Get At It

Dominating a tough HIIT routine, a distance run or an adventure race may be more about your brain than your body.

Portrait of Tammy Strobel
Dominating a tough HIIT routine, a distance run or an adventure race may be more about your brain than your body.

“Even the best-executed training plans will never net good results or personal records without a positive mental approach,” says Olympic triathlete and Ironwoman Joanna Zeiger in her new book, The Champion Mindset: An Athlete’s Guide to Mental Toughness. So what’s the right note to hit when talking yourself through? A kind one, it turns out – you want to encourage yourself, but without doing a drill sergeant act. Joanna cites one study of endurance runners conducted by the University of Kent in England, which found that those who went with sweet (like “Go, champ!”) more than strict (“Suck it up!”) self-talk ran fastest.