Managing Distraction During Training

Many mountaineers are VERY driven individuals. This can be beneficial in many situations, but it can often lead to numerous distractions that hinder focus on training.

​In this episode, we explore a few simple ideas to help reduce this, and ensure you are getting the most out of your sessions! 

​Episode Transcript:

[0:00] Right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are exploring a couple of really simple mindset tips to help with a mountaineer

[0:10] who struggles with a bit of distraction during their training sessions. Because over the years of training mountaineers, one common theme I've seen from mountaineers who struggle with consistency during their training is distraction, is getting into their sessions and having their mind just pulling in a bunch of different directions, getting distracted by things getting in the way of their sessions and having these things come up again and again and again. I've seen this so many times and it has been a pretty common theme for a lot of mountaineers that I've seen who haven't really gotten the results that they want from their training during various stages of their journeys. So today we're going to be exploring a few simple tips which can help with this type of situation and help you focus on your sessions, get the most out of it, and really, really, really just reap the benefits of all the hard work you're intending to put in.

[1:05] Now, I think where this comes from is a lot of mountaineers out there, and this is a trait for a lot of mountaineers, is they're very, very driven people, especially people who are booking on these big expeditions. And they're like, you know what, this is a big goal for me. I really want to push myself. I really want to challenge myself. I want to put myself out there and just do something that a lot of people in the world would consider intense, extreme, crazy, however you want to frame it. A lot of mountaineers are very driven people. And this isn't only in their mountaineering ambitions. You know, there's a lot of mountaineers out there who are also very, very driven in their career, very, very driven in their work life. They're really, really put in the hours. They work high pressure jobs. They sort of, you know, or whatever it is.

[1:52] And it does seem to be a bit of a common theme that I see from mountaineers over the years, who people who book on these big expeditions, all too often, they are trying to balance out not only a pretty big training load for their training, but also balancing out a very busy and sometimes intense work life as well. And whether this is a case of just people need an escape in these situations and like, oh my gosh, work is intense and I need something that I can focus on to pull myself out there, whether it's just personality people, like personalities of like, hey, I'm that type A personality. I like to work hard and play hard or whatever it is. I don't know. But it definitely is a common theme. But if you do find yourself in this situation, maybe this sounds a bit familiar to you. It does run into an issue because mountaineering training can obviously be pretty time intensive. You know, as an endurance sport, we need to put in quite a few hours. And if you are working a pretty intense job, whether it's just intense in normal hours or intense in amount of hours, and if you're trying to balance out your work and your training, you know, sometimes it can be a very delicate balancing act. And quite often, people will be just cramming in what they can. They'll be training at lunchtime. They'll be training right before work. They'll be training right after work and just doing what they can to squeeze in their sessions around work, which is absolutely fine. Obviously, everyone's in different situations. and you've just got to do what you've got to do to work around your life. But it does run into a risk.

[3:22] As I said, so many mountaineers I've worked with in the past have found themselves distracted and regularly distracted during their training sessions. Maybe they're doing their training and they're getting phone calls from the office or they're getting messages or emails or whatever may be. Maybe they're just coming out of a stressful day or they're in the middle of a stressful day and work just keeps on going through their mind. They're thinking of the million things they need to do or the issues that are cropping up or whatever may be.

[3:50] Or maybe they just are trying to train before work and they're like, oh my gosh, something's come up. I've got to get in the office or public transport's down or whatever it may be. And a lot of people just have this distraction going on. And if this happens every once in a while, it happens to everyone once in a while, regardless of what type of job you live or things coming up in life will always get in our mind. And if this happens occasionally, not really a big deal. We just got to deal with it, whatever it is. But if this is a regular thing and you're like, you know what, that's just kind of life I live and I'm regularly finding I'm getting into my sessions and I'm getting distracted by phone calls. I'm getting distracted by emails. I just can't focus. I can't be fully present in these sessions. You know, it can be a bit of a major barrier for training because if we're distracted, we're not concentrating, obviously. If we're distracted, we're not paying attention to how the body feels. If we're distracted, we are not sort of really, really honing in on our exercises or our training. Or whatever it may be, and there is no denying if you are distracted, your sessions are going to suffer.

