Mental skills · the archive
Mental skills for
endurance athletes.
Essays on the inner game of endurance sport: doubt, fear, pain, focus and the habits of mind that hold up on race day.
You can't outtrain doubt
It’s the silent prediction of your own failure that does the real damage…
The 3-2-1 Resilience Hack
Most athletes don’t break because they’re weak. They break because they can’t tolerate feeling weak.
Giving Up
Because it’s about attitude not aptitude…
Attention
If you aren’t happy with what you’re doing, take the information and act on it.
Hope is Hopeless
That will lead you to your knowing, not your doubting...
Toxic Self Abuse
We’ve bought into the idea that we have to flog ourselves ten different ways to Sunday just to get the most from ourselves.
The Power Of One
A life organised around fear is a contracted life. You will never know how far you can go unless you are willing to go too far.
Overthinking
The only way to step into your power is to let go of who you were pretending to be.
Valour
The main problem is …We don’t actually allow ourselves to feel fear. We think it.
Blind Ambition
When reality doesn’t meet the ambition you built, that’s your moment of truth.
Settle
Force travels through its own relaxation, not its tension.
The Enemy At The Gate
The problem isn’t the bad races. It’s the script you run that says, I can’t allow imperfection.
Surrender To Victory
In the end, you surrender to victory…You bend to its measure, not yours.
Deep In The Pit
What’s the lesson? You can’t trust your thoughts!
Hanging Onto Pain
So indeed, pain is temporary and suffering is optional.
The Guts to Trust Your Gut
The most dangerous thing an athlete can do is work toward fulfilling someone else’s expectations. They generally produce their worst training and racing that way.
In The Trenches
You’ve got to stop having an opinion on what happens, and start looking at your response to it.
Grind
Someone out there with half your talent is winning with twice your consistency.
Do You Really Wanna Get After It?
Then you begin to truly understand that the uncomfortable trials you face will also introduce you to your own strengths.
Quiet Quitting
The quitting we do when we cave in on ourselves is the most destructive. That voice of dissent in training is the same voice that leads to desperation in races.
Grace Under Pressure
Grace is flow. Grace is trust that the moment itself is carrying your development. A damaged ego will chase, push, force, overanalyse and overwhelm itself.
The Goldilocks Zone
Chaos is an idea we are not comfortable with, but there’s no growth without it. You have to get what you don’t want so you can attract what you do want.
It's Messy, Get Over It
Perfect and tidy is a myth. You start, you suck… get over it.
If you don't Mind, It don't Matter
Instead… break bread with it. Sit down with the resistance. With the suck. Have it out.
Get Real With Yourself
You’ve got to find a way to be there for all of it, not just the parts you approve of, if you want to truly know yourself.
It Ain't Relaxing
It’s not about the armchair. Truth is, you can suffer at the hands of your own mind anywhere.
Shape Shift
If you can’t regulate your emotions in training, you won’t regulate them when it matters most.
The Power Of Attitude
Complaining isn’t just venting: it’s reinforcing. It’s like telling your brain, “Hey, turn this pain up to eleven!”
Turn Worrier Into Warrior
Worrying is like worshiping the problem. Better you worship the solution and take any action you can to mitigate the issue.
Fight For Survival
The war between seeking the known and dealing with the unknown. But here’s the thing, trying to make things safe and known makes you unsafe. You’ve got to let that go.
Going Through It
The avoidance we use in our heads to escape suffering increases its intensity because your body is intelligent, it wants to be listened to.
The Warriors Hat
There is a power play at work in most challenges. It’s not about overcoming anything, it’s about meeting the power and matching its energy.
Wreckage
If it breaks, it breaks for a reason. Don’t do the same, do different. It’s not about being courageous either, that just confirms that you are afraid.
Real Power
You are no longer bartering your body for fitness or comprising your personal integrity for the goal. Strength comes in the quiet groundedness of self-reclamation.
Anxiety - Do it Anyway
No longer a victim, you begin to rise in the shadow of what you thought was your ultimate downfall.
