (IFS) for SportsPsychology

Liz has been learning about a type of therapy called Internal Family Systems (IFS). This isn’t referring to our family of origin but the "voices" in our head.  Liz calls them our "inside people".  This could be thought of as the narrative that runs in our head often without us realizing it.  IFS identifies these various narratives and helps to figure out what purpose they are serving and how to manage them.  Their intentions are good and are meant to protect or help us.  However, the way these thoughts translate into behavior are not always helpful.  

Liz believes this type of therapy would be really helpful for athletes. 

IFS sometimes is paired with somatic healing.  This is the idea that your body remembers life experiences and we can use that to help heal. The Body Keeps the Score is a book about how and why the body remembers.  This largely deals with our nervous systems. 

Thoughts impact our actions.  Actions can also change our thinking.  This is where practice comes in.  We teach ourselves we can do something by actually doing it.  We learn to trust we can do something.  All of this is hard work and requires intention and choice to practice.  We develop skills to manage our head both in life and in sports. 

August 10, 2024 Reds Tri Team IFS Mental Skills Clinic - Register Here if interested or email liz@redstriteam.com. Thank you!

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