The following article is the second in a three-part series from Samantha Pruitt and features mind body flexibility. The title of this piece is, “Emotional Fitness: How Mental and Emotional Strength, Flexibility and Endurance Will Take Both Your Game and Your Life to the Next Level.”
Hello There Beautiful Human, in part one of this series on Emotional Fitness I filled you in on my personal transformation journey and laid the ground work for you to look at your own 2024 up level strategy with fresh perspective. If you missed it, then circle back now for the primer to this second chapter plus enjoy my podcast jam session on the subject here.
My definition of Emotional Fitness, just to set the stage for our work today, is the integration and development of your complete emotional and physical self. A holistic empowered way to train your body and your mind together in order to achieve your life goals. Being ‘emotionally fit’ allows you to use the strength, flexibility and endurance of your body and brain together to reach your full potential.
Train your mind
In our athletic world FLEXIBILITY is viewed as a product of regular stretching, yoga practice or mobility sessions. As active people we all know that running on the daily can of course lead to running fitness, but it can also bring overuse injuries, stiff immobile joints and dysfunctional connective tissue. Most of us know how to counter these issues and understand that to stay in our run game, flexibility of body cannot be ignored!
However, how many of us invest time developing and training our mind to be flexible? How many of us would like to have more nimble emotional muscles? Since we are all living on this planet, it goes without saying that we each experience daily stress and have regular challenges occur in our personal lives. Again, humaning is HARD. Work, family, finances, politics, competing in running races and the occasional pandemic, just to name a few, are all high stress experiences! These can feel like emotional pressure points, like extra mind reps, or often emotional long draining ultra sessions.
The combination of high volume and intensity physical demands paired with high intensity or big volume emotional loads can be a recipe for disaster if we are not sufficiently trained in both our body and brain. If disaster strikes it can lead to an emotional AND physical break down. Everything our mind takes in affects our entire body and what happens to the body happens to the mind. Just like our joints or connective tissue can tear or fail when the repeated load or running volume is too great, our minds are also vulnerable to injury.
So, how do we avoid life’s stress and challenges so that we do not experience mind ‘over training syndrome’ or ‘emotional tissue dysfunction’? We don’t avoid it. We all signed up for this wild and wonderful life adventure! However, what we can do is TRAIN ourselves to be emotionally FLEXIBLE. We can intentionally develop more nimble ‘emotional connective tissue’ and increased mobility of our mind to better handle life’s load.
Coach Sam in the Grand Canyon. Practicing mind body flexibility.
Be nimble and adapt
Some ways to do this include intentionally putting yourself through drills and exercises that require you to really be uncomfortable and outside of your routine. In a safe non-threatening way you can seek out new social settings, crappy weather workouts, public speaking or new skill development opportunities or even new emotionally challenging projects that require you to stretch beyond your comfort zone. Look for ways to force yourself to be nimble and adapt on a regular basis rather than rolling through each day business as usual. Seek the things you suck at and explore your own edges.
Though many will swear that their daily rituals and routines are what has made them great, have they also made them less flexible or worse at problem solving in a crisis? True, daily habits do indeed build the blocks of health, fitness and success. But also true is the fact that big goals require risk and evolution of the whole self. We grow faster through adversity and variety because our body and brain have to continue to adapt over and over again.
Embrace opportunities to grow
Everyone reading this has a story – or, in my case dozens – of races that have not gone according to plan. No matter how many hours, planning and effort we poured into those training blocks our race day was a shit show. Recently I had another growth opportunity to relearn this at my New Year’s 100 miler.
I was attempting a 100 mile distance PR and had everything in place to succeed at my goal. The first 40 miles I was even ahead of pace and mentally on fire! So much so that I made a critical shoe error. When I finally stopped to change shoes, I had already developed an inflamed top foot tendon. Babying that foot and running in one size-up shoes, I then proceeded to step on a rock, tweaking that same ankle and causing a cascade of a tissue damage. Now having to power walk, my A Goal slipped away.
Luckily I was flexible enough to redirect my thoughts and actions to my B Goal, earn that 100-mile buckle! Mobilizing my mind required me to focus on keeping the injury below an 8 out of 10 and required walking all night through the cold into the next day. To further test my mental game and emotional fitness I had to painstakingly pass that finish line (and those warm DNF chairs) every single 1.4m loop! Yes, I had to not only handle the physical stress and body pain but the added emotional stress of my mind telling me to quit each lap.
As I walked for hours in circles all night I revisited all the emotional fitness and flexibility I had built over these 25 years of endurance sports. I flashed back to the endless chapters of my life’s book where I had been mentally challenged and had adapted. I coached myself using the tools I had developed over the years of falling and rising again both in sport and in life. Bravery, self-trust and overcoming adversity where buff emotional muscles I had built intentionally for moments like this as well as in business, family and life. Truth be told, that is one of the best race medals I have ever earned and taken home. I learned once again that when life throws me really hard and emotionally challenging circumstances I will overcome.
Coah Sam finishing her 100-mile race and earning her buckle.
Achieve goals
FLEXIBILITY is one of the three foundational life pillars of Emotional Fitness. Flexibility in your emotional mind allows you to mobilize more resources and nimble thinking to achieve goals when things go wrong. When your mind is trained to navigate the thoughts and feelings that arise from daily challenges it can better adapt and overcome. We need these skills now more than ever in this fast changing world. Investing in our own personal evolution of body and mind will take us into a level of personal potential we often have no idea is waiting. If we are emotionally fit, along with physically fit, we will have higher performance in life and experience a deeper love of self and others. I support you in exploring this aspect of your own Emotional Fitness and look forward to continuing this personal growth conversation.
Please circle back to hear more about Emotional Fitness in series 3 on Endurance. Meanwhile contact me to share your own story and come join our Everyday Awesome Project movement. @thesamanthapruitt and @everydayawesomeproject
Remember my beautiful humans, how your life FEELS is more important than how your life LOOKS.
About Samantha Pruitt
Life & Business Coach, Ultra Athlete Sam Pruitt just launched a new podcast with transformational programs and events for humans, organizations and teams ready to build healthier brains and bodies! Learning from her own ex-couch potato to IronWoman then UltraWoman transformation, Sam deeply believes each person has massive untapped potential and that by training their mindset and physical health simultaneously, they will build not only an awesome life, but go on to create empowered communities and thriving companies. Learn more here.
