Episode #374: Mental Strategies: Neuroscience, Visualization, and Developing Resilience with Anne-Sophie Fluri

35:21It's a safety concern. So, like, you can't go to the track every single day before a race. They give you – yeah, there's a certain amount of testing time, certain budget that can be allocated there in a certain amount of time because they don't want – their athletes to just crash their brains out all the time so what they'll do is not only sim-based training right but also like active like this is our visualization time and so we're gonna rehearse the course in your brain or this particular turn or what gear are you in and you know what's your lean angle stuff like that um is that legit like when it comes to performance in sport like is there good good data on how visualization can can carry over here yeah and And have you ever seen the videos of like Formula One drivers that are, they've got the steering wheel in their hands and they like, they have their eyes closed or they're seeing it in an image and they're mentally rehearsing that.

36:09But it's basically, they have learned the track, let's say like the back of their hand and they could do it with their eyes closed. And in that way, they're just, I mean, on the day when they're competing, it's, they're just going to be so much more well-equipped to do that because they already, it's like, it's like the muscle memory. Totally. But there's different types of visualization that you can do. Michael Phelps, famously, I think it was the 2008 Olympics, he had water in his goggles while he was swimming. Terrible. Yeah. I hate that. um but he had as part of his training apparently would use different types of visualization where he would visualize and this is called visualizing in the negative which isn't always recommended for people it's like a stoic principle where you imagine the worst thing that could go wrong and you mentally rehearse how you would overcome if that were to happen sometimes people use that also if they're getting on stage and they're or they're nervous or they're performing or something like that.

37:11They imagined the worst thing going wrong, like forgetting what they were going to say or just being too nervous to take the shot. And because they've mentally rehearsed it so many times, they know what to do in that situation if it ever happens in real life. It's like their backup plan kind of thing. Exactly. So it's just like mentally preparing yourself for that. But then again, it really depends on individual differences. There are some people for for which that kind of technique wouldn't work because they would get too caught up in the anxiety of something going wrong and then it would be the self-fulfilling prophecy where they're like you know they're just aware of all the things that could go wrong yeah yeah uh do you find that there's like a particular type of visualization whether it's rehearsing the act right uh which is maybe more like neutral right you're just doing doing the thing that's called process visualization where you're in the process of doing something or executing a task and i assume there's also negative type what's the worst thing that could happen and i assume there's also positive visual you know what's the best thing that can happen yeah and so then there's yeah so so the the main ones i think that people use and especially with with athletes is process visualization where you're visualizing the process of achieving the goal um and that helps you first of all because you're you know everything that it takes in order to get there and that's what the the f1 drivers are doing when they're visualizing the process of uh of training for the i don't know the all the right words for no totally fine um but then you have outcome visualization which is where you visualize the outcome so you um a lot of people do this they visualize what it would look like if they've already achieved their goal so you could visualize for example what would it look like me winning this powerlifting competition yeah a lot of dudes would be like cool so you visualize it but you um critically what you have to do to make it more effective and to engage more areas of the brain is to um to bring in as many uh senses as possible so you have vision and the reason why that's so effective is because the visual system takes up such a big portion of the brain your visual cortex is quite big and when you're visualizing something you activate similar areas like overlapping areas as if you were seeing it in real life so obviously you don't have the input from from your eyes into the um the optic nerve and the visual cortex but there are certain brain areas that are that are still activated as if you were really seeing it happen um and then if you bring in some of the other senses maybe you can you can you can imagine yourself in the space you can smell what that conference room smells like or you know the what the air is going to be like you can visualize your posture or how it feels to have achieved that goal and that floods your brain with the same chemicals and endorphins as if you were really achieving that goal and that helps you bridge the gap between where you are now and what's possible for you in the future so for some people so some like you know breath work wellness people will co-opt some of that science and say like this is what manifestation is I see you know interesting okay you can very quickly like you know fall into that kind of area um which is not something that I believe in personally but I see visualization as a um it is a way to work towards your goals and there is also research that shows that if you practice visualization like goal-oriented visualization that you're more likely to achieve your goal that's not because you're magically manifesting something to happen it's because it's because most of the time you see this as a practice that you do day in day out so every single day you're priming your brain to think about what do I have to do in order to achieve that goal and so your actions are going to be more in line aligned with um you know maybe you're gonna even on an off day go to the gym or practice because you're like hey I've got this big goal and I can feel what it feels like to to do that and I need and I need to practice and I need to you know get over however I feel today and make sure that it happens again just last thing that I would say is that it's, it's always like down to individual differences because there are some people where that's going to be really useful for them as a goal setting technique.

