Isn’t it strange how we are able to train so consistently and so confidently in the day to day training environment, but as we draw into race week the jitters begin.

Some of that shakiness is a requirement, a shakiness that alerts us to the fact that we are about to go into battle and that we need all our reserves to be awakened.

However once that shakiness moves into the realm of doubt, we move into a shadow land of hidden inner judgements, criticisms, doubts and fears, yes those ones we don’t want the competition to see.

In this episode we are working to bring clarity to what is helpful and what is harmful to your performance in that uncomfortable week called race week, and the pitfalls we set ourselves up for unconsciously through the inner habits we perpetuate and the resistance we create to the process we trained so effectively for physically.

Nerves, anxiousness, obsessiveness, doubts, fears, agitation, avoidance, resistance, apathy and how to reach an optimal pre race arousal level all covered here in this episode to help you negotiate the tricky landscape called pre race angst.

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In this episode Gilesy explores the age old athlete question, how do I know when I’m too fatigued to train and when I’m just slacking?

Athletes have a very hard time coming to terms with fatigue, often we will override our own intuition to push on into the twilight zone.

In this episode we explore the effect of rumination on the decision   making process on whether to train or not, the damned if you, damned if you don’t scenario that so many athletes struggle with in their day to day training environment.

We unpick the very nature of our relationship to fatigue and the role intuition and awareness plays in maintaining the necessary long term consistency which sometimes  plays out at the cost of the short term plan in order for us to stay in homeostasis and continue to grow athletically.

Some of the key areas we cover this week around the hooks hidden in this question are-
rumination, worry, stress, doubt, fear, comparison, outcomes and expectations and the effect they have on us making the right decisions for the benefit of the long term goal.

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering whether you should pull the trigger and train or go home, this one is for you.

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https://www.inconvenientminds.com.au/

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In this episode we have Kira Sutherland, an Australian Naturopath and Sports Nutritionist with more than 20 years in clinical practice. Kira's focus in performance nutrition led her to be the first Naturopath in Australia to undertake the International Olympic Committees diploma in sports nutrition. She is the 2019 winner of the BioCeuticals Integrative Medicine Award for Excellence in practice (Nutrition/Dietetics).

In this chat we discuss the link between the gut microbiome and our mental, emotional states and the ultimate intelligence of the body to self regulate. We talk athlete body types, athlete weight obsession and disordered eating.

We discuss athletic dietary trends and fads and the performance implications that surround our decisions, and sometimes the consequence of not paying enough attention to the awareness around the signals that out bodies are sending us.

We speak of the massive role intuition plays in correct nutrition practices, both in races and in training, and learning how to dial into the internal messages the gut is sending and what it means.

Naturally we talk pre-race diet and race day nutrition plans. The importance of only making subtle dietary changes in race week. Removing the complexity and keeping it simple, avoiding race day disasters set in motion by not trialing enough in training or the big mistake of changing too much leading into races. 

This chat was one I was looking forward to having and I'm sure there will plenty of take homes for any athlete taking the time to listen in.

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In this episode Grant explores the epidemic of anxiety. I pulled the trigger on this particular podcast due to the fact that so many have contacted about the subject of anxiety.

Anxiety steals the peace, tranquility and efficacy of living life as a being. We suffer so at the hands of anxiety because we misidentify ourselves as objects. Unconsciously we feed our anxiety the fuel it requires, which is our own ignorance of our true definition. 

If we want to work with anxiety, first we must understand what and who anxiety and fear really occurs to. Here Grant explores our relationship to it and ourselves, and the ways we unconsciously get ourselves stuck in it, and more importantly what we can do about it. How we can put an end to the fear inside the fear.

While ever we see ourselves as an object, we will see ourselves as doings not beings. Beings naturally do, objects are inert lumps of matter that have no being, if we see ourselves this way, how can we not feel anxious?

Anxiety is a misinterpretation of our true identity, the confusion that comes with that  keeps us stuck on a rats wheel of illusion, dissatisfaction and despair. But it need not be that way.

Anxiety likes to hide out in the dark corners of our subconscious waiting for an opportunity to strike, it thrives on our ignorance and lack of awareness. However you can't be caught off guard if you are looking at it, allowing it, accepting its presence.

In this podcast Grant explores a mode of recovery from anxiety that has lasting power. It's about moving into your own power and getting back into the drivers seat of your own life. The first step is to commit to change and to give up the resistance.

If you suffer from anxiety, know someone who suffers from anxiety or even if you worry too much, this one is for you.

Its time to stop the rot. 

