The intimidation factor

This is a topic I really wanted to cover because it appears relevant to virtually everyone I speak to including men!  I have also committed every single faux pas there is: dropping weight plates on my feet (twice), tripping, falling off a treadmill, trapping myself under a barbell, breaking machines, forgetting to shave my armpits and even training in a pyjama top (best not to ask!). The number of these undignified moments is usually inversely correlated to calories consumed so I'm anticipating a whole lot more for the coming weeks.

I don't think anybody is immune to the intimidation factor no matter how experienced, but it is related to how much you care about what other people think and also how competent and confident you feel in an environment. Ultimately, the way to off set this best is to be prepared and there are a number of ways to go about this so you put yourself in a situation for success rather than setting yourself up for something unnecessarily difficult and ultimately failing.

1. Choose your gym wisely

Choosing a suitable gym is actually really important. The people, staff, equipment, the space, they all contribute to helping you stay on track with goals. These can range dramatically from female only to hard core bodybuilding gyms. I choose to train in a bodybuilding gym for two reasons; I work better in a no frills gym and I can always get access to the equipment, two things which matter a lot to me. The downside of this is I am the ONLY female in the gym which is unfortunately accompanied by the most derogatory, sexist, degrading comments. I am pleased to note that this dissipates pretty quickly or perhaps I've just stopped caring or listening! Some gyms are worse than others and I have in fact left a gym for this very reason. No woman should ever have to put up with these kinds of remarks. You can lead by example but unfortunately you can't win every battle.

2. Expect people to look

People will look at you, they'll look at what weight you're lifting but they'll also be looking at everybody else including the other men, so don't take this personally. Never assume you know what somebody is thinking as most likely you'll be wrong and therefore it's not even relevant or important. The question to ask is how are you going to deal with how it makes you feel? The best advice here is to be prepared and to know what you're going to be doing for that session, so you can get on with it without distraction. Being honest with where you're at is important to address as you can take action as to whether you need to top up on a few 1-1 sessions to master some basic movements. This can help drastically with feeling competent. 

3. Know how to use the equipment

In any new gym, there is always a bit of dilly dallying around to get familiar with different equipment. EVERYBODY feels this, no matter how experienced you are. If you don't know how to use something just ask. That is what the fitness staff are there for and they will be pleased to help you.

4. Really take some time to address realistic goals and objectives

There is no better way to fail at a task than setting unrealistic goals. It is a real confidence eroding process, can often induce overtraining and injury and is unnecessary. I believe daily short term goals should almost always be achievable. It's the culmination of achieving these daily targets and doing something well that builds confidence and I can't stress how important this attribute is for everything. It needs to be nurtured very carefully. It's also really important to be clear about why you're in the gym that day. When things get a bit tough - you need to be able to answer the question why are you there? and feel like the answer matters.

5. There is NO magic fitness program formula

Once the basic weight lifting moves have been learnt, the fitness program is next. This is something I am constantly experimenting with, because I love experimenting, but what becomes very apparent is ...there is NO magic formula. For any one goal, there are infinite possibilities in how you get there. Some are significantly harder than others! and I opt for the path of least resistance these days and the minimum effective dose! In fact, it's my standard question for any problem or dilemma at the start of the day - what is the path of least resistance for this task or situation?

It is however important to have a plan and one that fits with both your physiology and psychology. There are a number of generic plans floating around the internet which can be used as a good template but this leads onto the next point. If you are using a generic plan or even if you're using an individualised one, it's still really important to know when and how to modify it - the art of ebbing and flowing. 

6. Be flexible and open to possibility

This is slightly harder, because you have to be attuned to your body and trust it but it is so important to be able to modify or tweak a plan. This can make all the difference to progress. There are so many variables that contribute to progress; nutrition, recovery, training program, intensity, consistency, menstrual cycle...the list is endless. Knowing when to push and when to back off are two great examples; putting in an extra rest day or forgoing a rest day. Of course, you have to give a program time to work (usually about 4-8 weeks depending on fitness level) but within that, listening to your body is essential. During competition prep, the week before my period, I don't diet and I throw in a planned cheat meal.  This is very unconventional bodybuilding wisdom but I have found dieting during this time has the reverse effect, so I'd rather maintain my weight through eating a good amount of healthy clean food than struggle through calorie restriction and still end up putting on weight. 

7. When all else fails - Fake it

There is a real argument for "faking it until you make it".  Just as mind affects body, so does body affect mind. So even forcing a smile or displaying "dominant" poses affect the neuroendocrine system. The following paper is an interesting take on how adopting "power poses" for 2 mins can increase testosterone, decrease cortisol and lead to subsequent behavioural changes. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20855902 -Amy Cuddy talks really well on this and there are a number of her talks on YouTube. 

Tweaking body language to appear more confident is a good start: standing taller, basically any body position that makes you appear bigger (a dominance strategy adopted by primates and other animals).

So acting confident even though you don't feel it can still get you half way there if not the whole way. 