41:41Um, and then there are some people where, because they've already felt all of the feelings associated with actually achieving the goal actually end up less motivated to train the goal because they're already, they're already happy. They're already satisfied. Yeah. Yeah. So ultimately not really helping them along. Yeah. They feel like they already got it. I feel like you just need to understand what kind of person you are. Yeah, yeah. Identifying what are your predilections and what are your – maybe to co-opt a term from business, like pain points. Like, okay, where's the gap? Yeah, some of this to me visualization seems almost like an information gathering process, especially if you are trying to – you visualize yourself succeeding, for example, and you identify like, oh, there are various steps along the way that I was maybe either blind to previously.

42:31or hadn't fully fleshed out and now you're like, oh, I need to address these things or should practice them. And visualization, I use it, I use visualization probably more than any of these other type things, particularly like related to meditation and other maybe mental health practices, mostly related to training, competing most of the time. And then also in motorsport where you can rehearse a lap, what's the perfect lap? And oh, if this line, this particular, you know, path through a corner is not available, I would do this one. And so you just have, there's a shorter road to go to what's plan B.

43:11You don't have to think on the fly. You've kind of already done that legwork. And so it becomes more, as you mentioned, like, is it muscle memory? Is it brain memory? I don't know. It does seem to be useful for me, but I can also imagine a scenario where a person engages in all this stuff and maybe that doesn't really work for them. And so, yeah, individual responses as most things. Yeah, I would say like as a goal setting technique, it's really great. It's like, you know, it's the difference between somebody who wakes up on or it's January 1st and they like write a list of 10 things that they want to achieve in that year.

43:41And then they never look at that list again versus somebody who says like, you know what, I'm going to visualize achieving this goal. And like they're just much more likely to actually achieve it because they first of all, they remember it. They're paying attention to it. And then they're taking actions that are in alignment with that. Do you recommend that people, if someone wanted to start, again, visualization practices today, do you recommend like stacking that with a meditative practice? Like, okay, first get yourself focused and then pick a visualization target. Or is it like, you don't need to do that.

44:11Maybe we'll start with just a process-based approach or something like that. Do you have any recommendations on this one? Yeah, I guess it really depends on the person. So first of all, there are some people who will be listening to this and they'll be like, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Fair. Yeah, honestly. If you tell them to close their eyes and imagine an apple, it's never happened for them before. Yeah, like what's an apple? Yeah. But if you close your eyes and you visualize an apple, what does that look like for you? Yeah. I'm thinking this oblate spheroid object. It's shiny.

44:43It's smooth to the touch. The light's glaring off one side, wherever the light source is. In my case, it's green because green apples are superior. your granny smith preferentially that stupid stem is sticking out at a dumb angle okay so you have like you have a very clear idea of what that looks like i have the same mine is like green and a bit of red like on the side but i can see like shiny and it's it's turning like i can see it turning oh it's on okay it's on yeah a little easily and it's turning there are some people who will be like i have no idea what like i know what an apple looks like but i can't just bring it to mind and so there's a small percentage of the population that has something called aphantasia okay where they cannot voluntarily recall images so you tell them to imagine whatever it's not it's like they look at you sideways they're just like nothing it's black so for for for those people a visualization is obviously not an option it's something that you can train because it's not necessarily to do with not being able to um see mental imagery it's just that process of voluntarily recalling mental imagery that is kind of disrupted so they might still be able to dream in pictures but they won't be able to close their eyes and visualize something it's that the voluntary recall that just system is and you can train that by slowly practicing visualization and you know like it can get better over time for some people for some people it can't um so if that's you then maybe visualization is not going to be like the the way to go um but i would say all of these different types of meditation it's it's it's mostly just about being able to focus and focus your attention so if you're trying to visualize something and you're always getting distracted yeah maybe start with just a strict meditation first to train yourself to be able to pay attention if that helps um for some people visualization is the better way to train attention because you have more anchors like more things that you can call upon you can call upon your sights and the sounds and like what it might feel like if you're really putting yourself into that space um some people actually use this for you know to fall asleep because they imagine themselves like lying on a cloud and it's fluffy and it's dark and it's cool you know and you can you can really bring about all these different states of mind but i would say just maybe set aside a few minutes every day to visualize something and it can be as simple as visualizing how you want the rest of your day to go forward.

