The Mental Side of Training - Chrissy Barron

My challenge is, well, let's try to disengage or disconnect from that negative thought and write it down. And then realize how kind of silly it is to be so mean to yourself. And then reframe it. And by reframing it over and over and over and over and over again, hopefully we're gonna make that automatic thought process into a positive one. Where we are in the hurt locker, we're in the pain cave, and our first thought isn't you freaking suck. Our first thought is, okay, you got this, keep going.

Hey Fitness fans, welcome back to the Future of Fitness podcast and interview series. This is your host, Eric Balzone, and we're on episode number 65. And I had a ton of fun talking to Chrissy Barron. So Chrissy is the co-owner of Nova3 Labs. Uh, she's also the chief operating officer there. And Nova 3 does high-end online supplements. Um, I take their max sleep supplement every night, and it's changed my life in such a positive way. Uh, they also do online nutrition coaching primarily for athletes. I actually had our business partner, Mike Costelli, uh on the show not too long ago where talked about the future of genetic testing and supplementation, which was super cool, really interesting stuff. Uh, Chrissy um is also a competitive prospect athlete. And you can tell um from this conversation we had, she's very much focused um and rightfully so on the mental game uh of being a high performing athlete and what that takes and the challenges they're in. And she actually has a book. So let me make sure I get this right. It is available on their website, and it is a uh training log for mental, training log for mental and physical training. Uh it's a 90-day book. It's a physical book, walk you through the whole thing. Um 90 days, training of mental toughness. Sounds awesome. So let's get into it in a second. Before I do, uh, I'm gonna make you an offer. You know, if you're listening to this and you're interested in being on a podcast, uh, you're a fitness professional, and you're like, God, I've never really done one before. Well, I have just the thing. So if you go over to our sister website, fitnessprofessionalonline.com, I start another podcast. That's right, one was not enough. Start another one. It's called the Fitness Blitz. It's eight to twelve minutes, uh, audio only, uh, preset questions that are sent to you ahead of time. And uh, it's just a great way to dive in and get an amazing piece of content. Um, you know, search engine optimization for that thing is already through the roof. So if you want to be found, you want to get started by being interviewed, just let me know. Hit me up, Eric at fitnessmarketingalliance.com. Without further ado, number sixty-five, super fun Chrissy Barron. Hey Fitness fans, welcome back to the Future of Fitness podcast and interview series. Today I have Christine Barron. Christine, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Eric. Super excited to be here.

I'm excited too. We've had some great conversations prior to this. So you are currently uh director of operations for Nova 3 Labs. You also have um a long athletic background, and you're also digging in some really cool areas of psychology too. So I don't want to butcher that. Why don't you tell people a little bit about your background and and how you got to where you are right now?

Yeah, so in college, I studied a little bit of psychology and then actually changed my major to business. Um, and that both of that ended up actually helping when I invested in Nova 3 Labs, which before that we had a different name, but we're now Nova 3 Labs. And so I have been running the company with Mike for the past three years. And about a year ago, I thought to myself, you know, I'd really love to understand the psychology, the psychological aspect of being an athlete. And I see a huge deficit in the CrossFit space, specifically CrossFit, is in um, I think everyone says it's 90% mental, right? And 10% performance, and whatever the statistic is, because we could never really prove that. Um, the reality is that your mental game is really important in the sport, yet it's not something that anyone has really ever talked about, right? And I think it is such a vague term, mental game, right? It's like, well, how do I make my my my brain, you know, speak better to itself, right? So um that's kind of what we're gonna talk about today. But I was a college cheerleader at my college in California, and I kind of I went to school at Cal State Northridge. Okay, no matadors. Um, and I think that uh being a college athlete, aside from juggling everything, but the mental aspect of it was really hard, especially with tumbling and gymnastics. And I don't know if other people will understand that, but running, tumbling, gymnastics, standing, tumbling, it's very mental. You have to believe in yourself that you're not gonna break your neck, especially on hardwood floors, because we had a cheer for basketball. So I have a I have a lot of great memories to pull from to be like, oh, this is probably not how you should think about that, or this is probably not how you should do that, right? So I went through that to understand it.

Yeah, oh amazing. Yeah, I've always wondered. I I look at um, I was actually in a study group in college with um cheerleaders, and I would just like the injuries that they would have. I was like, Jesus, you guys are crazy. Yeah, so you're a little bit, you got you got a little bit of nuts in you, I'm sure, to be able to do that sport.