Wonder woman power pose: hands on hip, legs shoulder width apart

And lastly.....

8. Just do it!

How do you make hard things fun?

My love affair with bodybuilding came about as part accident and part experiment.
For the last 20 years I have been competing in some kind of sport but always with the motivation to just win, at all costs. Not always, but more often than not I achieved those things, but there was something distinctly vacuous and unfulfilling about the journey. Successful moments were often extremely fleeting and always accompanied by a tremendous emotional crash. Failure was often irredeemably corrosive to my confidence and sense of self. In truth it was a very anxious and tumultuous way to spend one's time. That feeling of it never being enough eventually makes one weary and bleary eyed.

As a scientist working in sports science and a strength and conditioning coach, I decided to embark on a giant physiological and psychological experiment working in a new sport; bodybuilding. The main aim was really to try and figure out if I could learn to enjoy the journey. I chose bodybuilding because it's not easy and it fit beautifully with my criteria for this experiment, which was:


1. To see if I could self-coach myself to be competition ready, without any performance enhancing drugs. 

2. To learn to enjoy the process

A radical shift in mindset 

Making bodybuilding prep fun, is not an easy task because you're combining training with harsh dieting over a 12-16 week period. The diet part is the tricky bit as this can substantially chip away at one's moods and mental resilience. To cut a long story short, I achieved both of the above objectives and the strangest thing happened when I made the conscious decision to train inside-out - mind first, body second; my life got so much better and so much happier. It also got me a silver medal in my first competition and I can honestly say I enjoyed every day of my prep. 

There were some very desperate hard days, both physically and emotionally, but hard can be good. There is a real difference between making something pointlessly hard and something that is hard because you need it to progress. The latter version was the majority of my hard days and so there were tears beyond what I even imagined possible for a human being, but these were met with an acceptance rather than resistance and it changed the dynamic completely. I emerged much better for it and I learned optimism amongst a whole cacophony of mental skills just through facing fear and limiting beliefs. Bodybuilding is a surprisingly good tool to do this because being exhausted is very revealing. You can't hide, it strips you to your core which is actually a great opportunity for change. 

Challenges are great, they force an evolution and growth of character but hard things can also be really fun and that was my big lesson. There is always choice about how you do any one thing, so doing something with an appreciation and joy is very different from doing it with dread, fear and begrudgement. Sometimes all you need is a fleeting moment experiencing a positive state and that is enough to know you can never go back to old ways of doing things. That is my experience with bodybuilding but it can be applied to all things. The message is the same; it is understanding how to create enjoyment and a positive mental state at any time and place..and these together fuel motivation - which is the driving force behind being able to do one's best.

The important and unimportant questions to ask? 

Knowing that one can learn optimism changes the kinds of questions we should ask about how best to tackle a task. With reference to training, these questions can be narrowed down to:

1) How do I make my training today enjoyable?

• Adjust the focus

As an example of how I did this; I started with the understanding that being creative and experimenting with designing programs is something I really enjoy. I therefore always looked forward to trialling my session, to see how effective it was. This shifts the focus from the body (the end product) to something more intrinsic. 

• Tweak intensity

Enjoyment of training is also very much linked to how well energy levels match up to training intensity and volume. When you're very tired, hard hard effort is fairly miserable. This matching of task to skill level or energy level, is the basis of the "flow" state originally proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and is thought to be a real contributor to human happiness and optimum performance. Essentially, the level of work needs to be appropriate so it's not too hard, but also not too easy and it just requires being mindful of one's energy on a day to day basis and being able to tweak accordingly. 

The other bonus of enjoying one's training is it snowballs into consistency, confidence and a positive mind set, all necessary requirements for feeling prepared. 

2) What do I need or not need in my life or situation at this precise moment to support my goals?

This is an interesting one and can be quite carthatic. It's an opportunity to remove all the things or re-evaluate relationships that don't serve you any more. As a demonstration of my very "un-abominable" will, I not only had to put some chocolates in the bin but then proceeded to cover them in washing up liquid, because quite frankly I didn't think plain "binning" was enough to deter a pre-menstrual, dieting, tired female. So there we go...placing oneself in a situation for success - not entirely dignified but it works. 

Once these questions are addressed, the rest is just strategy, following through and putting one foot in front of the other. I believe answers to these questions are the bread and butter of all training program, as it creates a solid foundation. 

Sleep - the elixir of life, weight loss and performance!

My main requirement for performance and being a fairly normal human being is sleep! This is a huge one for me and without good quality sleep (and a fair number of hours of this), there simply would be no prep and no competition; come to think of it probably no friends either! Ten years ago I would have managed pretty well on 2 hours sleep a night, but absolutely not now. I'm a blithering dysfunctional mess after a couple of nights of not getting my full quota. I can survive but I certainly do no thrive. 

