Mental Skills for Ultrarunning with Dr. Justin Ross (2020) | KoopCast Episode 144

trail and ultra runners what is going on what's happening welcome to another episode of the KoopCast as always i'm your humble host coach Jason Koop and this episode of the podcast is aimed at an area that i think most of you probably neglected throughout the course of 2022 i'm certainly i'm going to raise my hand where i didn't have the best game plan for this going into the year so it's something that i am going to fix and that is how to design the mental skills that you are going to deploy throughout the year this is something that i have come to appreciate more and more as my coaching has gone along i originally grew up as a coach with a physiological foundation but i am coming to appreciate and understand and utilize mental skills a lot more with my athletes as i've gotten older and wiser and hopefully more effective as well but i realize it's something that i am not classically trained in and so i have to lean on those the experts in the field and one of those experts is one of my longtime colleagues dr justin ross he helped design the mental skills chapter for the second edition of training essentials for ultra running and so way back in february of 2020 i brought him on the podcast to discuss how to design these mental skills and what you should be looking for in order to deploy them throughout the years i've always

appreciated justin's counsel in this area because he not only knows what tools to use because he's an endurance athlete himself but in addition to that he's really helped me organize those tools into a logical framework that i can use for any athlete and a lot of that framework is what you see represented in the book this is a re-release of an episode that came out a couple of years ago because i'm out on an athlete project right now and unable to record but the information as you all will find is timeless so with that as a backdrop i'm getting right out of the way here is my re-release conversation with dr justin ross all about mental skills for ultra running i want to spend a little bit of time talking about what you've got coming up you're running a couple like pretty big marathons yeah so uh boston in the spring which will be my third go around at that race uh which is it's just a fun weekend there's so much involvement a lot going on there it's so fun to be in the city for that and then uh yeah i'm going over to berlin in september and we'll run that that'll be my first international marathon which a couple of buddies and i are working on the world marathon majors so that'll be my first international and then i'll have tokyo and london to go after that in the next few years i like the fact that you're trying to put it together over several years and not just all do it in one year that's tough they're hard to get into they're really hard to get into it's a logistical proposition not a not a physical one yeah absolutely so what's it going to take to get you out on the

trails more you're not the first person to bring this up right uh i love trail running it's beautiful it's a great thing i think just um i wish i had more time to dedicate to it and i'm i wish i would make more commitment to get out there because it's so fun dude that's a nonsense excuse though because you live i'm looking out of your office window right now at the front range like it's not that far away for you to get on some pretty killer trails it's a true story yeah you're right i have prioritized i've prioritized road running in the last few years well in part due to logistical reasons it's a lot easier for me to put on shoes get out the front door be back in an hour with the kids versus you know it sounds trivial but for me it makes a big difference driving half an hour to the trail running driving back half an hour that that time i just i don't have a lot of uh discretionary time at this point to to do that so right now my trail running is at a minimum i get out there a couple times a year and i think as i get older as my kids get older that'll definitely be something i prioritize more well i think part of your like your time crunch right now is just with your practice which has kind of been blowing up recently and i think the i think one of the things that the listeners would start to appreciate is just the scope of all of the different types of athletes that you work with within the sports psych and developing mental skills and mindfulness space so why don't you provide just a broad umbrella for that first yeah yeah absolutely so um i graduated with a doctorate degree in clinical psychology back in 2007 and we opened this practice called mind body health basically

the same day and we see a lot of different clients in this practice so we do have a part of the practice is kind of general mental health right people coming in from the community working on anxiety depression life stress relationships those types of things there's a set of this practice that really works on health and wellness issues so we help people with chronic pain chronic stress chronic disease adjustment to disease and we do that work and then the last population is really working on the sports performance piece right working with athletes whether that's helping them just live with mental health live with life right because the athletes are humans first athletes second or whether it's working on mental skills or mindfulness training for the purpose of improving performance or connection to sport usually with some type of goal or agenda in mind that they're bringing into the room and you work with a lot of different types of athletes we had a conversation before we got on the air about some of the athletes at the training center and i know you're kind of frequently down in my hometown of colorado springs why don't you give us just a little scope of like the team sports endurance sports olympic level sports and things like that just to further paint this picture yeah so um it ranges really the way i usually think about it from little league baseball teams seriously yeah yeah so you'd be amazed like up here in denver i think colorado springs too uh competitive little league baseball is uh is is rampant around here there are little league baseball