It yeah, it was so much fun, but I I think now um people always ask, can you still throw your tumbling? And I'm like, I just like touch my lower back. I'm like, oh, I don't have that flexibility anymore, right?

Right.

Especially in CrossFit, like we don't move through that plane, we're like very right front back front back. So I'm like, I don't know if I could still do that, but at least I have my glory days and I have my videos, and I'm like, well, here was six years ago when I was more bendy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's talk about this. You um so you you're taking a deep dive into the mental game for athletics and specifically CrossFit too, but I'm sure it branches out into a lot of different things. So, where how is this how is this journey unfolding for you? Where are you finding the aha moments and where are you finding that you can help people?

So it all started when I wanted to understand things more. And I think that my biggest toy on this earth is I just want to understand things. I don't like if someone just tells me something. It's like, but why? But why? And most people hate when I ask, but why? But I'm like, but why? And so I said, you know what? I told Mike one day, I said, I'm gonna go back to school. Don't stress out, I'll be able to do everything. Don't worry about it. Nothing's gonna fall behind. And he was like, Okay, right, you're crazy, which I am, but it's fine. So I did a program where I was able to do the entire courses online, but in the back end, once I finish, is when I have to go through my mentoring and all my hours and clinical hours and things like that. So I did it on purpose like that, because I said, I want to get all the knowledge and then I want to figure out, well, what I want to do with this knowledge. So after going through, I'm actually almost done. I graduate in four months.

Nice.

Really excited about that. But after I'm learning everything, I came to a point where I said, you know, how do I apply this? Because school doesn't teach you how to apply things. It says, here's the equation and do what you want with it. So I said, well, how do I apply this and how do I affect people? Because as I was saying in our pre-interviews, I don't want to be a fraud. I don't want to fluff piece, I don't want to just sound good, look good, right? I want to actually affect people. So I started, I didn't tell you this before, but I started building out a mental health training journal. And I've been building it out for three months now, and I'm being a perfectionist, but that's just who I am. And my whole point of it is to teach people in the beginning the the sport psychology of the sport that you're in. So, what does this term mean? Like really, what does it mean? Why do we care about positive self-talk versus negative self-talk? What is thought stopping, right? Um, and then I'm I teach them how to apply it in the real life. And then at the end, we have I'm creating like a competition guide, eating guide, things like that. So, but where the need came from this was something that I wanted that wasn't out there. And I think that's where most products come from. Like for this podcast, you're thinking, okay, there's nothing out there that's sports and business and entrepreneurial. I'm gonna make it, right? And I think that's what makes great things happen, is when you just kind of push through the vulnerability of it and you say, I may not be an expert at this, but I'm gonna go try it and see what happens.

Yeah.

So that that was kind of my history with psychology in general. And I chose to focus on sports psychology because that is a majority of my life right now.

Yeah, yeah, and I totally agree. I mean, with every, you know, innovation is generally pushed by someone scratching their own itch when you come down to the root of it, right? That's that's where it comes from. And uh so, you know, with this this travel into mental speak, I guess, for lack of a better term. How how how has it affected your athletic game? And then how are you starting to see it help other people?

So self-talk okay, so we have self-talk, right? Which is basically when you talk to yourself in your head. So you're sending a message and you are also the receiver. So self-talk is not the same where someone cuts you off and you're like, this guy's an asshole, right? Or you just say the word asshole in your head, right? Right. That's not right, that's that's going towards him, but self-talk is saying something to yourself in your head. And we talk to ourselves all day in our head, right? And for most people, you're probably your own best friend and you laugh, you're all your own jokes, because I do that. I'm like, I'm hilarious. So, so so we all self-talk, right? Where where it starts affecting performance is when we have positive versus negative. And so positive self-talk uh increases performance. And think of positive self-talk as just like you can do this, keep going, keep pushing. Um, and more about changing, changing the game plan in the middle of the game, right? Versus freaking out that you couldn't do those 21 deadlifts unbroken, right? Which really who can? But that's that's besides the point. Um because I couldn't. Um positive self-talk has been shown to decrease anxiety, improve concentration and focus. So if we think about you have positive self-talk, then it brings these aspects of it, then all of that together improves performance, right? So it's never necessarily been proven that it's I think positive, I perform better, but it's I think positive, I feel more in control, I feel less anxiety, I feel more focused, I feel like I can perform better, right? Negative self-talk does like the complete opposite. So negative self-talk posative, it decreases your self-confidence and therefore puts you in a state of lower performance because you're not believing in yourself as much. So my biggest thing is how do I help people stop that negative self-talk train in their brain?

