List five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. This is a common grounding technique used to shift focus from tension or anxiety, to simple, tangible thoughts to reduce tension or anxiety, regulating the mind and body. This exercise takes approximately 20-60 seconds, which is the perfect amount of time between hard repetitive tasks, like running repeats or intervals of any distance.
Another technique includes the turning of a ring (on a finger), where each turn of the ring implies a fresh start to a new task. This is a great method of cueing a relaxation response, and it’s even more useful if one has a familiar breathing technique (i.e., box breathing) or a history with Progressive Relaxation Training (PRT).
Professional golfers use the “Six Seconds” rule, where the golfer executes a swing, observes the response of the ball, then processes the play to know whether and how to make adjustments on future like swings.
Baseball players. When a hitter gets an out, they have between the batters box to the dugout to process the at-bat, which includes the pitch sequence, pitcher cues, or whatever baseball players thing about during that time to process the at-bat. Once they reach the dugout, there may be some discussion with the hitting coach or another player, but the batter typically spends their energy on the next task, whatever that may be.
Earlier this week, I shared a Flushing technique with a runner that I had the pleasure of running intervals with. She’s fairly new to the program - less than a year - and I know this technique had never been discussed with her, so its introduction brought about a fresh take on a new activity. It’s called, Flush.
Interval after interval, we zipped around the track hitting goal pace after goal pace, in an effort to bring confidence and rhythm for her next big race. After the fourth 400m, she looked at me with “Are you sure we only have 20-seconds left in the recovery interval?” eyes, to which I said, “Flush the toilet.”
Looking puzzled, I explained, “After using the restroom, what do you do? You flush the toilet, right? And that flush brings fresh water!”
Rather than marinate in dirty toilet water, the Flush method is one where you’ll tap your waistband with your thumb, similar to flushing a toilet with your thumb, ridding unproductive thoughts, and bringing focus to the next interval. It’s a similar concept to the turning of the ring, but with the flush comes a bit more time, where you can imagine unproductive thoughts being washed away, and productive thoughts seeping into ones pores, followed by actions of relaxing the shoulders, a couple of hops, wiggling the hands, or any other method of reminding the nervous system the purpose of the process.
Unproductive thoughts can range from feelings of fatigue, to taking the next interval off. But when you’re in the heat of the battle, similar to lap three of a mile race, or the final corner of an open 400m, taking an interval off is not in the cards, so we have to make hard decisions to move forward. Once the decision to continue is solidified, we toe the line and go - three quick steps and we’re off on the fifth interval. Fresh steps, fresh pace, back in rhythm.
Repeat as needed. Hopefully not too many more intervals. One only has so many flushes.
That brings me to: some toilets get clogged. There’s a time for prolonging the rest between intervals or taking an interval entirely off. Then there’s a time for knowing when to press forward. Considerations include:
Ensuring the workout is age, event, and intensity appropriate.
The time of year or season.
Managing the psychological ramifications of incomplete workouts, while avoiding Perfectionism. It is okay to not run all the intervals, but shorter workouts like 6x400 is doable, so long as the intensity is right. Missing one interval of a 15x400m workout is one thing, but missing one of six is less than desired. You have to know when to know when.
The next day at practice, the distance group had a workout of [(Grade Level x .5) x 1k]. Prior to the fourth interval, I instructed the group to flush their toilet. Some looked puzzled, but after a very brief description and rationale of the Flush, for the most part, the kids understood the intent. However, the Flush will certainly be a topic of discussion next week, along with Breathing Control and Progressive Relaxation Training - the tools to guide autoregulation.