Focus

A nice little reminder about focus this morning.

I went training this morning. Nothing particularly ground breaking there.

However, as I trained I was finding that I was really struggling to engage with the session. My brain was clearly elsewhere. It wasn't all that surprising, Monday morning, beginning of the working week, I had plenty on my mind, I need to get this done, I should do that first. My brain was everywhere but on what I was doing.

Sometimes that sort of mind purge can be a good thing about exercise, it can help clear the head, a bit like meditation, I used to find that was a nice thing about long rides. However, more often than not having the mind off somewhere else can have a negative effect on training. If you aren't engaged in what you are doing, you are unlikely to be doing it well.

The session I was doing this morning was technique focused, which obviously requires mental engagement, but the same issues can arise if you are trying to work hard. It is very difficult to do good quality intervals if you aren't concentrating on them, the intensity doesn't tend to be there and when the going gets hard the quality usually falls away.

For my session this morning it took until about half way through before my brain finally engaged. By that stage my mind had done a bit of a purge and freed up enough to settle on what I was actually doing. As a result the second half of the session was better quality, although by then fatigue was starting to take a toll. By taking so long to get into the session you could question the point of the first half. Did I actually get a benefit from it? Hmmmm.

It can be a challenge, but with training I often have to remind myself to be in the moment. What are you doing right now, why are you doing it. Don't worry about what is for dinner or what meetings are on later, what is purpose of what I am doing right now and what do I need to be doing to do it well? What power should I be holding, or what HR, or what pace, what drill am I doing, what technique points should I be checking for. Bringing myself back to the current activity and focusing on that instead of all those other external distractions will mean a greater benefit from that activity. Always worth it.