Peak Performance: How to Think, Train and Eat for Optimal Performance

Peak Performance

How to think, train and

eat for optimal performance

––––––––

By Epic Rios

For more information please visit:

http://getfitentrepreneurs.com/

Get a Free eBook

Optimizing Your Body and Mind

Sign-up Here

http://eepurl.com/dgAAzb

Table of Contents

Introduction

Section 1: Mental Toughness

Section 2: Strength Training

Section 3: Intermittent Fasting

Conclusion

Intro

Thanks for purchasing Peak Performance: How to Think, Train and Eat for Optimal Performance.

This Peak Performance book is divided into three sections.

The first section goes over how to develop a resilient and unbeatable mindset for achieving any goal in life.

The second section explains how to develop total body superior strength.

The third section goes over how to get lean and fit with intermittent fasting.

Overall, this Peak Performance book will help you to develop a Champion Mindset for achieving Optimal Physical and Mental Performance.

Thanks again for purchasing Peak Performance: How to Think, Train and Eat for Optimal Performance.

I wish you great success with achieving your health and fitness goals.

Section I

Mental Toughness

The Ultimate Guide to Succeeding in

Sports, Business and in Life

Chapter one: What is Mental Toughness?

What is mental toughness?

Depending on who you ask, mental toughness can be defined as a person who is strong minded, a risk taker as well as confident, and/or resilient.

In addition, mental toughness is the way of measuring a person’s success in sports, business, education, at the workplace and in overall life. 

When you think of mental toughness you may think of tough athletes in sports such as boxing or rugby. 

In addition, you may think of a warrior such as a soldier or Navy Seal as someone that has mental toughness.

In the business world, you may consider the owner or the CEO of a company to have a lot of mental toughness.

However, mental toughness is something that everyone can aspire to develop throughout their lives but it requires repetitive practice.

Mental toughness first came about as a result of the training that is involved in sports training. 

More specifically mental toughness developed due to the attributes that enable someone to become a better athlete. 

In addition to the process of becoming a better athlete, the athlete learns to deal with difficult training and competitive situations that are going to come about from playing competitive sports without losing his/her confidence.

As time has gone on, the term mental toughness has begun to be used not only by those who work in the sports world with athletes but also by business leaders, members of educational institutions, every day working professionals and even members of a family household.

Quite often, the term mental toughness is used to describe a set of positive attributes that are going to assist someone in coping with situations that are difficult to deal with.

Some examples of positive attributes of mental toughness are:

Emotional intelligence: The ability to control your emotions even when faced in a stressful, negative situation and even when having strong negative emotions. 

Flexible and adaptive:  Having the ability to quickly adapt to any situation no matter what.

Risk-Taking:  A willingness to face fear and take on new opportunities and challenges in order to advance, grow and achieve success in life.

Accepting of Failure: The ability to accept defeat gracefully and then to immediately plan to bounce back in order to have another opportunity at succeeding or winning.

Optimistic: The ability to be extremely confident in yourself and positively know that you will win and achieve great success.

––––––––

As stated before, the term mental toughness is used to describe a set of positive attributes that are going to assist someone in coping with situations that are difficult to deal with.

For example, when it comes to sports, coaches and many sports commentators use the term mental toughness as a way to talk about an athlete’s mental state as the athlete overcomes a difficult situation in order to succeed in winning.

However, over the past fifteen years, researchers have tried to come up with a scientific definition for mental toughness so that criteria could be established as a way to measure mental toughness in order for analysis and comparisons to be made.

Here are three different research teams that have been able to come up with a definition for mental toughness in the modern world.

Research Team #1 (Jones, Hanton, and Connaughton)

According to Jones, Hanton, and Connaughton, "Mental toughness is having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to generally cope better than your opponents with the many demands in competition, training and lifestyle that a sport places on you.

More specifically, mental toughness means to be more consistent and better than your opponents in competition and under stressful situations.

Last, mental toughness means to be determined, focused, confident, and under complete control while under intense pressure during competition."

Research Team #2 (Clough and Earle)

The second team of researchers decided that mental toughness was a Personality Trait that consisted of four components.

These four components are:

Commitment

Confidence

Self-control

Daring or up to a challenge

According to this team of researchers, if you had each of these four components in your personality then you had the mental toughness trait.

Research Team #3 (Gucciardi, Gordon, and Dimmock)

According to this team of researchers they concluded that, "Mental toughness is a collection of values, attitudes, behaviors, and emotions that enable you to persevere and overcome any obstacle, adversity, or pressure experienced." 

In addition, this group of researchers also believed that, When it comes to mental toughness it is very important for a person to maintain razor sharp focus and motivation when things are going both good and bad in order to consistently achieve your goals.

Although these three research teams provided what they thought to be mental toughness, there is still no definite answer to what exactly is mental toughness.