teams performing on a really high level like the ones you'd see on espn yeah absolutely world two and so a lot of that is like helping helping those kids just deal with a 60 70 game season or help them deal with emotional management or helping the coach kind of structure programming to help everybody stay aligned so all the way down to that and then all the way up to the professional ranks right so working with guys in the big four here broncos rockies avalanche or nuggets um i love endurance athletes um in part because that's what i know best personally in my own athletic career uh so i see a lot of runners a lot of triathletes focusing on a lot of different disciplines and again working on anything from right now the otq is a really big thing we're in an olympic year there's a big push there's a big movement for those folks to either make trials or make a squad um and so we're seeing a lot of that right now um there's a lot of kind of recreational everyday athletes who are looking to qualify for boston or qualify for kona or um you know run their first ultra or compete on a very high level in an ultra marathon um i have some ultra athletes who are doing some of these unique events i call them unique events so big backyard right so that's unique amongst the unique unique amongst the so yeah absolutely so we had an athlete do that last year and um we came up with sort of a plan to think about how to structure that mentally because it it is pushing the bounds of comfort in so many different ways not just physical but also

mental but it's a mind fuck type of race too absolutely that's why that's my that's my colloquial way to describe it right because just the structure of the event the fact that you have a certain amount of time to start the next lap you can on any one day you can run the lap well within your physical means right but how do you kind of pace it out and then if you're trying to win i mean that's the that's the most purest sense of head-to-head competition that you could draw up it's like who quits first that's it yeah it's a last person standing event and so many factors go into that right it's such a unique event when i first heard about it i was uh i was kind of blown away by what it would take to even think about constructing a plan to survive something like that because it really is a survival plan i think at that point okay well yeah you're absolutely right about that so let's boil let's start to boil this down a little bit what is and i want you to speak to the listeners that might not be as familiar with mental skills training as you are as a practitioner or somebody coming to you that says hey this is something this is a part of my game that i want to develop what is the basic value proposition out there for athletes for working on their mental skills yeah so the the first step i think with this is recognizing that whether or not you're actively working on mental skills as an athlete your mind is a huge part of your performance right so when you're out there running or training your mind is active and engaged in the process regardless of whether or not

you're paying attention to it or doing something meaningful about it so the way i think about it is this is an area that it's already happening it's not an additive process it's one that you can either choose to focus on and take with you and improve or it's one that may cost you because you haven't developed finely tuned skills to make sure that it's not your mind that's leading to you not finishing or not performing well um that it's like it's your body right so not letting your mind become the reason that you're not performing on an optimal level is a huge part of this process i like the additive component because that that's how i view the difference between running and training so when you're running you're always you're always improving some physical part of yourself and mental part of yourself from from your framework but as a coach what we do is we organize that running in a smart intelligent fashion and create training out of it so that they're they're getting more bang for their buck they're improving to a greater extent than they actually are and i'd say from like from your context you would take the same thing from a mental skills approach almost yeah absolutely i think it's it's organizing a structure a psychological structure to be implemented alongside the physical training in kind of a periodized way right so mental skills they build upon each other and they need to be structured in a way that you would structure a training plan you're doing different things at different times with an intended purpose so where do athletes start so in training we start

with you know what are you training right now okay let's build off of that what's that equivalent in your world do you have an athlete coming to you and they want to work on your on their mental skills how do you start out with them and what should athletes that want to take upon a practice like this what should they do to start yeah it's it's almost exactly the same as what you just said about the physical side it's okay where are you at let's start there the the very first skill is awareness right so i have a lot of favorite sayings one of them is we you cannot change what you are not aware of and so the very first thing we do is we help athletes become aware of what's happening in their mind before during and after training just do that for a little period of time for a week right for a run whatever it may be it's this awareness exercise to get people to become familiar with those thoughts right what's happening in their mind what's happening with their focus what happens when things are easy on easy days what happens when things get hard right so that people can become much more attuned to that thinking process huh and so after they become aware of what they're doing and i actually i'm going to take some credit for a coach that's like one of the first steps that i take with any new athlete that is that we're trying to like work on their mental skills game is just to make them hey how'd you feel during the run that's one of the reasons i focus on rate of perceived exertion so much as opposed to the metrics and things like that after they've got this general awareness are there any like stylized steps that an athlete can take after that to further enhance

their game yeah absolutely right and i think the awareness platform really generates what comes next and what comes out of that awareness platform helps steer the program that we try to create together right so uh often a lot of athletes not every athlete but a lot of athletes uh struggle when it gets uncomfortable right so this um you know this nagging voice that is haunting them about pain in their body and they're uh they're feeling that become really problematic and so we work on skills to become aware of that or challenge those assumptions or create a new narrative right for longer races one of the things that happens is the ability to channel focus and awareness and concentration can become problematic so we develop skills around focus and concentration coming up with strategies for how to play with that in training so that they can then take it into a racing environment yeah that's so true because ultra running has a lot of uncomfortableness associated with it and i think a lot like a lot of the ways that that uncomfortableness manifests itself is just in the sheer dnf rate we never talk about dnf rates in a marathon or even in an iron distance triathlon maybe a little bit but they're always associated with like weird things like really really weird things my bike broke you know during the bike i got kicked in the you know face and my nose was bleeding during the swim or in a marathon there was some underlying medical condition or whatever i can look over the front range you know