47:15You can visualize yourself achieving all the tasks that you want to do, being in a good mood, having good conversations with people, having a good influence on people, people walking away from interactions with you feeling good and positive. So that's a really good way to start because it's real, it's tangible. Yeah, this may be a dumb comment, so just bear with me on this. But it does seem like what you're saying, obviously some regular practice, regular frequency doing this seems to be helpful. But temporally, time-wise, it seems like, yeah, ideally you're doing this beforehand, like whatever the task is.

47:52And is there like some immediacy type bias here where it's like, look, if you have a particular task that you want to get up for, you want to maximize your performance or your whatever, right before? it's like is that the is that the perfect the best time or like could you do it hours before could you do it days before yeah like okay so it depends on what what the task is specifically i'm just thinking about squatting 300 kilos so so so there are there are some studies if you're looking at um things with immediate effect where they do these um have you heard like ultrasound imaging of the muscles like where it's immediate the bio yeah of course you have because that's what you do but uh like this is this is more you know separate to the work that i've done but if you have if you have this like real-time visual biofeedback um they've had this in in settings where people are seeing their muscle be activated and it's a specific muscle um and if they're visualizing that muscle be activated by seeing this ultrasound image they can actually engage more of the muscle and engage more like smaller and specific muscle groups to increase like the muscle activation force production and such yeah okay yeah yeah who would say that you're able to like recruit more of the muscle than if you were just like flexing with you know without kind of paying attention and it's and that visual feedback really helps and so the same way like if you if you don't have that visual feedback from the ultrasound you can do that by mentally like visualizing what's the muscle that I'm activating now I think that's interesting but like do you ever do that when when you're doing a squat it's like really paying attention to like these are the muscles I'm and you really feel what it feels like to activate and engage that muscle yeah I mean with when lifting heavy weights most of the time my visualization strategies go to like what would this perfect rep look like?

49:47And like, what am I feeling? Like with respect to the bar in a squat, for example, the bar is fighting me. It wants to crush me, take me forward. It wants me to fall, right? So what, what's that, what am I going to feel like? And what does it look like? And to the extent that's, I don't know, I could be placeboing myself, but if I'm trying to just catch a pump, you know, for the, for the bros, for example, yeah, I will divert my attention towards like, oh, what? Yeah. Okay. My biceps, sorry. Here's where that muscle, here's what it looks like anatomically. And I'm trying to do this particular action.

50:19Maybe that's been my hack this whole time. You know, I've just been visualizing my muscle. I do that. Like there's so many times I'm at the gym and I'm just like, I'm on my phone and I'm just kind of like doing, I just know I need to, like, I have the weight set at the way that I know that it's like, I'm pushing myself, but I'm just doing it and trying to get it over with and just not paying attention. But then for For the last few reps, it's like, I really need to focus so that I can do this. And because when you're visualizing it and when you're paying attention, you're recruiting more of the muscle.

50:45It like that will help with, you know, your gains, I guess. Yeah, mind muscle. Maybe that's what people are really talking about. Because I'm like, well, your mind is definitely attached to the muscle. Otherwise, you're going to be up a creek, like trying to get that thing to contract. So, you know, you can set that aside. But yeah, perhaps, you know, again, diverting attentional focus towards the muscle and or muscle groups that you're aiming to target. Yeah, it seems like that is a reasonable ask for people that are like, how could I level up with my training here? And so you're actively doing it while you're lifting, which is never really.

51:17And that's the whole principle of mindfulness. And, you know, we were talking about, like, how do people begin? And a lot of the time people think, like, I don't have time to sit and do a 10-minute or 20-minute or 45-minute, God forbid, meditation practice every single day. but mindfulness is a form of meditation which is you're just being mindful of like the sensations and this is what we're talking about you don't need to take any time out of your day to practice mindfulness the only thing you need to do is to remove the distractions and focus on the task that you're already doing so you can practice mindfulness by like being mindful at the gym and focusing on the muscle activation and like imagining which specific muscle group you're targeting and what it feels like to lift the weight and what it feels like to all of this stuff like that that is a meditation like your your gym can be can be like a practice in mindfulness just the same way as when you're cooking or when you're folding laundry pay attention to the sounds you know and and the smells and the textures that is that is mindfulness and that's going to help you have a happier life because again when you're being mindful and when you're being focused on the task at hand, your brain is less likely to think about all of these like awful scenarios that it's making up.

