I have more or less been writing a series on mindfulness, which has included how to become more aware of your thoughts. More specifically, I have been encouraging you to recognize how your thoughts directly influence your mood and ultimately your lifting performance. My hope is that by becoming more aware of your thoughts—particularly the detrimental ones— you can learn how to reframe them so they can have a more positive impact on your life and goals.

It is no easy feat to learn how to effectively engage in cognitive reframing simply by reading about it. I applaud of all you who have been giving it a try thus far, and I hope you will take the skill yet another step further by implementing what I am suggesting in this article.  

Let’s quickly recap cognitive reframing

Why should you even bother implementing cognitive reframing? Well, as you may recall from my previous articles, our thoughts directly influence our emotions. For example, if you think There is way too much weight on this bar; I can’t lift this, it is very likely you will feel less confident, maybe a little anxious, and I bet you will even notice a physiological change like quicker, shallower breathing. As a result, your attempt at lifting that bar is likely going to embody those thoughts and feelings; you are likely going to miss the lift, or if you do make it, you will probably attribute the success to luck or a fluke, which will further maintain your lack of confidence.

If you instead are mindful of that negative thought, and you immediately challenge it with a more realistic thought (e.g., Yup, there is a lot of weight on that bar, but instead of focusing on that, let me focus on something I’ve been working on—let me focus on making sure to control the pull off the ground and see what that does), you will probably experience a cascading, positive effect which very well may lead to a successful lift. You also will increase the likelihood of enhancing your overall well-being by consistently doing so.

Recommended structure

To help, I offered this recommended structure in the last article. This is the approach I teach to the majority of my clients. This is the approach that I have witnessed as having significant positive results for people. If you have not already been practicing, I very strongly encourage you to start. In fact, if that is the case, I might even go so far as to recommend that you discontinue reading this article at this point and go back to February’s article prior to moving ahead. Start learning the skill I discussed in that article, and then come back to this one to take it a step further.

Thought	Feeling	Behavior/Consequences

 

I am by no means trying to be punitive. It is more that I am trying to see you succeed. Cognitive reframing is a lot like building a house. If you fail to build a good foundation and start trying to put up the actual structure, your structure is probably going to collapse or have some major issues. Don’t set yourself up for failure!

Common Mind Traps

Now that you’ve been practicing my recommendations for a while—perhaps by using the suggested table above— you may be finding that sometimes cognitive reframing is notably helpful and other times it seems to fall flat or almost feels futile. One reason for this is that you may only be catching the blatantly obvious and negative automatic thoughts. It can be difficult at first to catch the less obvious thoughts that are also having a very strong impact on your feelings, emotions, and behaviors. I would like to now focus on catching the common mind traps that can initially be easy for us to miss.

Cognitive Distortions

In the world of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, there are specific kinds of thoughts that we refer to as cognitive distortions. If you do a little research, you will likely find Aaron Beck, PhD and David Burns, MD most notably connected to the identification of these ineffective thought patterns. They have done a tremendous amount of research on this topic and have found that these distortions have truly stood the test of time. Therefore, if you’re questioning this stuff and finding yourself minimizing the validity of this information, please be aware that it is widely supported and not just something I have made up or found to be useful for my clientele only. 

Top 10 Cognitive Distortions

When you are aware of common cognitive pitfalls and are able to label them when you notice them, it is not only empowering, but it can be extremely useful when it comes to reframing them as well. This is because when you understand what makes an automatic thought ineffective, then you are taking the guessing game out of the equation when you begin to challenge them.

Here are 10 common cognitive distortions for which you may wish to be mindful:

1.     All-or-Nothing Thinking: You see things in black-or-white categories. Example: thinking it’s only a good lifting session when you have no missed lifts.

2.     Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as “always” or “never” when you think about it. Example: you miss one lift and think I always miss my lifts. I’ll never be good at this.