Defeat Is Psychological
In sport in general, we attend to our thoughts way too much, and not anywhere near enough to our body’s direct messaging.
The Extra Mile
You need your passion, your will and your lust. That’s fuel not to be fucked with.
Nobody Cares
Here’s the thing, if you are going to do what you please, then you are going to have to let go of what you think pleases others.
War and Peace
Not one second should be wasted on aversion, avoidance and resistance.
Stop The Chase
Everything you reject about yourself is a rejection of your experience!
No Quarter
You gotta reconnect with your refusal to make yourself a mental victim over and over again. You have to stay out of that rabbit hole.
Purposeful Intent
You are going to need to re-connect and re-remember your why over and over again to make that habit an automatic action.
Get After It
Here’s the thing: that Stoic idea of challenge weakens you…I’m dead serious, the tension and resistance adds to the hurt exponentially.
Reverberation
The repercussions of the reverb are happening in your body and nervous system, they will continue to choose the familiar path of chaos until you learn how to choose consciously and differently.
Dedication
Dedication is the warrior's prayer. On fierce focus, staying present when doubt creeps in, and the psychology that turns desire into results.
Embracing the Symphony
Discover how integrating mind, body and heart fuels exceptional athletic performance.
A Sacred Drive
Embracing life's difficulties and discomfort is true bravery. True aliveness requires accepting the inevitable challenges, heartbreaks and vulnerabilities that come with it.
Coaching: It's About Bringing Out What You Hide Within
Grant Giles redefines coaching as a transformative journey, guiding athletes to unearth their inner strengths and innovate through self-discovery
True Intelligence: Gilesy’s Insight on Thought Hygiene and Inner Clarity
The essence of true intelligence, advocating for self-examination, inner clarity and mindful expression to navigate life and sports effectively.
Breaking Free from Athletic Prisons: A Journey Within 🏊♂️🚴♂️🏃♂️
Unlock the barriers limiting your athletic potential by embracing the present, avoiding judgment and celebrating every step of your unique journey.
Get Busy Living
Everybody dies, not everybody lives. On living from the heart rather than the head, and why chasing the mountain top lets life slip past you.
The River flows
Life is always flowing, whether a creek, a torrent or a frozen lake. On letting go of the bank, feeling what you resist and choosing flow.
The Punisher
The inner punisher that shaped me as an athlete, and how fear of your own thoughts, not failure itself, can hold you back.
Elegance
Worrying about worrying drives a neurotic search for balance. On not fearing your thoughts, and being still enough to meet another person's essence.
Masks
The personas we present to the world, from shyness to Instagram, and why relating mask to mask leaves us missing what is real in each other.
The Dream
A lifetime of waiting for the next thing, a childhood sketch of a dream house, and why life is a process rather than an outcome.
Disappearance
Lost in paperwork and longing for the river: on busyness, nature and the regret of rushing through a body that won't stay vital forever.
Normalise
Normal is a statistical idea, not a standard to live by. On mental health, creativity and individuality, and why you are not broken as you are.
The Moment of Truth
Every athlete meets a moment of truth. Why ego and excuses collapse under pressure, and why accepting what is real builds true resilience.
Shackled
The busyness and material slavery we use to avoid being alone with ourselves, and why love has to start with yourself, not with your thoughts.
Let It Die
Holding on invites suffering. On letting things end, the micro-deaths in every day, and how accepting death can ease your fear of living fully.
Toxic Positivity
Forced positive self-talk can push pain deeper. The case for honest self-talk, and for accepting your darker side rather than hiding it.
Growing Pains
Pain is the price we pay to play. You can't get over pain, only through it, and letting it teach you brings stillness and personal growth.
The Fear is Near
One man's roadmap to fear and ambiguity in sport and life: why a low tolerance for not knowing forms, and why moving toward fear helps.
Identified
How I identified with my racing and coaching career, and why nothing you do or own is who you are, only the essence you pass on to others.
Flowering
A hundred years from now, no one you know will be here. A flower in bloom, and what it says about transience, being present and love given freely.