over our shoulders right now to where ludville colorado is and they have a 50 finish rate at that race and i've always looked at that as absurd because that race is not that hard it's not hard it's a hard race don't get me wrong but it's not hard enough to justify a 50 finish rate and i think a lot of that can be attributed to people just not wanting to go on any further they're not comfortable enough being uncomfortable do you do you now that you've like you have some framework for ultra running how how do athletes kind of work on like that component specifically yeah so it you know like the buzzword in the field right now is mental toughness right like that's what everybody's throwing around right and to me mental toughness comes down to two components like one is willingness right how willing are you to continue despite condition despite how you're feeling right and willingness can be built on based on meaning or purpose of the goal how important it is to you to see it through to reach a time whatever it may be willingness can be trained the the other part of that equation in my mind is optimism right and optimism is so vital especially when you're not feeling good physically and your mind is starting to take over true and starting to to kind of crap all over the experience you have to be able to drive back to optimism and there's a lot of ways that you can train optimism or slice optimism to

think about getting getting to the next aid station right believing that you can just get there right and then creating a plan for the next aid station whatever it may be so as it comes back to training those things have to be trained in the physical course of a of a build-up right willingness and optimism but often what happens is people don't have the language for that or they don't have the structure for that right and so they go out and they go for a three or four hour run and they do all the physical things but they don't add the mental component to it so again going all the way back to awareness when we start to structure a plan we start to think about okay for each run you need to be doing something on the mental side and maybe that's only for five minutes right maybe you just spend five minutes of this run really working on being present or working on self-talk or maybe you spend an hour but you're doing something every run with a purpose because when you get to that 80 mile mark at Leadville if your mind is telling you it would be much better for you to just call it a day and you start to listen to that and you don't have any way to push back against that or any incentive to go around it you're going to listen to that voice it's funny you mentioned the 80 mile mark at Leadville because I've spent a lot of time just observing the Leadville Traor 100 I've run it but I've probably spent more time actually observing it and there's there is an aid station at mile 75 might be 77 now because they change the course every once in a while but anyway around 75 it's called the outward bound aid station and year after year after year I go there and I spend time from when

the leaders come through which is early in in the evening way before the sun sets late afternoon way before the sun sets all the way to the cutoff which is early the next morning and inevitably what happens is is these groups of people you can see them off in the distance with their headlamps they come in in twos and threes and fours and fives and they all either continue or they all either drop out and nothing is wrong with them with either group they're indistinguishable from one another as they're making their way into the aid station but once they leave the aid station either in the cars as when they've dropped out or on foot that's the only differentiating factor and I've always thought to myself there's nothing physical they've done like 75 miles it's hard but there's nothing physically wrong at this point in the game they have enough time to finish they're locomoting just fine something some switch gets turned on or turned off to where they can't continue anymore and the power of group think in that moment too right if they're all in it together and they're talking and they're sharing misery right there's a great misery loves company well we've changed it right we change it misery loves miserable company oh right so that the misery binds together and if there's this shared group think of this is really hard we don't have optimism that it's going to get better or that we're going to be

successful and we're unwilling to continue game over right it becomes a mental shutdown not a physical shutdown i always tell whenever i'm counseling crews for athletes that i work with which is kind of an integral part of my job as a as a coach and especially if they're new to the crew game i tell them that if their runner is in a really bad spot a really low really low spot just to lie tell them they're the tell them they look great tell them they smell great they're taller you know they didn't expect them to be here at this time like just do whatever you can and just lie your face off and a lot of that is an effort to create some sort of optimism for the athlete because the reality is is they look like shit you know they probably have a piss poor attitude right their nutrition is off they're behind their splits or whatever but the crew and the people around them can create that optimistic attitude sometimes falsely but it works it gets people out of the chair optimism it's so important it's vital and if you have to fabricate it at certain parts of a race to get it done that's what it takes absolutely okay so you're endorsing me lying or you're endorsing me telling crews to lie i'm endorsing the power of optimism okay it's been there it's been there actually i the reason i got the where i got that from was actually in a crew meeting before leadville the medical director uh gave that piece of advice to the entire audience out there one of my early attempts at that race um and uh i've taken