Right.

Um so what were you gonna say?

Oh, nothing. I was just curious, um, you know, when you talk about positive self-talk, and I'm I'm I really want to get down to like the actual granular aspects of how you people help that, because I think that's that's powerful stuff. I mean, some people, you know, use affirmations, you know, that's something that a mentor has always given me, you know, positive affirmations. But um yeah, let's get into the to the granular. So maybe give us some, you know, give us some examples, like how how like what what exercises do you use to to to push the the conversation in your head towards positivity?

Okay, so one of the biggest things that I pushed on people is it's called cognitive reframing, but I just call it thought reframing.

Okay.

And you're basically taking the thought and you're finding a positive alternative to it. So you're like, wow, that's genius, right? No, it's uh it's not, I I'm not, I'm I'm not reinventing the wheel here, okay? I'm just sharing it with everyone. So my biggest thing on changing negative thoughts to positive is not doing it all in here. Um, so I say, okay, here's my example. You have a workout and you look at your programming, it's eight by eight, eight hundred meter running on the true form, which is really, you know, that's a reality.

Yeah.

So my first thought is, oh my gosh, I hate running, right? Because I suck at it because I'm five foot nothing. But I'm like, okay, whatever, I'm still gonna do it, right? Because I'm I'm stubborn. So then I start running and I'm on my third one and I start falling off pace. And my first thought that I think when I'm falling off pace is, well, of course you're falling off pace. You you suck at running. And the next thought that follows up is, well, just slow down because you're off pace anyway. So why keep pushing it, right? And that's my brain's way of trying to make it okay that I'm not where I'm supposed to be, right? So my brain is trying to like feed it negativity to be like, well, it's okay, right? Like, who likes running, anyways? So immediately in that situation, what I do is I write down the negative thought when I'm done with the exercise. Like, don't tell your coach, I just told you to stop working out right then and there. So whenever I'm done, I write it right down. And I always have a training journal that I write with, just like a blank page. And I then reframe the thought immediately. So the original thought was, I suck at running, you know, I can slow down because I'm never gonna be the best. I'm never gonna be Usain Bull, right? Unfortunately. And so when I reframe it, I tell myself, I may not be the best at running, but I'm still gonna give my full effort in all running workouts. So the way that our brain uses negative thoughts is it's a way to reutilize them in a way to kind of tell ourselves that it's okay. Well, it's okay, right? We can slow down because we're not the best runners. Or it's okay that we're not giving our full effort because we don't even really care, right? So my challenge to everyone is well, let's take those negative thoughts and let's reframe them into positive thoughts. And let's not even use the word positive, let's just reframe them so they're not make like bringing our self-confidence down. And let's reframe them in a way where we're in control of them. Because originally it feels like we're not in control, because we're putting effort out and we're not reaching where we want to be, right? So the goal with that is to reframe them, to reframe all these negative thoughts by writing them down. And once you write them down, I think that also we tend to be a little bit nicer to ourselves once once we breathe them on paper. Because the reality is like I would never tell you, you know what, Eric, you're probably not the best runners, you might as well not run. I would be overly supportive to anyone else in the world. You know, even a stranger, right? I always honk at runners. I'm like, you got it, girl. You got it, right? Just random humans. But when it comes to ourselves, we're so critical.

Yeah.

We're so we're such perfectionists, even, you know, especially business owners, right? And entrepreneurs, we're such perfectionists. So my challenge is, well, let's try to disengage or disconnect from that negative thought and write it down, and then realize how kind of silly it is to be so mean to yourself, and then reframe it. And by reframing it over and over and over and over and over again, hopefully we're gonna make that automatic thought process into a positive one where we are in the hurt locker, we're in the pain cave, and our first thought isn't you freaking suck. Our first thought is, okay, you got this, keep going. Like you can do this, keep going. Right? That's so that's my goal of trying to trying to help people. Because I think that by me saying, Eric, okay, never have a negative thought again. You're gonna be like, well, that that's not gonna happen, right? I cannot control that. So the goal would be to train your brain to then automatically change these negative thoughts into positive, or for that first thought to be something positive versus the negative that often happens.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. And you know, one of the things, you know, I've been I've been a competitive athlete for essentially since from the age of five to 35. And I'm very thankful for all of those things because the the lessons in athletics translate so well into business or just life in general. And, you know, when you one of the exercises that um my business partner and I use all the time. And it sounds so simple, but it's really effective, right? And we do a lot of business coaching for other people. So we'll say, well, you know, what will we tell if we are coaching ourselves? What will we tell ourselves? We'll be like, well, number one, take it easy on yourself. You're not that you're not that bad, right? But those thoughts come through us all the time. And it's just that simple point of like just changing the paradigm or changing the the vision of of what's going on and the the lens that you're looking at, it does a miracle. It's a miracle, and it happens all the time. So if you just stop for a second and pull yourself away and look at it from a different a different view and say, you know, well, if I was coaching myself, what would that look like? And it it just works, you know, it's it doesn't have to be complicated, it just has to be consistent. Would you agree?

