M2M Day 290: The questionable magic of temporary mental delusion
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For August, my goal is to complete one continuous set of 40 pull-ups.
While training today, my friend asked me: “Right now, if your life depended on it, could you do 40 pull-ups?”.
I think the answer is probably yes.
If I was trapped underneath a car, and, in this hypothetical universe, for some inexplicable reason, lifting the car off of myself required that I executed a sequence of 40 pull-ups, I’m sure that 1. My body would create enough adrenaline and other chemicals to enable peak performance, and 2. My mind would be fully present, singularly focused on preventing my impending death.
However, in the real world, things are a bit different: While I’m doing pull-ups, I have normal levels of adrenaline and my mind only wants me to work until I’m sort of tired and not until I’ve prevented death.
But, I wonder if there is a way for me to tap into this “do not die” mindset on demand. If so, I might be to train my brain to get into the optimal pull-up state whenever I want.
The first step is to convince my brain that I unequivocally need to achieve 40 pull-ups and that it’s expected that my body can and will be able to do so.
Right now, I’ve found that whatever number I have in my mind (as my pull-up goal), my body somehow magically tires right around that number — clearly indicating that something mental is going on here.
I need to find a way to genuinely adopt the belief that 40 pull-ups are expected, so I can set my internal pull-up goal at 40 every time I step up to the bar for a maximum effort set.
Of course, in order for this to help, I can’t fake the belief. I really need to believe it. So, to help plant this belief in my brain, I’ve been playing around with Michael Phelps-style visualization and the Headspace meditation sessions specifically designed for athletic training and performance.
It will be interesting to see if these help.
If I am able to adopt this belief, there will likely still be a disconnect between my expectation for myself and what my body is prepared to do. Hopefully, this is the point where my brain helps close the gap through a decent infusion of adrenaline.
This all might sound a bit pseudo-sciencey, and that I’m just wishing my way to 40 pull-ups, but I think there is actually something here. After all, this is exactly the mental process I went through in order to land a backflip during February:
From Day 1 of my backflip training, I had convinced myself mentally that I could do a backflip (even though I couldn’t). As a result, my brain reacted by saying “Oh no. Max thinks he can do a backflip. I’m not so sure he can. But it’s not fully up to me. He’s about to try, and if it goes poorly, he will land on his head, which wouldn’t be great for me because I live in his head. Why don’t I give him a little bit of adrenaline, so he has an extra push”.
And this is how I learned to backflip: I used a false (or “overextended”) belief to motivate my brain/body to get into the state necessary where I was willing to try to make the belief true.
In other words, I’m not saying “If you believe, all your dreams will magically come true”. Instead, I’m saying “When you believe that a certain dream is possible, you are giving yourself permission to at least try to pursue that dream”.
When I’m on the bar, I need to believe that 40 pull-ups is a feasible — otherwise, I will never let myself even try for this number.
Let’s see if I can get my mind there. Right now, despite my effort (via writing this post), my brain hasn’t yet been fully convinced.
I guess I’ll need to just keep visualizing and meditating my way there…
Read the next post. Read the previous post.