Mental skills and personal experiment (16): negative feedback

I have stopped mental rehearsal for 10 or 15 days. On March 29th I developed a strange illness. According to my physician, it was a flu-like virosis, pretty strong. This Summer has been particularly difficult for many of us in Brazil. We had the hottest temperatures in more than six decades and I learned the hard way that I suffer from “idiopathic heat intolerance”. By the end of the period when I struggled against heat intolerance, I had interesting results from my mental training.

On March 26th and 27th, we tested the protocol through a maximum effort test, which I reported earlier. This test is quite taxing on the athlete’s immune system, and I might have failed to take the necessary precautions, such as extra supplementation, feeding and hydration. Yes: I am sure I failed. It had been my birthday and all was a bit out of control. On the 28th there was a family party – those long ones – where I definitely failed to feed and supplement properly, plus had some alcohol (ok, in general, not good after maxing out and not recovering well). On the 29th I had a very stressful business meeting. By the end of the day I was already feeling the virosis symptoms: sinus pain, nasal congestion, a little head-ache.

What followed then was unusual: joint pain, sickness and fatigue. I had no strength to make myself even sit down and meditate. Work was demanding and by the end of the day I felt miserable.

I lost 8lbs of lean mass, measured by bio-conductivity tests. And I lost about 25% of my maximum strength. I’ve been able to recover some of it on the squat, but not on the bench press yet. My injury is especially annoying now, as well.

Lessons to take home: it seems once you start on this mental training journey, there is no looking back. The loss was worse than when I had not engaged in any special protocol. It seems the price to pay for the gains in control acquired from mental practice is that the losses are equally dramatic.