that to heart ever since so i can't take full full credit for it dr john he's longtime medical director for the leadville trial 100 should take full credit for it um so i want to we've gone through a couple of different strategies right and a lot of it just is revolves around awareness and optimism i want to pivot to something that i've heard you speak about before and and you've done so in a way that was it was at least unique to me and made me kind of reframe and re rethink the way that i approach this with my athletes and that's around anxiety and the the typical framework for anxiety with runners revolves around a watch you know you're about to do yeah right you've got one as i look at my watch and your watch i know and i'm gonna look at mine i actually i actually realized this when i do podcasts when i look at the time that so there's just like a little bit of anxiousness like creeping up and like okay am i going to get to the next question is the conversation flowing around but anyway let's let's keep this on running and not on podcasting um you're about to do boston and everybody there is going to have their watches go off every single mile the audible beep and then they're all going to look at it at the same time like it's telling them a different piece of information right there's a lot of anxiety revolving around just the time splits that we get either in a race or a workout and i want to know what you have to say about how that actually impacts either their training performance whether they're thinking about a training context or a race performance sure so uh one it it's so normal for us to do that we we all

do this and so i think the starting point is to recognize just what a natural draw it is to metric our running experience right and now with the watches that we have we can track i mean you name it sneeze rate on a run you can track everything it's it's both amazing and also it can be detrimental so what i think it can do is i i think we attach so much meaning to the numbers it's not the numbers that really matter it's the meaning that we associate with those numbers anything from pace to time to heart rate to power output i mean it's ridiculous now right so again going back to awareness one of the first things we talk about is what uh what meaning are you putting into the numbers and where does that come from like why is that important to you okay so from there then you have the ability to maybe give it less power right or to play with how you're metricing your experience so one of the things when we're talking about marathon just for ease of a marathon people have very specific time goals that they're chasing in that race and they count it down to the mile splits now the mind can only really chunk seven to ten digits of information comfortably before there's an energy cost right so think about your phone number right phone numbers are set into three different sets of digits it's easy to remember they're not 26 digits for a reason so what happens if we're trying to pay too much attention to 26 data points along the way it's creating more emotional and cognitive stress than we really need

we're giving that energy away so one of the strategies just for a marathon that we often use is rather than thinking about mile we think about it by time right so let's break it down so a guy like me i'm running three hour marathons i have three chunks of time that i have goals for so the first hour is chunk one here's where i want to be on the course what that does is then i can check my watch periodically throughout the first hour but i'm not freaking out about if i'm four seconds off on mile one or not right i have this ability to have much more space to focus on how my body feels to tap into flow and to not be caught up in my head about numbers right so that i think is the the biggest obstacle about numbers is it's a it's a flow robber if every time we look at our watch i love that term yeah low robber every time we look at our watch it it robs us of flow state wow i'm sorry i didn't want to cut your train of thought off but flow robber it's a flow robber oh wow okay so keep going so you get these three chunks of time yeah so and and then it's the same thing so you get to hour one and then you think about the next chunk and the next chunk the beautiful thing about that is you can chunk any distance any length of race in a similar fashion and the the general rule of thumb is the more you're checking your watch or the um the the more data points along the way that you put meaning to the more it's going to rob you of the ability to just tap into your body and to run really really well i've heard so many people in this office come in with race

reports and the days that they run the best they pr are days that either a they forgot their watch or b it didn't work because they no longer had a data point to tap into all they were focusing on was their body and we have this amazing ability if we could tap into our body figure out that flow state and just go with it we could be machines we could do amazing things have you uh have you done any work with either the olympic distance triathletes or any of like the time trial cyclists over the training center uh not not down in colorado springs but in other capacities because i know a strategy that they often use to point to this you can you know kind of cover up the data on your watch is they'll actually put tape over their power meters so that they don't have that input and for athletes that are completely fixated on the numbers it's really interesting because some of them react really well to it like they can let it go by putting the tape over it because the coaches always want the data afterwards but other athletes because they don't have it it's another source of consternation for them to deal with during the race absolutely absolutely yeah so how would you advise an athlete to get over that aspect like get over the aspect of pace and this is really relevant for a lot of road runners that come onto the trails because they don't have those consistent data inputs that are valid because the trail is undulating and there's no mile markers you know every single mile or

anything like that and they just can't wrap their head around not having their those data points so how would you like counsel them to just like let like let that go yeah so so two thoughts on that one right with within an ultra distance or even a trail run you could have a flat mile or a downhill mile that resembles like a road pace for a roadie right and so that feels good but then they hit a really steep uphill section and it's a 20 minute mile and they freak out because i i don't run 20 minute miles that's not the kind of runner that i am right they put so much identity into what those splits mean so again often the work awareness let's come back to awareness what are you telling yourself about what those miles mean the second thing we do is we can uh do like naked runs right there's a lot of ways to do that either um if you have enough discipline turn your watch on but just turn it to the time of day right or turn it to a metric that doesn't really mean anything that you're not going to be checking in with if you can't do that turn it on but put it in your pocket so you don't look at it the other way is to be playful with it and to change the metric altogether right so if you're used to running in miles per hour turn your watch so it's kilometers per hour right it's going to screw with your equilibrium on what you think you're doing and rather than playing mental math most people are like oh the hell i don't know what it means i don't know what this means but you still have the data at the end to look at but the numbers you start to realize like it's not the numbers that matter it's what you put into them so so you're basically saying just change your frame of mind for what

