If you’ve ever had to give yourself a pep talk to finish a workout, you might know a thing or two about mental toughness. Similarly, if you’ve got nothing left to give after a hard workout, you may also be well versed in the mental game. The magic of mastering mental toughness is being able to overcome situations just like these. We’ve compiled a few things to think about when you’re trying to master your mentality.

Comfortable With Discomfort

No matter where you are in you CrossFit journey, you know that being comfortable with the uncomfortable is a big part of the game. The sport is designed to always keep your body guessing, which supports building stamina and the ability to work for long periods of time.

Remember that polishing your mental game takes time and is always a work in progress! Even the most elite athletes experience periods of being extremely uncomfortable and battling their own psyches.

Take Steps to Ease Your Mind

When your mind starts to take over during a workout, remember to breathe and don’t stop moving.

While the latter may sound counterintuitive, getting in slow reps will serve you better than taking long rests because your engine is already running and prepared for work. If you do need to take a rest, do so, but give yourself a five-second countdown and get back to work. Some of this will come down to knowing your body and some of this will rely on coaching.

If you know that during a long chipper, you move most efficiently with an even pace from start to finish, then don’t go racing out the gate. Allow yourself to work through the movements one rep at a time, even if your mates hit it hot and heavy from the start. Focus on how you work best.

You vs. You

Perhaps the most important thing about being mentally tough is knowing that in your workout, it’s you versus you.

You may look around and see everyone else seemingly crushing the WOD, or you might feel the pressure of the clock while you’re struggling, and that’s OK. Maybe the movements don’t suit you as well as others—now you know what you need to work on. Maybe you’re having a bad day at the gym. We all have those, but it’s how you recover from them that makes the difference.

Always remember to give your best effort and you won’t be disappointed. Being better than you were yesterday is a reason to be proud and head strong!

The beauty of being mentally tough is being willing to push yourself farther than you thought you would and celebrating it. As long as you’re 100 percent committed to your goal, you’ve already won.

Sound Advice

We’ll leave you with this piece of wisdom Olympic weightlifter Casey Burgener wrote in an email to his sister Sage:

“Toughness means you fight through pain, or discomfort, and continue striving forward. But why would you do this in the first place? It seems against our nature to put ourselves through pain and discomfort, so why bother? The answer is this; because we are committed to making ourselves better, committed to be something greater than what we currently are. Think about the people who are tough, the one thing they have in common is that they’ve committed to something. Whether it’s becoming healthy, smarter, a better parent, or a CrossFit Games champion, they decided it was what they wanted, and they didn’t care how hard it became, or what obstacles showed up, nothing was going to stop them from following through with the decision they made.”

(Read the full email here.)

By Katie Ferraro