Psychology: running motivation

Running Psychology And Motivation 

As part of the National Running Show, we hosted a special VIP session for our Run Leaders to come and take part in interactive discussion sessions. Our sessions were hosted by experts in the fields of Psychology, Nutrition, and Strength and Conditioning. The experts shared their knowledge and insight, to help our Run Leaders improve their running and further support their runners. 

This feature focuses on running psychology, a session that was facilitated by Saul Shorm and Ben Parry, Sports Psychologists from the University of Birmingham. 

The running psychology workshop focused on developing tools for Run Leaders to stay motivated through all levels of sessions. This also covered how to overcome the barriers to self-improvement, both mentally and physically. 

Whether you’re going from couch to 5k, or looking to conquer other challenges in your running, we can all appreciate how impactful our minds can be. From practices in sport psychology, we can learn how to engage our mind to enhance our running experience. 

But the million-dollar question is: how…?

Mental Skills Training is a framework in sport and running psychology. This gives athletes structure to train their mental skills to enhance motivation, pursuit of goals, and positive coping strategies. However, this approach is not just for elite-level athletes. We can all benefit from expanding our mental skills ‘toolkit’ and apply this knowledge to our everyday lives. 

Adding mental skills to your toolkit

The session brought awareness to three specific mental skills which can be seen as ‘tools’ to add to our ‘mental toolkit’. These three tools will provide the tips for running motivation to help you excel. 

These tools include:

• Pre-Performance Routine

• Attentional Control

• Reframing

Pre-Performance Routine

PPRs are specific habits that athletes/runners commit to performing before they ‘perform’. Once the action is done, it begins the chain of events that leads to the desired outcome e.g. going for a run. It’s a powerful tool which offers key running motivation tips.

Examples of PPRs include:

• Laying out your kit the night before in a set way and/or positioning your trainers by the door.
• Listening to a certain song/type of music.
• A set of stretches or movements to loosen up.

Whatever the PPR is, the underlying principle behind it is that it’s something that you do consistently. This helps it to become automatic so that after you complete the specific action, you run.

Attentional Control

Attentional control is an important part of running training. It is quite simply about being intentional on where we focus our mind’s attention whilst we run. Generally speaking, there are two ways our attention can be directed. Either inwards – to the self, or outwards – to things around us. Neither is right or wrong, but as we become more aware of our attention during a run, we can start to understand how it may be helpful or unhelpful to our running performance. This running motivation tip is especially useful for those who take part in running groups. 

Examples of different forms of attention

	Inward attention	Outward attention
Helpful	Focus on breathing: this can help us be more mindful, control our tempo or distract the mind. Self-talk: using positive phrases to encourage yourself and boost confidence, ‘I can do this!’	Taking in the setting around you: this may help distract the mind, taking your attention away from how the body is feeling. Times and splits: focusing on your watch, tracking your times and splits, can reinforce self-belief in your ability during a run.
Unhelpful	Allowing the mind to wander: this may result in disruptions to your tempo or pacing as your focus goes elsewhere. Self-talk: negative self-talk can harm our confidence and self-belief, ‘I can’t do this’.	Focusing on others: comparing to others isn’t always helpful, we can become overly competitive and lose a sense of enjoyment. Times and splits: if we just focus on our times, seeing a slower than expected time may knock our confidence.

Do you have a runner who finds themselves experiencing negative self-talk during a run? Try challenging them to focus on things around them or even to just have a chat with another runner. Sometimes distracting someone running psychology.

Reframing

We may sometimes face barriers to running. And these barriers can threaten whether we will run, or how we feel about the sport. Reframing is a mental skill that can change the way we view our thoughts and bring positivity and opportunity to the way we see things. This tip for running motivation helps people to turn the negatives into positives. With a simple change of outlook, it’s not only a great habit to get into but also great for running training. 

Examples of this include:

• It’s pretty bad weather out there today, I can’t run in that.
• If I can run in this weather, I can run in anything!
• It’s been a busy week. I’ve only managed to do one run.
• It’s been a busy week, but I’ve still managed to find time to go for a run!

When completed effectively, reframing allows one to take back ownership of their thoughts.

Important to remember…

These tools will be more effective the more you practice them. Just like a physical skill, we have to practice our mental skills to strengthen them and feel more confident using them. 

For Run Leaders

Talk to your runners and learn what might work best for them, as one ‘tool’ doesn’t work for all. Try to use these running motivation tips to enhance each individual’s performance.  

On behalf of RunTogether HQ, thanks to Ben and Saul for leading the insightful running psychology sessions. Not to mention, thank you to our Run Leaders who attended and engaged in great conversation and discussion! For more running tips and advice, take a look at the range of guides we have on our website. Contact us today or email support@runtogether.co.uk.