Yes. And so one of the things that I was thinking too, uh before we got on here was that like one of the biggest, one of the most common denominators between athletes that have been athletes for a long time are people that are in business. Um, you know, just like people in general's perseverance, right? So like owning a business is not a walk in the park every day. It feels like you are pushing a thousand-pound ball up a hill and you keep thinking, maybe I'll get to the top, but you keep, like you keep going because the thought of stopping isn't really there. But you're like, okay, I'm just I'm just gonna keep pushing through. And that's my that's kind of my thought process with um, you know, sports, sports psychology, is that it's not like we you cannot, you and I can sit down and you can say, I have uh performance anxiety, and I can say, okay, well, here's the steps to help with that, and then it's gonna be fixed in a day. You have to go through that, you have to constantly practice your skills. You wouldn't say, I want to be an elite-level swimmer and practice one hour a week, right? You would probably throw yourself into that sport, hire coaches, right? Technique, all this stuff. So we can't put all of our focus and effort into you know, technique or working out or like the nitty-gritty of it versus when we're not focusing on the mental aspect at all. Yeah, and the great thing about with the great thing about the mental aspect is that it's all pretty actionable items, right? And I like actionable items, so I do well on that. So I give people what I like, right? Which is probably maybe a downfall to me, but I'm like, I do well with actionable items, so I'm gonna give other people actionable items. I would never tell you, hey Eric, go sit in the corner and I just want you to think positive thoughts, right? Like, how hard is meditation? You're like, okay, think about not thinking, and I'm thinking, right?

Oh yeah.

But I'll still try to do it, right? I'm so bad at it. So I think that it's it's helpful that I give action steps and kind of versus saying that this goal, right? Here's this big goal, never have a negative thought again, right? Which is unrealistic. But let's say that's your huge goal. Well, let's break it down. And let's say, okay, well, on Mondays I'm gonna work on thought reforming, and on Tuesdays, I'm gonna work on thought stopping, and on Wednesday, Wednesdays, I'm gonna work on affirmations, and on Thursdays, when I look in the mirror, I'm not gonna say anything negative to myself. I'm just gonna be like, you are one good-looking human being, right? Whatever you want to say to yourself, right? And so break it down each day so that you're not looking at this goal as like so overbearing, but it's a small goal. It's a small, attainable goal. And I tell people a lot, it's it's about the small wins. Like, what was your small win for today? And it's not necessarily about you know, closing that that huge account that you wanted to close for forever or you know getting that muscle up, right? But it's like, what is your small goal for today? Because the small goals will inevitably lead to that big goal. And if every day we're focusing on the fact that we're not reaching our big goal, well, that's just a self-confidence killer, right? So I I tell people, write down your small wins for the day, whatever they are, even if they're so small. Sometimes a small win is the fact that you got out of bed and it's like, heck yeah. Because I could work from bed. I could.

I don't I don't Do you uh do you practice? Do you do like a consistent gratitude practice as well with you and and the people you work with?

I do. Um, so one of the tools that I used previously was the five-minute journal. Have you love it? Yeah, yes, yes, okay. So I I am not perfect with it because I will be like in my head, I'm just gonna think about it instead of writing it down, right? Because it's like, can't believe I can't spare five minutes of my day, right? Right, right. Um, but so what I do in any situation where I'm immediately angry, so like someone break checks me. This is always traffic. I only have traffic examples, but like I'm not I do not have road rage, I promise. Even though it doesn't sound like it. But if someone cuts me off or whatever, the first thought that I've taught myself to think is to wish them good. And I know it sounds crazy, but if I sit there and I'm angry about being stuck in traffic or I'm angry that this person cut me off, I like dwell in it and like gets into me. And then wherever I'm going after that, I'm like a little moody. So I've trained myself to say, Oh, I hope this person has a great day. And it's like I say it out of anger, but it actually helps me like move on from this from the situation. So that's something I challenge everyone to try to. You can yell at them, like, have a good day.

