Frustrated with an MTB practice session? Reframe it by asking, "What did I learn today?"

Ryan Hurst at GMB Fitness has some insight on why that's a game-changer

A month ago, I listed five strategies to deal with a pesky plateau in your MTB skills development and chose to focus on one of them: curiosity.

One of the other five strategies in that list: reflecting on each practice session via a journal. I wrote about that a year ago in a post titled, There are ways to make reflection interesting and beneficial for developing your mountain biking skills

So I was interested this week when GMB Fitness head coach and co-founder Ryan Hurst posted a video to the GMB Fitness Instagram feed about reflection:

He makes a point in the video that I’d not considered regarding reflection. Here’s my transcript of it:

When I was having trouble with my right wrist, and nothing was working, instead of getting upset, I just asked myself, "Okay, what did I learn today?"

I was laughing because I realized that that reframe of "What did I learn that day" would mean that I would never have a bad session again.

This is something that I've heard before, and I've said to other people, but here I was, a person not taking my own advice.

So whenever we're getting frustrated for not being able to do something at the end of our session, if we could instead ask ourselves, what did I learn today, that's going to help for tomorrow. And that way, we'll always have a great session.

And this is a huge, huge game-changer. And the reason is that now we've shifted the focus from a physical outcome, which we can't always control, to a mental outcome, and that is something that we can always have control over.

After a practice session of seemingly no wheelie progress yesterday, I asked myself, Hey Griff, what did you learn today? I made some quick notes on my phone and last night I took the time to write in detail about the session in my practice journal as I watched some of my videos.

Yes, I learned a few things. But more importantly, my mindset about wheelie practice tomorrow has changed. I’m not harboring thoughts like I hope to get past this frustrating plateau or Be disciplined! Show up! or You’re gonna get this!

Rather, it’s much easier for me to be curious, and to treat my upcoming practice like a scientist. I wonder what I’m going to learn today. My motivation to do the hard thing is stronger.

I’m also guessing that I’ll be less inclined to consider taking time to do reflection after a practice session as obligatory homework. Yes, it will still take some self-discipline. But now the additional benefit is more apparent.

Check out the new blog post by GMB Fitness Managing Director Jarlo Ilano, titled: The Power of Reflection: Make Faster Progress by Learning More from Every Workout.