[4:55] So if this is sounding a bit familiar to you, you're entering your sessions and you have a bit of distraction, whether it's from work or whether it's from some other thing, I want to talk you through a couple of really simple, but very, very effective strategies, which can make a bit of a difference.

[5:11] Now, first and foremost, this is common sense. I know you've already heard it. I know you've already considered it. I know a lot of people do this already, and I know a lot of people ignore this, but first and foremost is managing notifications. There is nothing that is going to get in the way, nothing like getting in the way of your session as you're halfway through an exercise and you see an email pop up, or you're going through something and a phone call comes on or whatever it may be. And a lot of training, when you're looking at training for mountaineering, in theory, a lot of people think, you know what, I can probably multitask while I'm doing this. Maybe you're doing your strength training and you're having a minute or two rest in between your sets. And you're like, you know what, I'll reply to emails here or reply to messages here. Or maybe you're sitting on like a stationary bike at the gym and you're like, you know what? I'm just going to be on a phone call while I'm doing this, or I'm going to respond to messages while I do this or whatever it is. And I understand the idea behind it. I understand the thought process. But if there is any, any, any way of avoiding this, if it is not 100% necessary for you to be on call or whatever it is, please don't do this because it will absolutely pull you away from your training. You'll still would some is better than none, but you won't be able to focus. You won't be able to push yourself. You won't be able to be in tune with your body knowing what's going on. And it's just something you want to avoid.

[6:32] In the best case scenario, if this is at all possible, please just don't have your phone with you. And if you have like a training watch, make sure there aren't notifications popping up when you're training.

[6:43] In the best case scenario, just leave it in your bag or leave it in the office or leave it at home or whatever it may be.

[6:49] Now i fully understand maybe this isn't possible maybe you do need to be accessible from work maybe you do need to you know got family members or a young family and you just need to be there in case there is emergency or whatever may be at the very very least if you do have your phone with you you know set it on do not disturb set it up so you only get certain notifications or certain phone calls can come through to you during these times from family members or from key people from your team or whatever it may be. Cut out that noise of the stuff that isn't necessary and don't be tempted to check things. If you are tempted, then turn on airplane mode so you don't have internet access or whatever it is. Just avoid this. I couldn't tell you how much of a change this can make to your training.

[7:35] It's a simple thing. So please go with that. I promise you or to make a difference.

[7:41] Now, the other thing, and this is applicable to most people, even if you don't find yourself majorly distracted during training.

[7:49] But it's something called managing transitions. And this is something that I did a bit of work on with for myself when I was sort of struggling to balance out my own training, my own personal life and my own career because I run a business and run a team and all of that. And I was actually struggling with this myself. And the whole idea around this is managing the transitions between going from one facet of your life to another. So when you are going from work and transitioning to training, when you're going from work, and in my case, transitioning to family or whatever it is, and not meshing everything in between, but really signifying the transition and the boundary between the others. The idea behind this is it'll basically help us just be present where we are. It'll help us sort of encapsulate those certain aspects of our life so it doesn't creep into everything like that, and we can properly focus on each of those areas.

[8:46] So the idea around here is when we're talking about work and training, is we essentially just want to make sure we do something to signify when we are leaving work mode and when we are entering training mode. This will be really, really good for minimizing those distractions, letting you focus, and letting you perform. Now, there are lots and lots of different ways of going about this, and ultimately all you're trying to do is just put a signal at this transition. It can be as simple as literally walking through the door and say, you know what? I'm going to say a sentence to myself like, you know what? Training time is here. Or you know what?

