Are you an athlete?
Who cares? I don’t need to call myself an athlete, I just do my training for fun. Me too…but when you dedicate a lot of time, effort and resources to training or sport doesn’t the word ‘athlete’ hold something positive for you? A note of self-respect aspiration or inspiration?
I decided to use it to describe one of my yoga classes and I’m glad because then I came across this quote from an endurance sport coach on a podcast I follow and it confirmed the choice for me and my perspective:
“Anybody can be an athlete. Athlete to me is a mindset - how I’m gonna prepare for the workout, how I’m gonna execute the workout, how I’m gonna recover from the workout. That could be for your first 5k or that could be for the Olympics. What makes you an athlete is how you prepare for and think about and get through it. Not because you have some sort of elite status or physical stature.” (Chris Houth, Rich Roll podcast episode 377)
But what exactly is this mindset described in the quote above? Is it a type of aspiration? A person who wants to be better at their sport, has their eyes on the prize or is competitive? We might be tempted to think about the goal or result obsessed type who trains hard because they want to win, motivated by the end goal. For many professional athletes I guess that is their career foundation and the expectation of their sponsors. For most of us, we’re pretty dedicated to our physical activities but maybe not particularly focused on winning races (especially at the moment!).
As I listened to the podcast I wondered if I was just being self-indulgent! Indulging in some fantasy that I’m an amateur professional - “I could be pro if I really wanted to be or if I’d had the right opportunities as a young person…”. Not a helpful mindset even if it were true!! But later in the podcast, Chris talks a lot about mental qualities and then it all started to make sense. The mindset isn’t a wish, dream or goal. It’s not even purely hard discipline or passion. It’s mental resilience, the ability to overcome setbacks, unexpected changes or emerging weaknesses. The ability to be consistent and have true self-compassion. This might mean allowing for ‘bad’ days or it may mean understanding the true need behind apparent fatigue (sometimes mental more than physical). Focus and discipline yes but not always for a goal or schedule. We could call focus ‘paying attention’ to our physical and mental state. We could call discipline ‘staying power’, believing that you have the strength to deal with cold, wet, pain, hills, cliffs or whatever challenges are out there. Professionals need all this too - an competitive athlete isn’t going to make pro without a lot of these qualities.
What the coach also talks about (happens to be one of my favourite themes too!) is how all this translates into other areas of life. It struck me that resilience, adaptability and staying power, along with the ability to truly pay attention are qualities I value and wish to nurture in myself regardless of sport, training or any physical goals I have.
This is not to denigrate the achievements of professionals and great amateurs but to encourage you to think of yourself as an athlete and see how this may serve to build you up, physically, mentally, emotionally.
Happy sweating ;)