Observation
On consciousness, meditation and why the way you look at the world shapes the reality you create, including in sport and performance.
Neutral
Your mind feeds on stories of victimhood, right and wrong. On slipping into mental neutral and watching your reactions without judgment.
The Beginning of the End
Nothing comes together until everything has fallen apart. On pain, and why it is okay, even necessary, to not be okay for a while.
A racing Mind is a Bursting Heart
What does your heart long for, and what has worry really cost you, in the chase for things that never settle a racing mind or bring lasting peace?
Trapped in Pain
On nostalgia, grief and painful memories, and why feeling them rather than stuffing them down can make you a better human and a better athlete.
Dialogues n Epilogues
Why you can't think your way into mental toughness: the inner voice that argues against you, and why relying on it to back you up never works.
Spontaneity
Prepare out of fear and you race in fear. Sport is art, and trust and instinct serve you on race day better than clinging to metrics.
You Know It Ends
Emotions rise and pass, but we cling to them as if they were solid. How attaching to happiness keeps you waiting, and why you are none of it.
Dark Clouds
The trauma we carry from past generations, why holding on to the past makes us fearful and protective, and how facing it may help break the chain.
A painful Story
In endurance events and in life, it's about playing bad cards well. Feel hard emotions fully without getting lost in the story about them.
Rock Bottom
Why privilege breeds expectation, why rock bottom is a better teacher, and why the road to the goal holds more than the goal itself.
Entertaining Trouble
A triathlon coach on why athletes chase what they fear, and what a hairy stand-up paddle session taught him about doubt, instinct and the mind.
Motivations Shadow
Apathy is motivation's shadow. Why you don't need a reason for training or life, and how attaching reasons to experience can leave you flat.
Consider This
Your body can handle more than you think. How doubt and overthinking cut you off from basic trust in yourself, and the quiet intuition underneath.
Fear Flows
Fear in sport often comes from a lack of self-belief. The feeling of fear is safe, and staying with it brings you back to the present.
En-Courage-Ment
Courage lives in not knowing. On letting go of control, leaving the safety of the shore and finding what you are capable of in sport and in life.
Faith On Trial
Why we struggle to trust each other, how faith is earned rather than given, and how growing trust changes how you see the world.
Just Breathe
When did anxiety become the measure of effort? On pressure, information overload and constant doing, and why inner silence lets you hear your own guidance.
En-Courage-Ment
Courage lives in not knowing. Why growth in sport and life begins when you let go of control, and why you needn't wait for loss to force that discovery.
Dance On The Edge
Reality is an edge where past, present and future meet. On rumination, seeking safety in a transient life, and why life can only be lived in this moment.
Destiny
Wanting a goal isn't the same as believing you can reach it. How old mental scripts keep goals out of reach, and why you should write out what you believe.
Walk Away
Let go of what doesn't serve you. Walking away from negative self-talk and doubters builds faith in yourself, as does acting like you're already there.
The Love of Your Fate
Life can strengthen or weaken you. On loving your fate (victimhood, grief and change) and the freedom that comes from staying present through it.
Focus
Focus isn't something you do with your head. Why mental noise and division cost you focus in key sessions and races, and why you shouldn't think about it.
Mens Mental Health
From about 40, many men face big questions of why that can turn into anxiety. On the courage to face that inner shift rather than hide behind looking okay.
Pressure
Pressure is really protection: the fear of losing what you have. Why it pulls you out of presence before a race, and how staying grounded changes that.
An Inconvenient Truth
There are no magic pills. Success in sport and life is a slow, inconvenient process of patience, letting go of old mental models and learning from failure.
Conqueror or Saboteur?
You can't conquer a race until you conquer your limiting beliefs. How negative self-talk and old scripts quietly sabotage athletes and their performance.
Toughness
Cross winds, choppy swims, stifling heat: challenge reveals your unconscious content. How triathletes can use that contraction in training to grow.