they mean yeah but you have to again you have to train it you have to do something in your training to actively do that and it's a great concept that i think a lot of people agree with but when you tell them like all right now we're going to go do it people like well i don't know i don't want to do that i can't run without my watch i can't run without my mile splits yeah telling me to do yeah it's such a big problem in the in the trail not a big problem but a bit like it's for athletes to get over it in the trail running world particularly if they have like a track and field or a road type of background it just it becomes a huge mental block for that initial part of the transition because they have this piece of information that is no longer as useful or reliable as it was in their previous road running or track running life but yet what it forces it forces discipline to the body right let the body guide the information right let the rate of perceived effort let that guide how you tackle that hill or how you tackle that next section right it's not about what your dad on your watch is telling you it's like it's teaching people to be tapped in to their experience in mind and body so here's our other experiment that we can do we've got two of them already yeah if you take me up on at least one we've got the leadville uh uh leadville outward bound aid station experiment we'll go and observe those people this year the second one is going to be we're going to stand on power line that initial first big descent and we're going to watch how many people check their pace coming down power line because it's a totally useless number right

right and then we can correlate it to success afterwards i love it right we'll track bib numbers and how people did right there we go there's there's comfort in that though too right i think like that's the other way to think about that there's there's comfort in being able to check right and so often that checking behavior is really it's providing a way to reduce anxiety that's how people have to think about it and the numbers can kind of flip that one way or another but this it's a human tendency in the sport to be able to check into uh where do i find comfort where do i feel like i'm doing what i need to do where do i feel like i'm in control of this experience have you ever been in a pace group in a major marathon you know where they hold the big signs up i've been the guy who's been the guy yeah a couple of times okay so you'll you'll love this frame of reference so i've done that a few times and i've had athletes do this a few times as well and we've come to the conclusion that one of the pieces of advice that we give everybody as they're kind of lining up as they're congregating around like kind of spinning off their little nervous energy trying to like create small talk and things like that is we tell them to turn the audible alarm for their watches off trust us that we're going to do the job we're going to get you your three-hour marathon or your boston qualifier you know whatever we're kind of pacing it for and by doing that by reducing the amount of mental energy that they spend tracking every single mile i think it's worth like a minute for like a three or three and a half hour marathon like and i try to tell them that in like a tangible way right i get

like a 50 buy-in to whatever i've done it yeah yeah but not 100 buy-in definitely not this guy completely oh some people look at me like i've sprouted a third head like really right really really you think i'm gonna trust you like i just met you right right yeah yeah that's i i've always i've done it twice both for half marathons and i found it to be such a it's such a fun experience to guide that right because i know how meaningful hitting numbers um it's such a meaningful part of the sport regardless of distance right we put so much meaning into outcome that to be able to guide that for people is uh it's a really fun part of being able to give back i think yeah i i totally agree um okay let's get let's kind of get back to ultra running again i want to continue to like peel back this element of a dnf that a lot of ultra runners experience and it's it's really common and it is certainly not all physical um i i personally as a coach have a hard time like arming my athletes with the right tools such that they can pull themselves out of i want to drop out but i'm not going to and that's common for i would say almost everybody in their entire ultra running career has been in this situation i've been able to personally counsel athletes out of that situation when i've been there and they've sat on chair i'm gonna quit and no you can't quit like i've been i've been able to do that

but one of the things that i always struggle with as a coach is to give the athletes their own tools to do that so how would how would you do that in my situation arm an athlete with their own tools such that if they're all by themselves and they have no no crew no pacer no whatever to lean on yep get themselves out of that hole yeah so it's a great question right i think there are two components to that and it goes all the way back to sort of the base phase or the beginning of the year when we're starting to set our goals so back in training back in training one of the the more meaningful and purposeful our whys are the reasons for competing the more likely we're going to fight for them in the moment of discomfort and so again at the very beginning of the year you know months before a race being able to connect to okay why are you doing this why is this important what are you trying to prove to yourself what's on this path of self-discovery what do you hope to find satisfaction in in this event and you have to come back to this even every couple of weeks in training right you hit a hard patch in training things aren't going well you're not feeling good you're tired whatever to be able to come back to that why to be very very clear about it the more clear you make it with the more um uh with more angles on it with more component parts the more likely you're going to draw that up when it's uncomfortable at mile 75 or 80 the more willing you're going to be able to fight for it the other idea and this comes from an athlete not from me but he he had this great idea right he's