52:36Yeah, it's funny. I think people almost and maybe I might be projecting is like, if you're doing a mundane task in life, you're almost purposely trying to be distracted. Like, I don't want to think that I'm doing laundry or dishes right now or cleaning. But it's like, this is an opportunity to practice being focused. Even if you don't want to smell the, you know the smell of dish cleaner or the whatever you know how the fabric feels as you're folding it or whatever but it's but it could be a way in a person's busy life that they could actually kind of practice some of these yeah and for those people who are you know wanting to know like the best nootropic and you know no man will creatine help me with my cognitive function the the research is showing that the the best thing for your memory are these idle moments It's when you're not doing anything to just be mindful.

53:26That's when a lot of the information processing happens in your brain. It's like when you're at the gym, you need a rest date in order for the muscle to recover, right? Like it's part of your, the regimen. It's like essential. And it's the same thing for encoding memory. You're just constantly getting this barrage of information from all of your senses. is and the brain is like it's it's made to forget and not pay attention to things like if you were paying attention to all of the things that you're seeing and feeling and hearing at the same time you'd be so um you know i'm overwhelmed right now to be yeah exactly because but you're like you're not paying attention to uh the way that the shirt feels on my body or the way that the chair feels or the the temperature of the floor or the air you know you're not you're not paying attention to all those things the brain is in a way created to forget and not pay attention to those things otherwise it would just be too much um but in those idle moments where you're sitting and doing nothing don't try to use those to take in more information and you know maybe sometimes when you're listening to a podcast don't try and you know do that while you're also cooking and cleaning Like I know that everybody wants to multitask, but maybe just sit down and listen to a podcast and try and take in the information from that.

54:45That's enough. Yeah. How about a single task? Let's start with a single task first. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also, you know, like neuroscientists don't believe that multitasking is a thing, even though everybody like says that they love to multitask and that they're so efficient when they're doing 100 things at once. But like it looks like in the brain that it's you're actually task switching between different things. Yeah. So you're not always you're not paying attention to five things at once. You're switching your attention between like five different things, which is costing you a lot of mental energy.

55:18You only get a 20 percent. Yeah, I would love the study. I would love to see is you give people some sort of informational podcast. Right. And half the group there, they're listening to it while they're performing household tasks, for example. and the other half they're just sitting there listening to the podcast yeah they check for attention yeah yeah there are studies like that and there are studies even where they followed up with people five years later who had to do a task where they had to remember like a few words or something like that and they called them a few years later and they said like oh do you remember the words that you had to remember for this experiment that we did and the people who were paying attention and who were just sitting and doing nothing else they were better able to remember five years down the line, the words that they were given.

56:01There you go. Well, maybe it's not about doing more. It's about doing better. Yeah. There's a soundbite. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Clip it. Yeah. All right. Because we were mentioning like how, like how long should you have to practice and the studies that are the most solid studies on meditation where you actually see structural changes in the brain as well as the behavioral changes is after like eight weeks of mindfulness because you have a lot of time mindfulness-based stress reduction which is an eight-week course you do 20 minutes to 40 minutes every day and if you want to see changes in your brain structure so the neuroplasticity and action and um you know more gray matter in your hippocampus which is like helps you with memory as well um then eight weeks you you gotta you gotta stick with it at least eight weeks and uh if you want to see state-related changes where you're actually changing who you are as a person and becoming a more mindful person you want to do around 45 minutes every day wow yeah that's an ask yeah yeah yeah it is it is it is but then but there are also benefits associated with doing it for like up to 20 minutes but it's it might just be a little bit more transient yeah it's it's the same Same thing as exercise though, right?

57:18Because people are like, okay, how long do I need to exercise to build muscle? It's like, well. It's not like one big gym session. No, you got to keep doing it. And it's going to be some number of weeks before you're actually going to be able to detect appreciable changes in the structure and morphology of the muscle. Although in one single session, sure, there's some benefit there, but they're stacked over time. Yeah, exactly. Same. All right. I'm here. Yeah. Mental workouts. The last thing I wanted to talk about before we wrap this podcast up is mental resilience. And this was one of the topics that was really interesting to me because when we started doing our seminar, we talk a lot about health and performance.

57:54So performance is pretty straightforward to define, but health is a little stickier. And you go in and you look for what have other people said for defining health. And it started in the 1940s where this definition published said it's being free of any disease, mental, physical, emotional, whatever. And it's like, oh, my God. In that case, no one is ever healthy, right? Because when are you in this state of nirvana like ever in your life? And so the definition we use in our seminars is from a 2011 piece written by Huber, not to be confused with Huberman. Huber in 2011, British Medical Journal.