[9:24] I'm not going to say the corny lines that I had for myself because no one will take me seriously. But I used to have a few corny lines and I would walk out of my home office because I work from home and I would say a line to myself signifying that work is done and it's family realm, relationship realm coming in. One of my favorites in this type of situation, I think it can be really useful, is doing a brain dump. So essentially what this involves is when you're going through this transition, if you are finishing up your workday, going into training, if you're going into training at lunch, if you are waking up in the morning and going into training, whatever it may be, sit down with a pen and paper, put a timer on for anywhere from like two to five minutes. And literally for those two to five minutes, you literally just write down everything that's in your head. It's not structured. It doesn't have to be readable. It doesn't have to be pretty. It's just like a stream of consciousness writing down.

[10:17] And then once the time is done, that's it. Get on with your training. Get into it or whatever it is. Now, this is really, really powerful for a few reasons. Number one, it gets all those swirling thoughts out of your head. As I said before, one of the biggest issues with this distraction is we get into work or we get into training and we're just thinking about all these things we should be doing. We're thinking about, oh my gosh, I need to be doing this or I've got a meeting coming up or this conversation didn't go well or I've got to organize this or whatever it is. And that swirling stuff just takes us out of the present, takes us out of the session, and it just affects things. So literally just writing this all down and getting this out on paper, it takes it from the head and it's out of there. And if there are any significant things, you're like, I need to remember this, you can have a little to-do list right next to you. And you can have your stream consciousness, which is just going to throw out afterwards and literally write down, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this. It sounds simple. It sounds silly, but oh my gosh, if you struggle with this, it is a game changer.

[11:18] Now, number two, this can also be useful to set intentions around your training. Because if you're just brain dumping and you've got everything out of your head, you're like, cool, that's gone. I don't have to think about it anymore. While the time is going, you can literally set your intentions around the training. You can sort of say, hey, today I'm going to enter and I'm going to push really, really hard on one of these sessions, or I'm going to try and PB on this exercise, or I'm going to focus on my core stability. I'm going to focus on this, or I'm going to focus on relaxing when I'm running or whatever. And you can set intentions around your training. Now, by themselves, intentions for your workouts can be really powerful. That's a whole different story and a whole different thing, but it can work out well into this. And then number three, as I said before, it can just signify that transition. And it can say, I'm leaving work mode and I'm entering training mode. Or I'm leaving whatever and I'm entering this other mode. And that in itself, it's very, very, very significant.

[12:14] So, if you are a mountaineer who does struggle with distraction during training, whether it's during strength training, your long runs, or your long cardio, or your conditioning sessions, or whatever it may be, and if you're aware that maybe a busy work life is encroaching on that mentally, or a busy family life, or whatever it may be, here are two simple things. You've probably heard them before, but I promise you they'll make a genuine difference. Number one, manage those notifications. If you can, get rid of the phone.

[12:44] If not, minimize it and do not try to multitask. It will not serve you well over the long term. And then number two, have a look at those transitions. Give that brain dump a go. And I promise you, it will make a really big difference.

[12:58] And over the long term, the more you can focus in your training, the more you can be present in your training, the more you're going to get out of your sessions, and ultimately, the better it's going to help you for the mountain. So with that being said, I'm going to wrap this up here. I hope this is useful. I hope a few people can put this into action and I really do hope it can make a bit of a difference for people with their training. Now, as I always say with these podcasts, if you weren't interested in getting some personalized help with your own training for your mountaineering, if you want to learn a little bit about the online personal training for mountaineers that I do, you can go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. On that page, there's a nice video, talks through our program in a bit of detail. And if you want to explore it a bit further, there's a link on that page to book a free call with our team where we can have a bit of a chat, talk through you, your situation, your mountaineering, and your training, and ultimately see if we may be able to help you out. So if you want to check that out, go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer, and we can take it from there. But with that being said, thank you so much for listening today. Hope you've enjoyed it. Hope you got a bit out of it, and we'll talk to you very soon. Bye.

Want to get
fit, strong and resilient
for your mountaineering adventures?

Check out
​The Online Summit Program