As athletes who constantly strive for improvement, a question often being asked is “How do I push beyond my limits?”. You know that an effective training session will never be a walk in the park. However, as you feel your breathing rate reaching its peak and your muscles burning due to soreness, there will always be this little voice in your head telling you to stop before you could even reach your personal breakthrough.
During an intense session, we often think that we have exhausted all our resources to move forward. However, this is often not the case. Our brain is even smarter than you think, cumulated from 200 thousand years of development, adaptation and evolution. There’s this little voice in our head that “reminds” our body that we have reached our physical limits and we will destroy ourselves if we do not stop in time. More often than not, we never really achieve our true limits as our brain, coupled with the feelings of fatigue, would have told us to stop even before that to prevent our body from being overworked.
To overcome these mentally imposed boundaries, “The Power of One More Rep” is a simple technique that can provide us with that extra push we need to finish whatever we set out to complete. It can be done by simply asking ourselves: Can I do one more rep?
Asking this question will help our brain reflect and regain our focus. Because it is "just" one more rep. By focusing on this particular “one more rep”, we divert our mind from the barriers and boundaries automatically defined by our brain. This in turn gives us some extra fuel to push through our physical and mental boundaries one step at a time. In many cases, you’d be amazed that you are really capable on going that extra mile (or two!)
Therefore, next time when you are on the brink of giving up, bear in mind that there is still a little bit more in your tank that is not tapped; and to tap into these resources, a simple strategy is to ask yourself: Can I do one more rep? Most often than not, the answer will be a ‘yes’!
Not sure if you can create this habit in your sporting life? Connect with us and we can help!