There are huge numbers of studies correlating sleep with motivation, mood, appetite control, performance, cognition, pain perception, the immune system. It is also something I have come to prioritise over everything else because sleep deprivation is one of the biggest enemies of fat loss. This can be for many reasons, but there is strong evidence to say lack of sleep negatively affects the balance of the appetite regulating hormones ghrelin (hunger) and leptin (feeling of fullness), so a person is more prone to feeling hungry and craving sugar with the added insult of lowering mental resilience. The net result; fighting the urge to attack a pot of ice cream is much harder. It also affects stress levels and fatigue which further exacerbates the problem. 


A person's sleep requirement varies drastically from person to person and also at different times so it's a very personal one. During prep, sleep is one of the best things to promote good recovery, mental well-being and it's cheap! There can also be a vicious cycle with dieting and sleep, whereby harsh calorie restriction can create sleep problems and this can perpetuate a negative cascade of problems related to fat loss goals. Prioritising sleep (for me) therefore comes first above everything else. The moment diet affects sleep I address this pretty quickly, upping daily calories or adding in a pre-bed snack. What I don't do is endure it!

The revelation that not everything has to be hard and actually too much struggle is a sign something is probably not right, has completely changed by life. I am a much happier person because of this and consequently success has come a lot more easily. Sometimes working less hard but in the right way is a better strategy for sport and life. 

Emotional Fitness

With the introduction of new sciences that bridge the gap between the traditional hard sciences, we see the emergence of things like "happiness" and "mindfulness" research and with these come a whole new glossary of terminology; which I then have to furiously google to understand. 

"Emotional fitness" and "anti-fragility" are two rather fanciful examples but not a bad attempt at summing up what essentially means the strength of one's character. I'd like to go one step further and suggest that being mentally robust is about having a flexible personality, as it is this which allows someone to navigate relatively seamlessly through life's little ups and downs, which in turn just makes life more enjoyable. No personality trait is a virtue (or hindrance) at all times; there is a time and a place where it works best and understanding this can prevent a significant amount of head banging - something I know lots about and it gets you nowhere except exhausted. Similarly, and most demonstrable in females, we are different women at different times of the month and understanding this, contrary to popular belief can be used to our advantage. 
Learning to be flexible is possible and actually it's easier than one may think; it just takes a bit of awareness of habitual behaviour. It could be trying a new response to a situation, argument or just doing something/anything a different way. The book "Flex" (see below) does quite a good job of the "how to" of this. 

Having competed and worked in sport and fitness practically my whole life, you get to see a lot. I've experienced a lot of success and failure, disappointment, illness, injury and the whole spectrum of emotion that goes along with that. I've also seen many other people go through it as well. Nowadays I tend to coach myself in anything I do and at the moment my chosen sport is bodybuilding. Being self-aware is a necessity of any self-coaching venture but it also allows me to better understand how to help other people. 

My thoughts as a coach and an athlete

I work as a strength and conditioning coach but I also work in sports science research. One of my interest areas is the science of motivation and I'm fast realising how building a strong flexible character is easier to create than you might think and just as necessary as physical skills in getting and staying on top of any goal. Emotional fitness is also the skill set that seems the least visible in the athletes I train. They can squat 2-3 times their body weight but have absolutely no concept of how to respond constructively to an unexpected situation or difficult decision about how best to attain their goals. This is a problem, as being able to make the right decisions and change or not change strategy in a sporting context can make or break a person (literally!). 

To be able to self motivate, make good decisions, stay positive...these are all absolutely crucial skills to creating momentum, staying injury free and navigating through a training phase. These skills are usually acquired the hard way as a consequence to life but they can also be consciously learned. The last point is a jewel of information because it means you can learn the lessons much faster and easier without having to journey to the far end of the "mood" spectrum i.e to "bottom out", whisky in hand. This therefore creates a choice with how you choose to experience life and I wish I had known that ten years ago because it just makes everything easier, more fun and angst free. 

To be able to select the aspects of your personality you choose to demonstrate at any given time is hugely empowering because it strengthens our ability for self reliance. Sometimes as coaches or friends, we get it wrong, give bad advice, don't know the best thing to say at the right time or just can't be there; it's human nature. Unfortunately I've been in the situation and I've seen people literally fall apart because they can't deal with a situation on their own when they've had to and it's completely preventable. 

As a coach, I see my role as making a person more self sufficient whatever that may entail. If I have done my job right, over time I expect to disappear more and more into the background only emerging at times of desperate need! This goes against the grain of conventional wisdom about coaching but it works and it works well. It also works in alignment with my values about sporting success and that is to encourage an athlete to become a better, happier person along the way. 

Right now I'm in the middle of bodybuilding prep and so I can experience the athlete side of the athlete-coach dynamic. It is hard; I'm very tired and my usual support system is on holiday! so it's a true test to my resilience; practice what you preach and all that! Thank goodness for the small things.. music, rest and watching Gladiator on repeat seems to work a treat! 

Motivation Book Club!

Flex - Ben Fletcher and Karen Pine and The power of Habit - Charles Duhigg