However, having important characteristics such as confidence, optimism and razor-sharp focus are definitely important for having mental toughness. 

It is important to mention that there are psychologists that argue that there are different definitions or meanings when it comes to mental toughness and how it is developed.

For example, some psychologists claim that some attributes of those individuals who are mentally tough are going to be different from other individuals that are not developing their mental toughness.

One of the differences is that if you are a male your levels of mental toughness are going to be different from a woman’s levels of mental toughness. 

For example, men are taught to be physically and mentally tough from childhood all the way until they are full grown men. 

In addition, young boys are taught not to cry and to endure pain and this goes on throughout adulthood and for the rest of a man’s life.

Now there are many women that do have high levels of mental toughness and some women may even have higher levels of mental toughness then men.

For example, if there is a woman that endured hardship while growing up then she may have developed high levels of mental toughness throughout this period of her life. 

In addition, if a woman has been involved in competitive sports ever since she was a child then her levels of mental toughness are going to be greater than someone that has not competed in competitive sports.

Another factor that may determine your levels of mental toughness is the type of work you do and whether you have to interact and deal with people every day.

For example, law enforcement officers may have higher levels of mental toughness because they are constantly being faced almost daily with stressful situations and they need to learn to deal with and overcome these stressful situations.

More on Mental Toughness

Mental toughness can actually mean many things considering who you are asking. But to keep things simple, mental toughness can mean the ability to overcome pain, fear, doubt, disbelief and anything else that may prevent someone from succeeding at a specific task or goal.

Usually, when people think of mental toughness, people usually think of athletes that play competitive sports. 

However, mental toughness can apply to everyday people and even a parent that is raising a child with a physical disability.

One thing that is important to state is that mental toughness is not about having high levels of intelligence nor does it mean to be extremely talented.

Instead, mental toughness is about having the, Will to Win, or simply the mental attitude to never give up, never surrender, never retreat no matter what.

Where Does Mental Toughness Come from?

Mental toughness comes from within. More specifically, mental toughness comes from one’s thoughts, one’s "warrior spirit," one’s previous life experiences and one’s very own mind.

Mental toughness can be developed by facing challenges and overcoming these challenges.  In addition, mental toughness can be developed through practice and by being placed in stressful situations both physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally. 

For example, in sports athletes will practice a difficult skill over and over again and in various challenging conditions in order to be mentally prepared if such challenge should actually occur during a game.

In the business world, mental toughness can be developed by an employee deciding to achieve very large goals and by accepting to work on challenging projects and assignments.

Accepting to work on challenging projects and assignments will mentally challenge any business person and will prepare him/her for more responsibility and possibly a better position within the company.

How Do You Develop Mental Toughness?

You can develop mental toughness by having a willingness to get out of your comfort zone and having new experiences that will shock your body, your emotions and your mind.

In addition, you develop mental toughness by deciding that you want to have a champion’s mindset and this can take place in sports, business and in any other area of your life.

More specifically, you develop mental toughness by exposing yourself to a wide variety of uncomfortable and challenging experiences.

Keep this in mind, if you decide to stay safe and comfortable in life avoiding challenges, change and growth then you will never develop mental toughness.

In addition, it is very common for people to live a very safe, comfortable life because people simply don’t want to stress themselves out.

However, great champions think differently.  Great champions have a Purpose in Life, a Clear Vision of what they want to achieve in life and Razor-Sharp Focus for achieving their purpose.

As a result, this is why champions achieve greatness in life. 

In addition, these champions know that there is a PRICE to pay for achieving greatness and they make a decision to pay the PRICE for achieving greatness and this is what makes them different from the rest of the world.

In the words of boxing champion Muhammad Ali, I hated training very early in the morning but I LOVED being Champion of The World!

In previous studies that have been done specifically for sports and the mental toughness of athletes, the studies have shown that there is not a common framework between sports such as tennis, boxing or even a team sport like baseball.

So, researchers sometimes find it hard to define what exactly is mental toughness because not every sport is equally physically and mentally demanding. 

Therefore, researchers have found it hard to exactly define what mental toughness is because every athlete in every sport is not going to have the same levels of mental toughness.

For example, a tennis player will have a certain amount of mental toughness but when you consider an athlete that is a boxer, the boxer’s levels of toughness automatically skyrockets.

Why?

Because the sport of boxing is more physically demanding or simply more of a physical sport than a sport like tennis which means boxing is a more mentally demanding sport.

Actually, it can be said that boxing is more mental than it is physical because of the guts it takes for a boxer to fight another boxer in the ring.

And just to dig a little deeper in the mindset of a boxer, every boxer, no matter who it is, is afraid of losing.  In addition, every boxer is afraid of getting knocked out.

Every boxer knows, but most will not admit, that the other fighter can possibly beat him.  As a result, fear is in every boxer’s mind.