like no matter what happens i'm gonna i'm not gonna quit in the chair i'm gonna quit on the field if it comes to that i'm not making the decision to quit while i'm in a chair i'm gonna quit while i'm out on the course and so he made that this really deep embedded idea for um for running a really long distance right i'm not going to make that decision at an aid station when i'm in the chair if if i'm hurting if i'm uncomfortable i'm not doing it there i'm gonna get back out on the course and maybe i'm 100 feet away from the aid station maybe i'm a mile down but that's where i'm going to make that decision so that's part of it too is if you can convince yourself now in advance of a race that you don't make the decision sitting down at an aid station it has to be made out on the course it may prop you up and get you moving again right and once you get moving again right you're like okay i can do this there's that optimism i can do this i'm gonna be okay i can make it to the next way point you start to segment um the series of a distance again regardless of what that distance is you know it's so funny you mentioned that i did this uh i did this race last summer called the tour de gion it's like a 300 kilometer huge mountain race over in uh over in italy sorry 200 kilometer no it's like a fish story it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger every time it's a 200 mile like 300 306 kilometers or something like that anyway huge race over in over in italy takes like took me like four days to actually do it uh my wife was my crew and i told her before we

left that i'm not quitting i don't care what's going on unless i've got a bone sticking out or you know there's some like you know really serious medical condition i'm not quitting and her only job was to get me out of every aid station like i just boiled it down to something that simple yeah i think that's it right because you know once you get moving again if you've developed the right skills physically and mentally through movement you're going to be able to pick those back up it's in the chair that the chair provides comfort again one of the biggest things for endurance athletes is this is sort of a it's a it's a purposeful challenge to put ourselves in an uncomfortable position and the mind is going to want to pull you back to comfort and that becomes this fine line throughout the throughout the race when you sit down it starts to index on all these oh yeah feels so good i could just stay here for another minute or another hour maybe i should just stay here and just not finish oh man well so you mentioned mental toughness earlier like one of the strategies that i use with my athletes but i realize it has a lot of limitations is just to make the training hard and just to get them literally and proverbially be comfortable with being uncomfortable and so like the physical the physicality of having hard training and having them remember that throughout the training process is a big part of what they can then therefore kind of take out on the race course but the issue that i

have in ultra running using that type of um using that type of strategy is that the race always presents a much more marked physical effort than anything you can ever create in training and that's something that's unique to ultra running like if you have a 5 000 meter runner or a 10 000 meter runner even olympic distance triathlete or even a marathoner you can get pretty close in training like the elite you know uh marathoners they'll do 22 miles in training you know they're comfortable uncomfortable for 22 miles you can't do that in ultra running and i'm wondering how else you could set that situation up for for trying to get an athlete as tough as possible realizing there's still going to be this big gap from what you can create in training to what they're actually going to experience during the race yeah so the skills translate right mental skills in training need to translate to race day and so structuring hard training programs is really important part a part b needs to be what are the mental skills that you're working on during this tough set this tough week this tough run right to make sure that you're developing those and you're getting really good at using those so that you can translate that to um you know to the race that you're about to take on the other is i think working on more of a cumulative effect that leads to this mental review right so being able to look over the

course of training right the cliche saying trust your training and i'm always like well what are you trusting like that doesn't make sense to me you have to be able to be very specific about the things that you take away as trust principles that you carry then into a race so i think about as an athlete there's three things we can always focus on in terms of building trust this has to be embedded into a training program so part one is what do you trust from this current cycle right you're focused on this race what are the things that you trust to be true about this current block of your training right both physically but also mentally what are you developing part two is you broaden that a little bit what do you trust to be true about yourself as an athlete across time across seasons even across disciplines what have you endured what have you been through what do you know you're able to do especially on that mental side right are you able to face adversity and push through it can you trust that right that's part two and then part three you broaden even bigger still and it's like what do you trust to be true about yourself as a human being right we've all been through adversity we've all faced hardships there are really important kernels of belief about our identities that are going to help us recognize like we're pretty strong we're pretty capable we're meant to face hardships and adversity and we all have different ways of getting through that race is a very specific type of adversity and challenge but being able to focus on those three elements really helps us navigate it in a like disciplined effective way so that we're not just out there feeling kind of lost mentally or emotionally