Fiction n Friction
Move out of the resistance to what you don’t want and accept it fully as part of the learning in this goal that you have set yourself.
Battlegrounds of Illusion
Sport is a metaphor for life. Why winning satisfies (the judgment falls silent) and why chasing the next goal can't fill the void unless you're grounded.
Critical Mass
Your inner critic is a learned voice, not you. On where self-criticism comes from, how it shapes our judgment of others, and why awareness of it matters.
Fragments
Living through goals, achievements and outcomes fragments you. My own experience, and why your sense of self is already complete.
Haunted and Deluded
Stress and pressure come from memory and imagination, not the world. How the mind projects its own reality and why we end up victims of our own thinking.
Precluding Opposites
Lessons from a chaotic period: why resisting what you fear can invite it, how injury or illness can carry a lesson, and why belief precludes its opposite.
The Wounded Mind
The mind hoards experience and files it as safe or unsafe. On living by heart and instinct instead of a conditioned, wounded mind that keeps life small.
Functional Dysfunction
Athletes train their bodies into efficient movement patterns while old mental scripts from childhood run unchecked. Why the mind needs the same attention.
Motive
Attach to the process, not the outcome. Why external rewards leave athletes empty, and how loving what you do builds lasting motivation and flow.
Mindset Setmind!
Why I dislike the word mindset. The mind is a lost hitchhiker you can't tame. The real question for athletes is who's in the driver's seat.
The Athlete Stress Redress
You are not your stress or anxiety. You are aware of it. Drawing on my own anxiety as an athlete, why self-definition keeps you stuck.
The Truth About Our Potential
Don't ask thought to run your reality. Why athletes get caught in doubt, fear and expectation, when performance happens in the ruthless present.
Hitting the Ground
Injury, illness or a bike crash: the moment it happens is your opportunity. How athletes can choose healing over resistance when setbacks threaten goals.
The Soft Skills
There's nothing soft about the soft skills. Why compassion, self-awareness and presence matter to athlete and coach alike, and why they drive performance.
Success and Failure
Success and failure are one face. Advice for athletes from a non-duality view: learn as fully from failure as from success, or you'll repeat the lesson.
The Power of Ground
Pressure to perform isn't coming from sponsors or expectations: it's in your head. Why athletes move toward goals only in direct contact with the process.
Feeling Stuck
Feeling stuck is often resistance to reality: the gap between what is and your picture of how it should be. On the trap of measuring life, not living it.
Performance Anxiety
Performance anxiety feeds on judgment, the past and the future. Why presence is the missing ingredient, and how a daily mental reset can help you.
Make Change or Stay the Same
Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing. Why identifying with your struggles keeps you stuck and how negative self-talk feeds it.
The Unforgettable Fire
Real motivation moves from the inside out. On intrinsic motivation, why hype fades and why you can only point others toward their own drive to train.
What is the Goal?
As a coach, my goal is to sell you on yourself. How we split sport and life into likes and dislikes, and why to become conscious of being conscious.
Taught to Win - Conditioned to Fail
How childhood conditioning not to fail plants failure in the subconscious, why the fear of winning may run deeper than losing, and what athletes can learn.
Transforming Pain
Your judgment of pain does more damage than the pain itself. Why the ability to suffer in endurance sport is psychological.
Surrender As Performance Power
Surrender is not giving up. Why endurance athletes find real strength by meeting the challenge from within, not chasing answers in technology.
Defeat is a state of mind
No one is defeated until defeat is accepted. On mental capitulation in training, triggers as teachers and why resilience is a choice.
Your X-Factor
If you really want to find the x-factor of the athlete in you, there’s only one rule to apply. Refuse to impersonate.
Competitiveness
Competitiveness can help or harm you. Why comparison and envy pull athletes off their own path, and how self-awareness keeps your drive working for you.
Perception
Things are only as hard as they seem. How unconscious likes and dislikes shape your experience of training, racing and life, and why awareness changes it.
The Winners Pillars
Four simple pillars to a personal athletic success you never thought possible.
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Beyond reading
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