Welcome to Health & Fitness Friday on The Essential Strength Podcast!
Today’s episode is supported by the amazing folks over at FNX Fit. FNX Fit is a Utah-based company committed to creating the highest quality nutritional supplements and training apparel to fuel your greatness. As a listener of the Essential Strength Podcast, you get 15% off of any purchase with the code ESSENTIAL at checkout!
Let's talk about PSYCHOLOGY - the everyone’s favorite subject from their personal training coursework, right? For those non-trainers and non-coaches out there - that’s what we call a JOKE. There is essentially NO training for how to handle the psychological factors at play in this job, even though physical and mental performance are inextricably linked. The longer I work as a therapist and a coach, the more I realize managing the psychological factors is absolutely VITAL to get people the results they want.
Considering the world we live in right now, most of us and our clients have had out coping strategies and resilience stretched beyond max capacity.
In a recent article for Tony Gentilcore’s blog, his wife - Dr. Lisa Lewis - wrote about resilience and positive psychology - a branch of psychology which offers evidence-based recommendations for living well, coping effectively, and thriving. There are real, measurable benefits to gratitude, meaning, optimism and health relationships - and arming yourself with that knowledge so that you can pass it long to your clients and patients will make you a more effective coach and clinician.
And in another parallel to physical fitness - mental fitness means helping our clients recognize their strengths. How often have you had to re-direct a client who just hit a small PR on a lift but quickly minimizes their achievement by telling you what they still CAN’T do? For some reason, people tend to focus on their weakness and shortcomings, rather than their strengths. As coaches and clinicians, there is exceptional power in illuminating what people do well, while still acknowledging they have room for improvement - WE ALL DO.
I personally am fascinated by this stuff, which is why I’ve enrolled in the Behavior Change Specialist course through NASM. The power that our thoughts and emotions have over our ability to achieve our goals and live a fulfilling life is something I just can’t learn enough about. And Dr. Lewis now has a course for fitness professionals as well - It is called Psych Skills for Fitness Pros, Volume 1.
The article I've referenced in this episode is also the featured article on the Stronger in Motion Reading List - I highly recommend reading the entire thing!
Whether You are a fitness professional, healthcare professional, a manager, a parent, or just someone who wants to give their own mental health a bit more TLC - the concepts of positive psychology and mental agility are worth your time and effort to learn about, I know that’s what I’ll be reading about for the next few days!
That’s it for todays edition of Health & Fitness Friday, catch ya’ll next week!
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