it's interesting that you mentioned that because part of that trust in your training uh process as a coach i use the the calendar and the data to anchor that so i can when when a race is coming up part of the framework that that i use very frequently is taking the athlete through the entirety of training not just the last month or the last week but the last six months or maybe even the last two years and and demonstrating with data and dialogue where they were at at one point and then where they're at now and what those differences are and most of the time nine out of ten times are positive differences we can focus on lactate threshold pace or the amount of climbing that you're able to tolerate or some big huge training block if you want to use the big zoom out lens what's the analog for that training you know that training data that the that the athlete gets from their gps watch what's the analog for that in your world yeah it's it it's qualitative right you can't quantify or metric right psychological development right i'm sure somebody in is trying to figure that out right now it'll be on your watch in two years right but right now it's it's qualitative and again this is why it's so important to do this alongside your physical training so what i advise a lot of coaches on is uh you know once a quarter just an easy way to slice it once a quarter as you're going through a review with an athlete you do this little write-up this little dialogue what were the mental skills that have really worked well for you right now right if it's base training like okay you've gotten really good

at uh becoming aware of your thoughts right you become really good at generating the ability to shift your focus as you need right if it's harder block right oh you've gotten really good at these mental fitness these mental toughness skills uh remember these types of thoughts that are really working well for you so again as you're able to do that review you then have it in volume and uh in all kinds of metric ways but then you have it in the qualitative and if you can have it written down having the athlete write it down they can see it and then there's a time stamp like oh yeah july of 2017 was really really hard i was doing a lot of volume and a lot of vert and oh but here's what i developed in my mind i remember that now that's what you want to get to you want to have athletes be able to access what they've learned right in a very meaningful way i like that um you talked about kind of the core of mental training being awareness and in on the physical training side one of the things that we focus on are kind of almost like a hierarchy of needs like you need to run first you need to run a lot of miles and then you can incorporate some sort of intensity type of training and then maybe you might have like a recovery adjunct or a nutritional intervention or an altitude camp or things like that but you shouldn't do it in the opposite framework you shouldn't focus on the advanced training things before you have the base training things can you run through a really quick this is the most important mental skill to develop first this is the second most important and here are the advanced

ones that we're working on at the very like tip of the spear yeah absolutely yeah it's it's i like that framework i use that framework a lot right it's a pyramid that builds right the base of the pyramid is really three things it's awareness focus and concentration and if you think about them as sort of an aperture on a camera right awareness is this general broad awareness what are you feeling what are you noticing can you bring awareness to movement to the world around you to your thoughts to your body can you be generally aware of what's happening focus is one click down so focus is can you generate focus to something that's a little bit more specific right can you focus just on how your body feels in movement can you focus just on what you see on the trail in a kind of a general but specific way concentration you pare down even further and concentration is this ability to really hold one thing in mind at a time right so i'm really focusing on just moving from point a my body to that tree or that landmark and i'm just going to really focus on the flow of movement between here and there those three skills are really important to develop so that's at the base right right above that sort of the middle of the pyramid if we're just going to take it in three slices is um general cognitive narrative right so this is what are the thoughts and beliefs you have about who you are as a person who you are as an athlete that you bring into training right and that's again before during and after training how are you thinking about your run what are you thinking about during your run what's happening there right at the top of the pyramid are

then uh one i call cognitive appraisal so cognitive appraisal is what are you what are you saying specifically about what you're feeling in your body so if you're noticing that your leg is tight or sore and the message is my leg is tight or sore it's very different than this is destroying me i need to stop right and so being aware of those very specific cognitive appraisal messages of what's happening in our body and being able to tweak that or change that or be very specific about that's important and then so too this is like the mental toughness skill right willingness and optimism and they all work together all three and there's plenty of others but those are the general ones all three can be incorporated into a physical training block um and really need to be if or if athletes want to reach their optimal level of performance you know it's interesting when you went through all of that the things at the top of the pyramid the things that are like the hardest that you should work on last just in my observation you could tell me if you have the same observation working with athletes those are the things that athletes mess up the most and the easiest and i think it might go to point it just might point out that they're the hardest to develop that they are hard to develop and yet again the beautiful thing about them is they're already occurring in your training right when you're out there and it's hard your mind is doing something it's evaluating it's critiquing yeah you might as well be aware of it and then learn how to make that your own learn how to make it your friend not your enemy so that it can help you not harm you especially when it's mile 80 of

