Last week I interviewed Tom Scotto about how an instructor should verbalize really hard efforts to students. Tom is no stranger to suffering on the bike, being a sprinting specialist back when he was racing, and frequent participant in grueling events such as the Dirty Dozen and the Mt. Washington Hill Climb. Tom and I touched on the mental side, but mostly focused on the physical side, and how (and if) an instructor should use terms like “pain” and “suffering” to students.
This time I interviewed Dr. Haley Perlus, sports psychologist, an expert on motivation of the mental side of challenge. Dr. Perlus coaches elite athletes through two aspects of overcoming the mental side of pain. The first is through injury rehabilitation, and the second (and most pertinent to us) is through the functional pain of competition.
Dr. Perlus first discusses when it is and isn’t appropriate to push through pain, or to even use the term “pain”. Then she gives us 5 important tips on how to motivate our own students in our classes through the most challenging types of rides.
This first part of the interview is FREE to everyone to listen to. She covers 2 of the 5 tips. Please share it with every instructor you know. It will also be very helpful to your students who might struggle with getting through physical and mental challenges.
Click here to listen to Part 2, which includes the remaining 3 tips and the option to download the full interview as an MP3 file.
[box type=”download”]Mastering the Mental Side of Overcoming ChallengeListen to the audio or click the download button to save it![/box]