Fortius Sport and Health Centre

You can’t control the uncontrollable, so don’t waste tears trying. That was probably the most valuable piece of information I walked away with following the running symposium I attended this weekend at Burnaby’s Fortius Sport and Health Centre. Sports psychologist David Cox (who works with the Vancouver Whitecaps and the Canadian Olympic snowboarding team) had just 20 minutes to share his expertise in getting the mind ready for race day. He didn’t waste any time. Talking a mile a minute and frantically chicken scratching notes on the whiteboard he spewed out key words: Confidence. Belief. Self Efficacy. He threw his hands up at negative pressure, he slapped outcome goals in the face, he weighed the cancer of extrinsic values to the reward of intrinsic. As runners, we are so hung up on times, on the “brutal” win-or-lose mentality. But why not invest more on our performance goals, those things that […]