It is important to state that there are studies that determine not only how mentally strong an athlete is but also how well that athlete can perform under severe pressure.

For example, going back to the example of a boxer, if the boxer gets his nose broken during a boxing match, this boxer is now required to continue fighting under severe pressure. 

First consider that trying to breathe with a broken nose is very, very difficult to do.

Next, take into consideration that the boxer will continue to get punched all over his body requiring him to try to breathe from his nose. 

Also take into consideration that the warrior boxer will also continue to get punched in his broken nose which is an intense and gruesome experience that no athlete would ever want to experience.

So, consider that it is not enough to be mentally tough but what is also important is how well you perform under stressful situations. 

And performing well under stressful situations is very important not only in sports but also at work, in business and in the everyday living.

As stated before, researches have only been trying to define exactly what mental toughness is. 

However, now more and more researchers are studying mental athletics including analyzing an athlete’s psychological skills as well as how well they perform, and their emotional reactivity.

Still, more and more research regarding mental toughness continues to be done not only on athletes but also on business people, entrepreneurs, and every day common people. 

It is important to state that researchers are currently in an active debate about whether mental toughness is a characteristic that is developed or if it is something that comes from your genetics.

There are two studies regarding mental toughness that have been show that there is a foundational process that occurs when a person begins developing their mental toughness throughout their life.

For example, when a study was done on soccer players, their parents, and their coaches, the study showed that the parents are going to give a generalized form of mental toughness to the athlete child. 

In addition, the generalized form of mental toughness that was given to the athlete child by their parents is then passed on to the coaches that are going to continue to develop the athlete’s level of mental toughness so that the athlete is mentally tough for their sport.

In another study on mental toughness, researchers concluded that the mental toughness of a person is going to be first developed through their development of a tough attitude.

In addition, researchers also concluded that the development of a tough attitude for athletes is going to come through razor sharp focus as well as having a strong belief in themselves while they are practicing and training for their games and competitions.

It is important to state that it is easier to understand if you equate mental toughness to things such as hardiness or resilience.

However, the term resilience is often times used incorrectly to describe mental toughness, but there are psychologists that have defined resilience as the ability to positively adapt to a stressful situation.

Hardiness is a similar construct to mental toughness, but it is usually seen as a personality trait that is constructed and seen throughout someone’s life.

Nevertheless, mental toughness can take on many meanings especially when you consider how it is interpreted in sports, business and in everyday life.

In addition, mental toughness can be learned by continuous effort of certain practiced behaviors.

For example, taking a very cold shower every day for 1 year will develop a certain level of mental toughness in a person.

What is also important to state is that, everyone has some form of mental toughness in them because everyone has gone through some type of challenge or faced adversity whether at school, work or in their personal life.

What a lot of people don’t know is that they can tap into their levels of mental toughness in order to achieve greatness in life.

For example, if a person was mentally tough before, they can decide to be mentally tough again when facing a new challenge. Or, that person can simply retreat and decide he does not want to face any new challenges because facing new challenges can be stressful.

In the following chapter, you will learn how to develop mental toughness and how to apply to every day life.

Chapter two: How to Develop Mental Toughness

Even if you do not believe that you have mental toughness, you are going to be able to build mental toughness if you make the decision to do so.

By developing and having mental toughness, you are going to be empowered to take more risks and achieve more in life. 

In addition, you will have more confidence in yourself and in your abilities and you will simply feel mentally stronger than ever before.

However, should you suffer a loss or failure in life, there is no need to worry because you will be able to bounce back from a bad situation faster because you have put in the necessary working for developing your mental toughness. 

Here are some examples of how to develop mental toughness:

#1 Move straight to acceptance: Whenever you are wanting or expecting a specific outcome from a situation, you are going to need to accept the fact that you may fail and not succeed.

However, this is not something to focus on it just means that there is a possibility that you may not succeed at first.

Therefore, you have to be willing to be resilient and know that you will continue to try and try and try again until you succeed. And by trying over and over again, you will develop mental toughness but remember you cannot quit after one defeat and after failing once.

Instead, you must immediately develop a plan for bouncing back so that you can overcome your defeat/failure.

Keep in mind that when you allow a defeat or failure to negatively affect you in life, you set yourself back and you create a resistance that is going to slow you down for bouncing back and being resilient.

Therefore, even if you do not like what has happened, you are going to have to accept that it happened and move on.

For example, if you were to participate in a swimming competition and you were expecting to win but you ended up losing then you simply have to gracefully accept your loss. 

In addition, there is no need to be upset at yourself or at anyone else for your loss. Simply knowing that you went into the competition well prepared and you performed at your best is all that matters.

This example of mental toughness can be referred back to an ancient philosophy called Stoicism.

Stoicism had an important principle in its philosophy stating, "We