Got any good tips? This is what I’ve been able to locate so far:
Ironmind: Stronger Minds, Stronger Bodies by Randall J. Strossen
http://www.amazon.com/Ironmind-Stronger-Minds-Bodies/dp/0926888021
The Body Fat Solution by Tom Venuto
http://www.amazon.com/Body-Fat-Solution-Principles-Maintaining/dp/1583333290
I would imagine that the field of sports psychology, as well as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, would offer some good insights.
Of course, it goes without saying that general self-help/personal development/motivation books would be of use as well: Forums - T Nation - The World's Trusted Community for Elite Fitness
AHA has got it right. You dont need training specific psych truthfully it doesnt exist. The key is to get a ground for general psych and you’ll see everything in a different light (or dark)
Mind and muscle is a good one.
funmetal
I was a teaching assistant for a university Sports Psych course a couple times, and I thought the material was pretty lame. That is, the concepts seemed like they should be pretty intuitive – stopping negative thoughts, focus on the positive result, basic goal setting stuff, and techniques to optimize arousal (increase or decrease – usually decrease).
The students had to do a goal setting project related to physical fitness or sport throughout the quarter, and most of them sucked at it. I was amazed. 3/5 would set some impossible goal and then fail to take even the tiniest step to achieve it. MANY students felt intimidated at the gym and believed that everyone there was watching them and thinking how pathetic they were. 1/5 would set a goal so easy as to be worthless. The only students who did well at goal setting were already on the sports teams, with one notable exception who decided to try sprinting for the first time and ended up winning a regional tournament.
Something that would be of huge interest would be training mental fortitude while under physical stress (such as exercise). Sure, you could do that by simply doing lots of strenuous training sessions, but I am wondering if there isn’t some way to specialize in it so you get a more direct result. I find that a lot of the time, the mind fails before the body has run out of gas. Filling up this mental gas tank if you will, would be huge.
As for the sports psych stuff, here’s some links: ExRx.net : Exercise & Sports Psychology
[quote]AHA wrote:
Something that would be of huge interest would be training mental fortitude while under physical stress (such as exercise). Sure, you could do that by simply doing lots of strenuous training sessions, but I am wondering if there isn’t some way to specialize in it so you get a more direct result. I find that a lot of the time, the mind fails before the body has run out of gas. Filling up this mental gas tank if you will, would be huge.
As for the sports psych stuff, here’s some links: www.exrx.net/Psychology.html[/quote]
There are ways to trick yourself into thinking your work outs will be easy
Rockula, good tips! Exactly what I am talking about.
so youre looking for what
a way to help psyche yourself out to train harder?
or you want to look into what makes people train the way they do? (bodybuilding lifestyle, etc)
honestly while i think Ct Rockula is a joke, alias, troll, whatever you want to call it…a foundation in broad psychology pretty much helps with insight as to how you/others think - about everything.
Dorian Yates’ bio.
Also Winning Ugly by Brad Gilbert and Lance Armstrong’s books both pack a punch
[quote]Ct. Rockula wrote:
As for the sports psych stuff, here’s some links: www.exrx.net/Psychology.html
There are ways to trick yourself into thinking your work outs will be easy
[/quote]
True that! Number 6 especially. I have never had a greater workout than when I’m listening to Smashmouth and singing along, happy as can be.
and yes, I’m gay.
Fuckin’ man up and lift the shit.
Usually a pussy attitude equates to pussy weights.
Willpower and self-discipline are finite resources, except for Jack Bauer and Chuck Norris perhaps. Thus, learning how to train and progressively increase said attributes would be useful to most anyone. 
Live and Rockula, what do you consider good resources for learning this type of stuff. I’ve been browsing google and amazon some but keep coming up with self-help type books.
[quote]timbofirstblood wrote:
Live and Rockula, what do you consider good resources for learning this type of stuff. I’ve been browsing google and amazon some but keep coming up with self-help type books.[/quote]
oooohhh Live is gonna be mad when he sees you mentioned us in the same sentence!
it might seem complicated at first but its really simple once you get your feet wet
I’d suggest these three topics to begin with (in order) I can email you power points of the abnormal and lifespan that I have from a few terms ago, you’ll have to buy the general one
General Psychology
Life Span Psychology
Abnormal Psychology
General, to get the basics down and understand the brain functioning, motives and conditioning theories…plus some other nteresting things
Life span to understand how we develop our personality. This is important especially in training as it can show us flaws we made during our beginner phase.
abnormal is kinda overkill but its interesting…it definitely reveals root causes of certain development pertaining to attitude or lack of attitude
anything on CBT, cognitive behavioral Therapy or dialectical Behavioral Therapy. To understand why I said this, think of yourself as a patient that needs to be regulated mentally and emotionally. in reality you’re a trainee looking for tips to focus better. these strategies will help you become a better planner and broaden certain aspects of training and eventually help you push through mental blocks. The same principle applies to me seeing a mach client, I have to see what they need, how they react to certain current situations, and find a way to get them from whwere they are and whee they need to be.
it will all seem a bit self helpy until you get into the actual reading
send me your email address if you want those power points I pretty much have those two classes from start to finish so you don’t have to hunt everything down for yourself. Or I can just talk you through some stuff if you want it that way instead.
^^ offer is open to anyone
if you’re in college definately take some advanced psychology classes, if only for an elective.
i know everyone has to take psych 101 but that stuff is boring, its all neural anatomy, founding figures/ history of psych and basics of experimentation (control groups, test groups, biases, etc etc)
take something above the 101 level
anything to do with behavior/personality
if you’re looking for a way to push yourself harder the easiest way to do that is to find a good reason to. i honestly think most the people who have the dedication to lift weights day in and day out for years whilst always making progress are people who A) could do that with anything they put their mind to B) have some kind of mentality similar to OCD where they feel that they NEED to do it or else. everyone’s “or else” is different but generally i believe its either one of two things…
first, a fear of returning to a certain physique, whether fat or skinny. this is because when at that physique there was a lot of insecurities
fml i accidentally hit the submit button.
i’ll edit the original post and this if i see the message in time, if not, now you know why theres a half thought for a message
oops.