Building Mental Stamina

Building Mental Stamina

Do you find yourself struggling through workouts or cardio sessions, or at a plateau in your fitness? Is your challenge more mental than physical, and you find yourself giving in easier, telling yourself you just can’t do it, or making excuses to not exercise? If that’s the case, you just might need help increasing your mental stamina.

Techniques and tips for building mental stamina or toughness are plentiful; think positive, visualize your goal; don’t beat yourself up, etc. But, just like will power during dieting, what works for one person, might not work for another. However; there is one thing across the board that works wonders for building mental toughness, regardless of your personality type, where you are in your fitness journey, or your age. That single silver bullet is this: proper rest. That’s right. It’s that simple, but it has to be consistent, and for some people, this may be a new way of living.

If you’re a night owl, or have trouble sleeping, proper and consistent rest might be just the prescription you need to build mental toughness to go the distance. Although it has many benefits, proper rest results in three important effects that build mental stamina.

Proper rest:

–       Curbs inflammation. Studies have shown that inflammation is directly associated with increased fatigue.¹ When our body is fatigued, it is not primed for a good workout or cardio session, which definitely breaks down mental resolve and toughness.

–       Boosts emotional stability and decreases depression, which in turn reduce anxiety. These three benefits combined are great building blocks of mental toughness.

–       Increases physical stamina – This is supported by findings that many of the major restorative functions in the body like muscle growth, tissue repair, protein synthesis, and growth hormone occur mostly, or in some cases only, during sleep².

Studies have also shown that getting enough sleep can also improve reaction time and split second decision making.³ So, it might be time to rethink your sleep habits and routine if you currently just can’t seem to power through your workouts. If you’ve taken the step to get fit, and get your nutrition right, making proper sleep a priority just might be the final move you need to make to bring it all together for maximum performance and well-being.

So, how much sleep do you need? Seven to nine hours — and more if you’re under a lot of stress, or doing intense workouts. And just like you can’t ‘out-cardio’ your diet, you can’t catch up on sleep. If you sleep deprive yourself during the week, and play catch up on the weekends, you’ve cheated yourself 5 out of 7 days of all the great benefits discussed above. So, don’t try to cram one more thing into today. There is always tomorrow, and you’ll have a lot more energy. Just go to bed.

Sources:

 1A 2010 study conducted at the Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia study found that people getting six or fewer hours of sleep per night had higher levels of inflammatory proteins in their blood than those who get more than 6 hours.

2National Sleep Foundation

32009 study at the University of Texas at Austin with West Point cadets.