Cool article from the Crossfit Journal today entitled "Life Stress and Crossfit" written by Dawn Fletcher. She begins the article by prefacing how stress can be beneficial to us, for instance our bodies respond to stressors by releasing hormones, and the hormonal and physiclogical changes that take place can increase energy, awareness, and affect performance positively. The problems that occur with stress is when it becomes chronic and the response is no longer beneficial. Increased stress can be detected through a few signs including clammy hands, constant need to urinate, inability to focus, headaches, nausea, difficulties sleeping, and burnout. These can be brought on from stress from work, home, or even over training. The worse part is, that these symptoms pile up, and we lose our ability to cope, leading to poor function, health and performance. Fletcher offers mental performance training to help deal with these stressors, her format goes as follows, awareness----development-------application. For example, awareness- with stresses become aware of the negative thoughts that are causing you poor emotions, is the stress in your life helping or hurting your performance? Here are some tactics to figuring out those stressors, 1. When stress arrives, write down the triggers, 2. Share these thoughts with a coach, friend, or someone who provides emotional support, 3. Tune in to the negative thoughts, why do they make you feel that way, dig into the meaning behind them, also record how you feel before, during, and after wods. What thoughts were in your head, before, during and after the WOD, how did they affect your performance. Becoming aware of these thoughts will help drive you to better performance and give you a better ability to use stress to help rather than hurt your workouts.