They're like, I like that. I'll use it today. Um, so I'm curious, you know, you're you're building this practice. Where do you see where do you see yourself and and what you're doing now and like in three years? Where where do you where do you see your place within the industry or within consulting or um helping people?

So I think that what I want to do is consult with athletes. And I'm trying to try I'm trying to build that out right now and how I see that. But my main goal is to I think that I think that there are certain areas that anyone can learn from, right? And we're talking about self-confidence and we're talking about imagery training, and we're talking about um like technique breakdown, and we're talking about um, you know, negative self-talk, positive self-talk, right? So let's say I have these five areas that I think anyone and everyone could could learn from. So I kind of would like to have this workshop where if maybe you don't have a specific problem you want to bring to me, like competition anxiety, um, like arousal regulation, then you can come to this workshop that I have and we can go through everything and I can teach you about imagery training. And I can teach you the positive and positives and negatives of music for pre and post-workout. Um, and I can teach you, you know, all of the mental aspects of it without you having a specific issue that you do want to work with. And then I do want to have athletes that I have a specific issue that I that you want to work with, and it's more of a one-on-one basic basis, like let's talk about it, let's write it down, let's create an action plan. I think that the the most important thing in any kind of psychology is that homework that's done when you leave. And it's pretty simple, and I can compare it to like when you're mentoring clients. Okay, so you say, Well, I want you to go create a business plan, right? And then the next session they come back and they're like, Well, I didn't create the business plan, right? And so you're like, Well, I'm trying to help you get organized, or I'm trying to help you do this. So you need to go and do your homework on the on your own time, and then we can come back and discuss it, right? So if I say, okay, so your homework at whenever you're doing thrusters, because I know you hate thrusters, right? I made that. Everybody hates thrusters.

Yeah.

Yeah. So when you're doing thrusters and you get to that set where you start doubting yourself, what I want you to do is I want you to have a positive voice that speaks louder than your negative voice. I don't care if you're yelling in your head, I don't care if you yell out loud, right? Just say, I can do this, right? Or even some people talk to themselves in third, third person, not in a weird way, but in a motivational way, like you can do this.

Right.

So I don't know if you've ever thought about that, right? I don't know if you ever say I can do this. I think it's more natural to say, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this.

Right.

Right. And so um another technique that I actually give clients is that I tell them to name that negative voice in their head. And I named mine Frank because I once had a landlord that wasn't just an ass, and his name was Frank. So my negative voice in my head is Frank. And Frank will try, he'll try to like speak up sometimes. And I'm like, Frank, calm it down, right? And there's a like when you name it, it helps you disengage from it, right? And say that it's not you, right? It's just, it's just Frank. He's just acting up, right? And I mean, I'm being silly by naming him Frank, but um, you get what I'm saying, where by naming it, you're kind of you're giving it less power. You're not saying that I am, you know, not self-confident, I am not believing in myself, I am a bad deadlifter, whatever, right? You're you're kind of disengaging from those from the negative words that are said, and you can then write them down, then reform them, then have your positive voice be louder than Frank, your negative voice, right?

Yeah. Awesome. Well, uh, here's what I think. I think that you're gonna start um, you know, within the niche of CrossFit athletes and athletes in general, but I have a feeling you're gonna expand into something much bigger and doing, you know, dealing with a lot more variety of people, but it's a I think it's a really good place. So where where do people find you, Chrissy? If people are interested in working with you, where do they go?

Yeah, so I'm actually in the process of building out that part of my website for the performance coaching. Um, it's gonna be on our Nova website just because I am an owner of Nova 3 Labs and I just feel comfortable kind of running everything through that.

Sure.

So in the meantime, if you are actually interested, you can email me. My email is Chrissy C-H-R-I-S-S-Y at Nova3labs.com. And that's number three.

Got it, got it. And I'll put it in the show notes too. So um, well, I'm excited. This is great. You know, it's it's insight. You know, the mental game is something that um, you know, a lot of people won't admit that they need help with, uh, especially guys. But it's it's it's just a great conversation because I I know every major push I've ever had as far as you know moving towards success has always been a mental shift. It hasn't been something that's physically happened. So um I think you're in a great space to help people, and I appreciate that you're doing it. And uh most of all, thanks for coming on. I appreciate your time.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Eric. I really like talking to you.

Yeah, you're welcome. We'll talk soon.

Okay, bye.

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