Mental Toughness for Runners: A Complete Guide

by Michele Ufer

Overview

Mental Toughness for Runners gives you highly effective methods for successful mental training, including self-coaching, well-founded training psychology, and thought-provoking strategies for self-reflection. Michele Ufer's successful mental training has been used in numerous coaching sessions and by endurance athletes throughout the world who have achieved significant and often dramatic achievements by improving their motivation, performance, and well-being with Ufer's training. Ufer also provides exercises supplemented with case studies from various coaching sessions. Delving into the science of mental training, you will understand the reasons behind certain training concepts, but always the focus remains on practicing and directly applying the methods to your training. You will be guided through a personal assessment of your training so that you may develop an individually tailored mental training plan which can then be integrated into everyday sports life. In this book, sports psychology expert Ufer uniquely presents his experiences and know-how from having coached numerous runners and other endurance athletes, researched psychological aspects in running, and presented on his findings at lectures, scientific congresses, and in magazine articles. Other runners share their success stories after using Ufer's mental training methods in this book. Every runner who reads this book is guaranteed to improve mental toughness and running performance!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782554936
Publisher:	Meyer Meyer Sports
Publication date:	03/01/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Dr. Michele Ufer is an internationally sought-after expert in sports and management psychology and a successful ultrarunner. As speaker, coach, and mental trainer, he motivates athletes, executives, and other high performers, promoting top performance. As a runner and someone who pushes his own boundaries, he is attracted by challenges beyond the marathon distance, sometimes at great heights. Whether it's a desert, rainforest, Himalayas, or the polar circle, Michele Ufer is at home on the most extreme running tracks. He has regularly achieved top 10 ratings in international (extreme) races using his training methods.

Table of Contents

Prologue 8

1 It All Begins With an Unusual Running Story 13

1.1 The Atacama experiment: Performance that defies the imagination 15

1.2 The book's character and structure: How it works 18

2 How Much of Your Head is in Your Feet? 25

2.1 Antiquated everyday training: Is the earth still flat? 27

2.2 Power of the mind 28

2.3 The mind's astounding effects on the body: Learning to control the uncontrollable?! 30

2.4 Mental training as the magic bullet? Possibilities and limits 42

3 Position Fixing: Starting My Personal Navigation System 49

3.1 "I'm going to rate myself": Important topics in a nutshell 51

3.2 Where am I right now? 54

3.3 Personal performance profile 56

3.4 Diagnosing my mental strengths 58

3.5 Why do I run? What drives me? 68

4 Motivation and Coals: Fueling and Guiding Productive Energy 77

4.1 Everyday self-sabotage, or: Fuck you, problem! 79

4.2 Never again, motivational problems! A beautiful new world of athletics or something from the psychological bag of tricks? 89

4.3 Brain-appropriate goal management The basis of success 91

5 7-D Head Cinema: Let the Magic Happen 107

5.1 Visualization with virtuosity = 7-D experience patterns 109

5.2 Visualization guide 110

5.3 Remembering a successful future: Irresistible wish goals, performances, and results 112

5.4 Magic moments: Perfect movements, processes, and sequences 114

5.5 The big picture: Visualizing competitions 127

6 Using Resources 133

6.1 Resource reload: The Swiss army knife of mental training 135

6.2 Focusing attention: Learning from the grand masters 147

6.3 Self-talk: How we can constructively guide the voices in our head 154

6.4 You're allowed to copy: Learning from more or less glam models 162

6.5 Act as if: Fake it till you make it 165

6.6 Testing and creating self-confidence 168

6.7 Relaxed effectiveness and effective relaxation 174

7 The Dark Side of Running and How to Turn It Into Opportunities 201

7.1 A threat to body and soul: The negative effects of positive thinking 203

7.2 Shit happens: How to handle failure 205

7.3 Crises, opportunities, twists, and turns: How does a world champion think? 208

7.4 From research & practice: Mental resilience as means for success 215

7.5 Sports injuries: The role our mind plays in the occurrence and healing of injuries 217

7.6 Exercise addiction: What exactly is it and am I affected? 229

7.7 What happens when success makes you unhappy? 241

Outlook 245

Interview with Michele Ufer: When Managers Learn to Run 247

References 251

Readers' opinions on the book 261

Success Stories 263

Photo credits 271