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This week I am discussing one of my favorite subjects when it comes to the borders of athletic endeavor, "relaxing into pain". In this episode I am covering some of the key aspects around pain, discomfort and our relationship to managing it, including:

• Our relationship to pain.
• Pain is a tag we learnt from our parents. 
• Our judgment of pain.
• Pain, is it felt or thought?
• The practice of using awareness to become the conduit of pain, not the victim of it. 
• The practice of relaxing into pain.
• The practice and the transmuting power of allowing discomfort, challenge and pain to be as it is.
• The role acceptance of pain can play in finding flow. 
• Finding your solid ground from which to perform. 

If you want pain and discomfort to cease then you first need to let go of it. We spend an inordinate amount of time judging ourselves to be the victim of it, when in fact, we make it so because we think that way.

We divide pain into likes and dislikes. We judge it so intensely that we don't give it the opportunity to flow though, like all energy, it comes and goes. In order to find flow and alignment with an athletic process you have to accept it as it is, the second you find yourself in resistance is the second you find yourself out of flow, you are no longer in your process, you are standing outside of it in judgment, you move out of the present moment and into past and future.

If we want to learn how to connect the dots of athletic process to its best effect, we need to explore the way we think and the damage it does, bearing in mind that most of what happens to us that separates us from our process is largely unconscious thinking patterns, its been going on for so long that we are not aware of it. Its an old program paradigm that needs an upgrade.

If you want the best from yourself then explore the parts of yourself that are most triggered or challenged.

There are not many things that challenge or trigger athletes like pain and discomfort.

Dig in,
Gilesy.

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Today I interview Christie Giles {née Sym}. We haven’t shared anything specifically from the feminine perceptive yet so I thought this might be an interesting perspective given the life she has led thus far.

Probably Australia’s best adventure racer through the years 2006-2009, Christie won just about everything. The epitome of what looked from the outside to be mental toughness.

Tired of being expected to win she sought out a new challenge and moved across to triathlon in 2009, setting the triathlon world alight early winning multiple 70.3 races and placing second in her first Ironman at Busselton only 3 minutes behind winner Gina Crawford.

Christie moved overseas through the years 2010-2013 and raced professionally, winning in international races but somehow lacking real consistency through a propensity to push too far too often.

What often looks like mental toughness from the outside does not match an athletes inner dialogue and we can travel a fine line, when driven to succeed, between appropriate self care and outright self destruction and unconscious self sabotage.

Christie has taken some hard hits and learnt some big lessons on her journey and one of the key lessons is that being hard and collapsing in on yourself can only go on for so long before it causes issues. So once again it raises the critical question, what does mental toughness actually mean? 

Today Christie will talk about the nature of athletic self care and self nurturing for longevity. She shares her struggles with body type, eating dysfunction and society's polarised view of what the female athlete should look like. 

We talk diet obsession, self sabotage, over-training and overreaching, negative self talk, negative expectancy and much more. This is a good listen for all levels of ability, hope you enjoy.

Grants Website-
https://www.inconvenientminds.com.au/

Today Gilesy discusses the immense power in the seemingly opposing recipe of giving up in Success! 

It’s not about what you gain, it’s about what you give up. What are you willing to give up for your dreams? Your late nights, your social butterfly ways, your high GI sugar fixes, your self judgment, your doubts, your fears, your Friday afternoon beers? 

Ultimately success is not measured by what you have, but by what you have given up! What you find in that giving up of outside attachment is the source of your very own power that fills the gaps in the void your attachments have left behind. Real power, tangible power. 

We need to sacrifice the peripheral to find our center, whereby we are in flow with success, in rhythm with it, in sync, that means subtraction of that which is surplus to the flow of success itself. 

When we want to have an each way bet and fail to fully commit, we stay out on the periphery, we know we haven’t made the necessary sacrifice and the heart knows it, so we are at the mercy of the spinning periphery, we cling and hang on for dear life and just hope we don’t get flung off the success trajectory we have sold our ego and neglected to swallow into our heart and gut. 

Heart and gut is the answer to the athletic realm and just about every other realm of life for that matter. 

When we really start to dig into the twilight zones, do we really believe there’s a chance in hell we are going into that place without heart, will, desire and guts? None of that is coming from your mind.

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https://www.inconvenientminds.com.au/

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Today Gilesy is discussing a few of the pillars of becoming self aware. The unconscious traps we tend to fall into that sever our performance cord and separate us from our own internal potential. 

Most of them experienced by Gilesy and explored out to hopefully add something to your own exploration that may help you short cut and negotiate some of the same holes that he fell into. 

The judgment system, being aware in this moment, the past, the future, fear, doubt, self confidence all tied into a non binding discussion that flows through all the corridors and ends up back where it starts, with you!

Grants Website-
https://www.inconvenientminds.com.au/

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