This articles outlines 7 fundamental psychological strategies that can be easily applied to your gym sessions to improve your performance and get better outcomes. So get inside your own head for a moment to see how it can help you.

1. Awareness to thought. Building awareness to thought process is a key strategy in psychotherapy to help clients improve their mental health. What are you thinking just before going to the gym/ just before that next set? Are these thoughts negative and are they attached to a negative emotion? (“this is going to be a hard session” - dread/ laziness for example). These negative emotions can influence your personal performance or earlier, determine whether you even turn up to the gym.

Knowing your cognitive tendencies is a healthy process, even if your tendencies are negatively oriented. Avoid placing judgment on yourself for them, just be aware and notice how your thoughts have the capacity to subconsciously affect your behaviour. By bringing this subconscious into the conscious, you gain power by what you choose to do the next time this thought arises.

2. Challenging your limits. What limits are you placing on yourself during your gym session? Ensure that you are planning and tracking your sets or times and continuously aiming to improve them.

Achievement is one of the three fundamental behavioural ideals that balance a life of psychological wellness (the others are responsibilities and pleasures FYI). Working towards micro goals in the gym can be a fantastic way to build an ongoing sense of achievement in your life.

3. Challenging your thoughts. From your newly developed cognitive awareness gained in strategy 1, ensure that your self-talk isn’t hampering your gains. For example, if you have a set of 15 bench press lifts to complete and you’re lying flat staring up at a bar, what is your internal dialogue?

a) Nothing
b) “I don’t know that I can do this” or “This is too heavy”
c) “I know I can do 12 at this weight. I’ll aim for that”
d) “I’ve totally got this down”

If your answer is:

(a) potentially it’s worth taking a bit more time on strategy 1. On the other hand, maybe your mind is clear at the gym and this could be highly functional to your performance (no intrusive thoughts = high level of task-oriented focus).

(b) you can no doubt notice the negativity here and, without judgement, maybe spend some time challenging these thoughts as they occur. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is apt for this process, though Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has some wonderful strategies to manage thoughts like these too.

(c) your limits are greatly defined by yourself. Always aim for what you want your body to prepare itself to achieve. Sure, you may not make it sometimes but that’s why your spotter is there, right? If you aim for 12, you’ll more than likely make that but those last 3 are going to be much harder to push out if your brain isn’t pre-warned that they’re coming.

(d) not surprisingly, this is exactly what we need more of in any potentially challenging task. Boost yourself up before you start with positive self-statements. You don’t need to believe them, just repeat them in your head until your actions meet your beliefs.

4. Visualising. Visualising is a well established psychological performance strategy. It works because to a certain degree, your brain doesn’t know the difference between actually engaging in an activity and simply imagining the experience. Psychologists rely on this minor brain flaw for many interventions we adopt. So if you visualise yourself completing that next block run in record time, as far as your brain is concerned, it believes that you can do it. Now you just need to get your body to keep up!

Start each session during your warm up visualising what it is you are about to do from start to finish. Then again before each activity, visualise your gains before you begin.

5. Breathe. Physiologically, the regulation and timing of your breathe is key to performance in the gym. You’ve probably been told this and if not, you’ve likely noticed it yourself. But while your muscles’ cells are sucking up the maximum oxygen they can with every breath you take, your brain is often depleted. Our body has evolved to direct blood and oxygen to where it needs it most, and at the gym, it’s more likely to be your biceps than your head.

By regulating your breathing through slowing down your breathe out, you also have the capacity to help your brain deal with any negative intrusive thoughts all the while reducing the experience of pain that you are enduring. Experiment with this just before the next time you are about to begin a set. Deep breathe in to the count of 3 or 4, slow breathe out for 4-5. Then return your breathing to as it normally would be in the activity you are doing.

6. Reflective practice. Reflecting on the progress and changes that occur in our life as a result of our actions allows us a sense of empowerment. It also gives us the capacity to fine tune our goals and improve our overall mood.

Environmental re-evaluation provides us with the opportunity to periodically check-in on how our gym habits are affecting us physically (our body) and socially (how are we in relation to other people from our gym practice?).

Self re-evaluation provides us with the opportunity to periodically check-in on how our gym habits are affecting our self-confidence, our self-esteem, and our emotional state.

Taking time to notice even small positive changes occurring as a result of a healthy habit like going to the gym is a great motivation boost to continue with the behaviour. Try regularly practicing re-evaluation just before your scheduled gym times and notice how your motivation and mood changes as a result.

7. Sleep. This is an essential prerequisite to any mental performance. If you want to apply any of the above to the best of your ability, sleep is a no-brainer. As an adult, we require between 7-9 hours of sleep per night and if you are a teenager, then boost this to at least 8-10. Caffeine is not a replacement for sleep people!

Evidence shows that our cognitive and physical performance dramatically declines with sleep deprivation and can be improved with an increase in quality sleeping hours. In one study of elite basketball players for example, by increasing sleep to 10 hours every night over 5-7 weeks; reaction times significantly decreased and sprinting pace increased as did shooting accuracy.