The Freedom Project

Dr. Mike Banna is a GP, a co-host on the Fitness Unfiltered Podcast, and proactively brings much needed balance, truth and realism to topics across medicine and fitness. In this episode, Dr. Mike and myself cover all things mental health. We take a deep dive into mental wellness, mental fitness and mental illness. 

Today I’m going to unveil the four stages I always take athletes through before they have a competition. Naturally, there are some things I add on if required, but these are the essential steps that are always included. Most athletes rely on luck as their pre-lift routine, and luck isn’t a strategy. This is why so many athletes feel like they didn’t give the best they possibly could. They end up disappointed and frustrated at their poor showing. ‘Fail to prepare, prepare to fail’ and all that… So I developed these 4 steps to ensure athletes perform at their best.

As a masters athlete, your approach to training your mindset will be different to non-masters athletes. There are three main considerations I take when working with a masters athlete. Today, I’m going to show you what they are. The mistake I used to make was treating everyone the same in their mindset training. Turns out mindset is one-size-fits-one. Your age plays a factor in that. Today, I’ll explain how being a masters athlete affects what you focus on, the total amount of time you spend training your mindset, and how to focus on your unique challenges.

Dan Williams is the founder of "Whatever It Takes" (WIT), a fitness apparel and equipment company based in London, UK. WIT is known for designing and producing high-quality clothing and accessories for athletes and fitness enthusiasts, as well as for its collaborations with popular fitness brands like Nike and Reebok. Dan Williams is also a CrossFit athlete and coach, and he has been involved in the CrossFit community for many years. In addition to running WIT, he has competed in numerous CrossFit competitions and has coached athletes at all levels of the sport.

McCoy Turner joins Tom on today’s Limitless Athlete Podcast to discuss the exact process he used to train his mindset.

If you look at your training & competing in the same way for the rest of your life, you will not change your mindset. Changing your mindset is about changing your perspective.   Today, I’m going to show you 3 ways you can flip your mindset instantly. Each offers a complete reframe around your mindset & can help you break free from your mindset blocks.   Once you’ve listened to this, you’ll understand why you’ve failed to change your mindset so far. You’ll also know what to do about it this time.

Today, I’m going to give you the truth. Honestly, this isn’t the sexy stuff. I anticipate this blog will get way fewer views than most of my stuff, but it’s the truth behind strong mindset foundations. If you’re going to push yourself, your mindset better be built on strong foundations. Without strong mindset foundations, you’ll find yourself going round and round in circles; perpetually falling into the same old trap and wondering why you can’t change your mindset. When I start working with athletes, they want to jump into the shiny stuff straight away: pre-lift routines and the like. I’ll be honest with you for a moment - if you haven’t got a decent foundation of mindset, most of that will fall flat on its face. Here are the foundational mindset requirements. Get these right and you’ll close the gap between you and your potential. Get them wrong and you’ll always be stagnated.

Whether you are proud of the athlete you become or not, depends entirely on your mindset. Not your physical capacity. Think about your mindset as the thing which determines the gap between the level you perform at and your potential. Someone else wrote this better than me: Performance = potential - interference. In my time coaching crossfit athletes mindset, I’ve located five extremely common problems which hold athletes back from their potential: the forbidden five. Today, I’m going to help you figure out which one of these five is holding you back the most. If you don’t know the belief holding you back, you will always be limited by it, but you probably won’t be able to see it. “Until the unconscious becomes conscious, it will rule your life and you’ll call it fate.” C.G. Jung Today we’re going to cover: Why you can’t meet the standards you set for yourself Why you don’t believe in yourself Why you feel like the outsider Why you can’t change your mindset Why you feel it’s fine for someone else, but not for you

I see 7 big reasons CrossFit athletes stay frustrated with poor performances.   If you consistently finish up comps or workouts second guessing your effort. Or look back at months of training and realise you haven’t come as far as you’d like. Or are just frustrated at how slowly you’re improving, this is for you.   Especially if you have a hunch that your body isn’t the limiting factor, it’s probably your mind.   Today, I’m going to let you know the 7 traps that I see athletes falling into time and again.   If you fall into one of these 7 traps, your mindset will suffer, and so will your performance.

In this podcast I’m going to explain how I debrief CrossFit Open performances with my athletes to help train their mindset.   This ensures no matter the result, they can use The Open to be better than they were before.   Before we get started, I need to reiterate something:   The quickest way to make The Open a complete failure is to learn nothing from it.   No matter if it went well or poorly, you stop growing when you stop learning.   The biggest mistake athletes can make right now (or after any comp) is failing to reflect on it by rushing onto the next thing.   I’ve found that if athletes go through this process they never regress. Of course, there’s some more depth I hit whilst in conversation with them, but these are my starting points   A mindset debrief comes in the following parts: Praising the positive intentionally Growing from setbacks and disappointments Increasing your self awareness Take action