light field well and athletes minds are super busy i actually got a comment on twitter to to ask you about this and a lot of times our minds are busy and it can be a positive thing it's kind of distracting us from the environment but at other points it can be a negative thing because we're not focused on the task at hand we're not being mindful about our environment and how we really feel and things like that once you give the listeners some commentary on how to how to balance that yeah that this is the reason that awareness is the most important skill is to be aware of what's happening so that you can almost look at it and observe it from just a little bit of a distance so he's like floating above yourself yeah a little bit yeah so you could be like oh wow i'm really distracted today i'm really thinking about everything i have going on in this other part of my life right to be able to be aware of that then generates the ability to do something about it but often without that awareness we're running and we're caught up in distraction and we get done with our run and we're like um wow i don't what did i just do i'm not even really sure where i was or how i performed or what that was about don't get me wrong there's some beauty in being able to do that in the sport too right it can become this ability to detach and distract but being aware of what's happening so that you have agency over doing something specifically when you need to when it's really important that's what it's ultimately all about oh man that's so cool okay so let's leave let's leave everybody listening right now with one thing that they can do either right now if they're listening

to it on their run which would be a distraction technique right that'd be a distraction technique if they have got earphones in now um or tomorrow the next day their next long run like what's the one thing that they can do to like take to the bank to like start this journey on working on their mental skills yeah so first step is just give yourself a little grade right now on what you're doing and how you're doing in the mental fitness department are you working on this at all are you not right are you working on specific skills are there areas you think you could improve upon what are they right so again it starts with generating that awareness right the the second thing i would do is it's a skill called priming right so priming is this idea that we give ourself some type of psychological recognition or idea prior to an event that kind of sets us up for how that's going to go and so when it comes to physical training i think there's a couple ways you can prime it so one is you prime okay what are you about to do so you just kind of go through the basics like oh i'm i have a one hour run today for ease of example right part two is why is that important right so connect again back to the why the bigger concept of what you're doing in this training block oh this is an aerobic run it's for volume right and then the third thing you prime is what is the mental skill or how are you planning to show up in that run and it could just be for five minutes but it gives you that reminder of like okay for five minutes i'm going to focus on this awareness focus concentration

idea i'm going to see how it goes right just for five minutes that's it and then i'm going to you know go about my other business so what you're doing is you're really setting yourself up to develop a platform for integrating these skills into your physical training and you do this this quick little priming exercise you do as you're putting your shoes on again you don't have to do it an hour in advance it doesn't take anything more than a little bit of cognitive load and effort prior to getting out the door god you know what's so funny about that is like i can't tell you how many athletes like if i go and i do a run with them we get out the door we punch our watches and be like hey what are you doing today and they'll have no idea yeah i'm supposed to do 90 minutes i'm supposed to do these intervals they some of them have to check their phone their training calendars on their phone i gotta you know check i'm like how are you so absent that we're already into the run and you don't know what you're supposed to accomplish today right right it's like back to the fundamentals fundamentals yeah they're so important that's awesome man all right man we're gonna let you go you gotta go back to your wife and kids busy life oh man busy you are busy man uh where can people find you yeah so uh website is dr justin ross.com so easy to find me there um i did just launch a uh it's called unlock your athletic potential it's a course on insight timer meditation app you can find that on uh on my website there's a link there uh instagram same handle dr justin ross and then i mean strava right everybody's got to see the metrics of my runs right look me up on there i'm on strava too nice man well i appreciate it appreciate your time i also appreciate what you

do for athletes anybody that can take athletes to a new level i always appreciate what they do and you've got a really special practice here so it's awesome yeah man thank i appreciate you saying that thank you yeah thanks justin yeah thanks for having me and we're gonna go hit the incline up next time yeah let's do it i love it all right man we'll do it we'll do it okay all right and there we have it there you go i hope you guys got something on your run if you were on a run right now you could have literally taken some of that stuff and applied it in the middle of the run as you were going along right then and right there how practical is that if you weren't on a run you're about to go out for a run hey you haven't you have some tools now that you can take out on the trails with you each and every day i do firmly believe that sports performance now especially when we're talking about ultra marathon performance there is a psycho biological model of this performance and it's just as much on the mental side as it is on the physical side and those two things have to they have to integrate in order for you to really attain your peak performance and your and your potential thanks a lot to dr justin ross for coming on this episode of the KoopCast really appreciate his insights and as always i appreciate what he does for athletes he's made a really big impact i know on the athletes that uh that he has worked with and if you guys really like this podcast go ahead go on over to itunes you can hit the subscribe button there or give it a five star review or you could do both i guess it really doesn't take that much time and it helps the podcast

out a lot if you think coaching is something right for you go ahead and hit us up at trainright.com got a number of great coaches you guys heard them on some earlier episodes of the podcast we'd love to see you out on the trails we'd love to see you achieve your goals for the year everybody's ramping up right now you guys are getting ready for some big races this summer i know you are if you're listening to this podcast you undoubtedly care about the results that you're going to get this summer and the process that it takes to achieve those results so hit us up on the website or you can hit me up at social on social media and i can direct you to one of our absolutely fantastic coaches thanks a lot for listening again you guys appreciate you all and as always we will see you on the trails you