Confidence and Self-Belief
What is it you want from your training and diet? Is it 8% bodyfat and a sculpted body that turns heads? Is it the ability to lift twice your bodyweight from the floor on demand? Or the capacity to run for six miles without having to breathe like an asthmatic jackhammer? We all want to look better, feel better, BE better. But what is it that this ‘better’ gives us?
This ‘better me’ can generally be wrapped up as possessing more of two things than we have right this moment, and those are confidence and self-belief. This ‘better me’ has the confidence to walk into a room and tell people what they think (and boy do people listen, because this guy/gal exudes confidence!). This ‘better me’ doesn’t worry about whether these jeans make their butt look big (or skinny), they don’t worry about looking foolish because they are comfortable in themselves and have believe in their own abilities.
When people start telling me what their goals are, and the reasons that they’ve sought out my help, often it is that they want to be more confident. But it goes a little deeper than ‘just being a bit more in control’, it is the idea that they want to know that when they go to do a thing, or experience a thing, that they will be able to do it. A few examples might be the confidence to:
- jump a small wall without looking like a fool
- run 20 metres to catch that bus that’s just about to leave (without then dying on it)
- to pick up their child/grandchild and play with them without hurting themselves
- to make long term plans without having to worry about health concerns
- to sign up for that mud race and know that it’s not outside their ability
- to wear whatever clothes they want without being laughed at
Have you ever noticed how confident high level athletes appear when they are surrounded by ‘normal people’? At University, I could always spot the people who were at a high level in their sport; they appeared more confident and seemed to ooze self belief. Most of this was due to the ‘power posture’ that they naturally assumed. ‘Power posture’ is something that is taught in many courses designed to teach office workers presentational skills. The purpose of power posture is to appear more confident, and therefore feel more confident and command more respect from your audience. What ‘power posture’ is though, is the natural position that most high level athletes stand in. So subconsciously we ascribe the values (and benefits) of high levels of confidence to those who are physically capable people.
As a PT, instead of teaching people ‘power posture’ as a kind of trick to develop confidence, I develop them using athletic training principles into ‘becoming’ that posture. An interesting side note is that in the office, the standard posture most people assume at work is the complete antithesis of this athletic posture.
Good posture can be trained, mostly through a combination of:
Heavy Deadlifts
Kettlebell swings (and snatches)
Upper body pulls (bent rows, pull ups, chin ups)
Upper body presses (specifically overhead presses)
A workout based solely on the above would go a long way to counteract ‘desk posture’ (aka ‘The Gollum’) and create the kind of posture that automatically makes people think ‘This guy/gal is pretty confident… I better listen to what they have to say.’
To ‘become better’ we need to move well, move strong and then apply this movement and strength to the goal at hand.
To become a ‘better me’, become a stronger version of yourself!
Get to it!