3.     Mental Filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a glass of water. Example: you make a lift and your coach offers you a suggestion that may help make your next lift better. You focus on that recommendation and convince yourself that since your form still required some tweaking, that means your last lift was actually awful.  

4.     Discounting the Positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count." Example: your coach comments on how awesome one of your warm-up lifts looked. You comment that it doesn’t count because of how light the weight was on the bar.

5.     Jumping to Conclusions: You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion. Example: you load the bar with a PR weight that you have never tried before and make the comment, there is no way I will make this lift.

6.     Magnification: You exaggerate the significance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the presence of your strengths. Example: other gym members comment on the impressiveness of your explosiveness, but you consistently respond by reminding them how much better you think your footwork should be.  

7.     Emotional Reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are in that moment. Example: you feel embarrassed after missing the lift and think, Today is the worst session ever. 

8.     “Should statements”: You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to be. Example: you miss a lift and think, I should have made that! This would suggest there is some universal expectation that you completely failed to meet.

9.     Labeling: Labeling is taking one characteristic of yourself and applying it to yourself as a whole. Example: you miss a lift and think, I’m a lost cause.

10.  Personalization and blame: When you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn’t entirely under your control. Example: someone right in front of you while you are in the middle of your lift and you ultimately miss. You think to yourself, that miss was entirely my fault. There is no reason I missed it.

What to do

The fun thing (at least it’s fun to me) about cognitive distortions is that, oftentimes, our thoughts do not fit perfectly into any one type of distortion. This means (this is the fun part) we typically have more than just one approach to take when it comes to reframing our thoughts. 

Let’s say you notice you are having the thought I’m never going to make this lift. Well, my friend, with that absolute way of thinking, we could argue that that is an overgeneralized way of viewing your upcoming lift. However, if you had that thought because you had a bad gut feeling about the lift, we could call that emotional reasoning. Or, if you had that thought because you were convinced you were an idiot for even thinking you could load that much weight on the bar, we could call that labeling.

Do you see what I am doing here? I am taking one example of an automatic thought and identifying why it is arguably a distorted way of perceiving the scenario. By identifying the types of distortions that it fits, I now have an idea of how to approach that thought in order to realistically reframe it. For example, I might suggest the following reframes: Okay, always is a little intense. I may not actually make the lift, but I have no way of knowing unless I try (overgeneralized). Or how about, I can’t go based on a feeling. Lifts are accomplished by so much more than that. Let’s see what happens if I focus on the latest cue that Coach has been giving me instead (emotional reasoning). You could also try, I’m assuming I won’t be able to make it based on my negative self-perception. Feeding this perception is only going to further minimize my confidence and negatively affect my performance.

Just give it a try

These suggested reframes may sound cheesy. That’s okay! As long as you’re being honest with yourself and realistic, then you’re probably doing this whole cognitive reframing thing correctly. And remember, the whole point of reframing is to positively impact your mood, which will ultimately impact your behaviors, which should improve your performance in the gym.

Don’t sell yourself short

Cognitive reframing isn’t super easy. It takes effort. When you feel frustrated, know that that’s okay. Just please don’t make a joke about it.

I very recently overheard the following conversation at my gym, and it truly made my heart ache, as I am aware that that lifter already experiences low self-esteem and ultimately struggles to consistently make lifts. I would strongly suggest avoiding the following internal (or external, such as in this case) dialogues:

Lifter: I’m awful at snatches.

Her friend: Don’t say that! Be positive! Remember that you need to be positive!

Lifter: Okay. Fine. I’m positive that I’m awful at snatches.

I know this was meant as a joke, but this is the kind of avoidant, easy-out response that hinders change and improvement. (I would also argue that it is an example of magnification.) Don’t inadvertently hold yourself back by dismissing the process. Give cognitive reframing an honest try. See what it does for you. You may (and likely will) find that it positively impacts your life as a whole—not just in the gym. Not a bad deal!