CANADIAN PHYSIQUE ALLIANCE July/August 2020 | Page 20

by Lesley Timbol
Mental training is the key to
favourable placements and
let me tell you why.
Bodybuilders are used to
hiring coaches to help
them with their diet and/
or training but who helps
them with specific, proven
strategies to coach them
when they get too much
in their own heads? This
is shown when they ask
themselves too frequently during
their offseason whether or not they should
eat more, change their macros, change
their training tempo &/or rest periods or
even training style, including cardio, and
so on. The real challenge is when prep
is in full swing. When carbs go down, the
ability of the brain to think rationally tends
to go down. Our fears or insecurities come
out. Comparisons to other bodybuilders
on social media create a sense of doubt or
urgency to ‘step it up’. The result is spending
too much time wondering which variable(s)
to change and changing too many at once
while not giving it enough time to see
whether or not changing one variable works,
listening to too many people and trying to
do what they do thereby not listening to
your coach, almost panicking and training
with heavier weights potentially causing an
injury, elevating your stress hormone which
impedes fat loss and can negatively affect
your sleep thereby affecting your recovery,
and the list literally goes on. Peak week and
especially on show day, emotions can run
high. Adrenaline is fine but it is important
to learn how to control those butterflies.
Mental challenges range from person
to person. Do you have a fear of failure or
even success? Either one can lead to selfsabotage.
How do you deal with distractions,
not just when you’re training but also while
in prep? How do you deal with life’s curve
balls (e.g., Covid-19 so you can’t train at a
gym, loss of a loved one, fighting with your
partner)? Have you ever been injured? How
do you deal with that mentally? Does it
cause you to be ‘stuck’ with your motivation
for instance? How do you deal with the
myriad of ‘worst case scenarios’ that flit
through your mind, which tends to increase
the closer you get to your show date? Do
you use negative self-talk, i.e., saying I have
a shitty (insert whatever body part)? Do you
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