BULKING: THE MENTAL BATTLE
The season is done. Your competition has finished. You have completed your race. Now what? After months of hard graft preparing for this day, regardless of the result you’re now due a well-earned break. Some time to relax, reflect, and restart your physical and mental engine. After listening to your coach, getting judges' feedback, and analysing your competition it is now time to dive into an ‘off-season’ to start working on your areas of development and preparing to perform better next season/competition.
It depends on what fitness-based sport you compete in, but our competition bodies normally look a little bit different to our training bodies. For competitions, we need to be primed for a single performance, whereas during the ‘off-season’, when we train, we need to be able to train hard and recover well. Therefore, it is natural that we will put a little bit of weight on our bodies to feel fully energised and meet the demands of training.
During the transition from your competitive physique to your training physique, many athletes can experience a decrease in confidence, motivation, and body image, as they increase negative self-talk and physical comparison. This isn’t necessarily the comparison with others that lowers their body image, but the comparison with their prior self, and how they know they can look.
Similarly, to most athletes, I have experienced this too. However, I have learned 6 tips to help me feel more confident in my ‘off-season’ body, embrace my strength, and maintain my motivation and momentum year-round.
6 TIPS TO FEEL CONFIDENT IN YOUR ‘OFF-SEASON’ BODY
‘OFF-SEASON’ VS ON SEASON
Let’s first clarify what is an on or ‘off-season’. When you’re on season we normally have a competition/race booked in for the near future, and training is structured around priming us to perform on that day. When we are ‘off-season’, the competition/race is done, and we start to put the work in that is going to put us in the best possible position to start the next season.
Therefore, both on and off seasons play a part in your performance. And the bodies that you have during these times, allow you to perform at your best for training or competition, making them both equally important.
Thus, I would argue that an ‘off-season’ is not in fact ‘OFF’ at all. Rather, let us shift our perspective to a performance season and an improvement season. Where we are ON all of the time, but with different objectives and measures for success. We know that in order to improve we need to change and that includes a body transformation to facilitate that change.
VISION INVESTMENT
This brings us nicely to the topic of goal setting, which can be broken into two sections, setting the goals, and monitoring them.
Setting Goals: Separate your performance and improvement season goals. The way that success is measured in performance versus training can be very different. During your improvement season and focus may be placed on shorter-term goals that can keep you motivated for the bigger performance season goals.
Monitoring Goals: Once a goal is set it doesn’t stop there. This is where we can lose direction and slip into a negative attitude towards our bodies. By regularly monitoring your goals, via a tracker that you fill out individually or with the guidance of your coach, you will remain motivated and remind yourself of the importance and celebrate the ability of your body.
THE GRASS ISN’T GREENER
A simple phrase, but an important one to remind yourself of, which can be difficult to do day-to-day. Therefore, regularly practising reflection and writing down a list of things that you have to sacrifice to have that competitive physique, can help you to stop putting it on a pedal stall and remove the rose-tinted glasses. This process can be helped if you make the list shortly before or after your competition, as the realities of maintaining this physique are fresh in your mind and you can return to them during your improvement season.
THE BENEFITS OF BULKING
Following on from the last technique, I challenge you to write down the positive side of your training physique. What does it allow you to do? How does it make you feel? When we slowly see our competition body slip away, we build up anxiety around the appearance of our physique, thus, instead, ask yourself what are the physical and mental benefits of having this training body?
This is a great technique to do in conjunction with the last exercise. In the middle of a page draw a fence. On one side note three pitfalls of a competition physique. On the other side, write down three positive things about your training physique. Repeat this activity when you start to feel negatively towards your body.
DOES FAT = BAD?
As a society, we seem to villainise fat. I am not talking about being overweight, but as an athlete, having a layer of fat that fades our abdominals or covers our quad separation, leads to us creating a poor relationship with this bodily necessity.
For most athletes in the fitness industry, we perform with minimal fat, whereas on our improvement season, we will add a little bit of fat to help with our training. It is here that we start to experience a poor relationship with fat.
But why? Ask yourself these questions:
Why do you want to be ‘ripped’?
What does ‘ripped’ look like for you?
Does looking like this help you to train?
Do you want to look like this for others?
Is it to be ‘healthier’?
What is healthy for you?
The last question is an interesting one. The relationship with fat is often built on what the media portray the ‘healthy’ human body to look like, but is this health? Using our ‘The Grass Isn’t Greener’ exercise, does that define health to you? If not, what does? And would a small layer of fat on top of your ‘ripped’ body be more in line with a healthy physique for you?
ATHLETIC IDENTITY
One of the main reasons why you struggle with feeling confident in your improvement season body is probably down to your battles with identity. We like to see ourselves as the best version of ourselves. This best version is normally our performance season physique, as this is when we perform at our best, achieve accolades, and get recognition for our hard work. However, once we are into our improvement season our body no longer reflects the identity, we have built up about ourselves. This incongruency causes us to feel less confident, less motivated, and more critical about our bodies.
Therefore, a strategy to help with this is to work on our athletic identity.
During my performance season, my identity represents ‘Ripped Robin’, that is how I categorise and tangibly perceive that part of my athletic identity. During my improvement season, I categorise my athletic identity as, ‘Bulky Robin’.
These two athletic identities represent not only my physical appearance but my goals, vision, feelings, energy, strength, and direction. During my improvement season, I am still ‘Ripped Robin’, he isn’t out of reach, there is just a small layer of fat sitting above him. And going back to our last exercise ‘Does Fat = Bad?’, I know that that layer of fat isn’t bad and actually makes me stronger, recover quicker, more energised, and a much happier person.
Visibly I may not look like ‘Ripped Robin’ right now, but he represents a lot more than just an image. He represents hard work, dedication, resiliency, purpose, and a goal, all of which I still possess even though the image doesn’t align.
WHAT CAN YOU CONTROL
Reminding yourself of your controllables can be incredibly powerful to feel in control of your body confidence. When we put on that layer of fat to help progress our improvement season, WE CANNOT CHOOSE WHERE IT GOES!
This is important to remember. There are certain things about our bodies that are simply just out of control as they are determined by genetics. If we choose to hold onto those uncontrollables, then we will drain our energy, confidence, and motivation.
Instead, look to the favourable genetics you possess, if you have stored the fat straight on your stomach, then that means that potentially your arms or legs are still very lean, which other athletes would die for!
Alternatively, we can defuse the voice of the self-critic. Give this critical voice a name, negative Nancy, Caveman, a negative person you may know. Separate yourself from them, as they are not empowering you to improve, but instead, they’re holding you back.
Moreover, you can begin to increase the distance of your self-talk by changing your thinking process to:
a. “I am having the thought that…”
b. “I am noticing that I am having the thought that…”
We begin with step ‘a’ and after practising this we progress into step 'b', increasing the distance from the critic even further. Repeat these statements followed by the negative voice to observe, accept, and detach from them.
If you’re struggling to feel confident in your ‘off-season’ body, then I hope that this blog helped you to identify some mental techniques that will help your relationship with your bulking body. How do you cope with the transition from on to ‘off-season’? Please feel free to share in the comments! If you would like help to improve your confidence, motivation, and happiness with your ‘off-season’ body, then please get in contact with me at robin@autonomypsychology.com
Best Wishes
Robin Hughes
Fitness Performance Psychologist located near Chelmsford, Essex, UK supporting athletes, exercisers, and coaches worldwide with Online Sports Psychology Services. Specialising in working within the fitness industry.
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