58:34And the definition they use for health is that it is the ability to adapt and self-manage in the face of social, physical, and emotional challenges. Now, much of that definition has to do with the concept known as self-efficacy. So when somebody has confidence and their ability to exert control over their own motivations, behaviors, social environment, et cetera. So from a neuroscience standpoint, is some of this rooted in mental resilience? Like, is that really what we're talking about? Yeah, I definitely think so. There's different definitions of what mental resilience is, depending on who you ask or like what theory you look at.

59:14Personally, for me, like I look at it in a mechanical way. It's like the same way in mechanics. Like if you exert force or pressure onto an object, how long before it bounces back to its original form and used for the same purpose. some people like to you know talk about mental resilience as not just bouncing back from adversity but also coming out better oh stronger better yeah okay more robust like i like i don't always i don't always go to that because i don't you know then you get into like this weird psychology world as well where you're like oh everything bad happens for a person a purpose and you come out stronger and like i just you know that sometimes bad stuff happens yeah sometimes Bad stuff just happens.

59:53But it's as long as you know that difficult times will come, but you have trust in yourself to overcome those things. And again, it changes from person to person. And it's like, it depends on people's circumstances. Because if Jeff Bezos lost his job or if he was, you know, outed from Amazon, that's not going to affect him in the same way that it would affect somebody who works at the Amazon store, you know, who is responsible for feeding a family of four it really depends on how like what circumstances you're in social factors health factors all of those things but then also yeah I think a big part is how you how you reason your way out of a situation whether you can tell yourself like something bad is happening but I trust myself to get over it something bad might be happening but it's a redirection um it's you know something bad might be happening to me but it's an opportunity for me to learn and to come out stronger and to like prove myself or something like that I think I think I think that's really important because with this whole meditation stuff the reason why I became so interested in that is because when I when I was younger bad things really happen like a lot of bad things happen to me and I just had this mindset of this is just my life bad things just happen to me all the time and like it's just gonna be one thing after the next and you kind of have this feeling of hopelessness and even though I was studying psychology and then I did my neuroscience and then I was doing you know it wasn't until I was actually looking specifically at the studies of putting monks in MRI machines that I realized oh, I have a say of, you know, like I can determine how bad something is or like how I'm going to reason my way out of the situation.

1:01:48And I think that's why these techniques are really useful because they give you a sense of power. Yeah, we talk a lot about self-efficacy and particularly the different characteristics of people that have like a high level of self-efficacy versus a low level of self-efficacy. And people who – individuals who have a high level of self-efficacy tend to have good insight into what's happening. They feel like they have some level of control over what's happening and ultimately have enough resources where they can kind of change the direction of what's happening. They feel like they can change the outcome, whereas people with low levels of self-efficacy, a number of interesting things.

1:02:29One, they do not have good insight into what's happening. They also feel like they are not in control. They're not like a main driver of what's happening. And ultimately, they've also had multiple experiences where they have either failed to do something. And so that's kind of like, yeah, helplessness is some sort of a feeling they commonly report. So when it comes to like mental resilience, are there strategies like how do you get mentally more resilient? Like what do you – how do you develop that? Is it just like, man, you need 45 minutes a day of visualization. You need 10 minutes a day of meditation.

1:03:02and you need a journal and you're good to go. How would you recommend somebody gets on the path to being more mentally resilient? So again, I would say it really depends on the person. But if you look at one of the ways that you look at mental resilience, there's six components. So there's health, and this is your physical health, sleep, all of those things, nutrition, which is like a big thing and that's important to just have that down and have that secured and you have vision which for a lot of people is the most important thing it's you have this vision for your life and your future and like where you want your life to go and that kind of like defines all of these other ones um vision then tenacity and this is your ability to pick yourself back up after you've fallen down and keep going that's a lot easier when you have a vision because you know what you're working towards um then you have composure and this is all about your ability to stay composed when you're going through stress is to self-regulate mindfulness is really important here um and then the other one is collaboration and that's all about the relationships that you have in the social support there's also studies that show that if you feel like you're part of a community if you feel like you have social support you're bound to be more resilient um But I think for all of those components, something that you can do to work on them is to develop that ability for self-awareness and reflection through something like meditation.

1:04:37And it doesn't have to be that strict meditation. I think I would encourage anyone who's interested in this to look up different types of meditation. but I think because the knock-on effects are so vast you know it can help you with health and your relationships because it helps you be a better listener it helps you pay more attention remember things have more engaging conversations it also practices that that non-judgment which I think you know I'm not saying everybody who meditates is a good person or like above everybody else but but i think it's a really good skill to have is to just see something or like it whether whether that's an adversity or whether that's something else to to be able to see that not judge it but then critically think about how am i going to address this and with some of the with with some of the fmri studies what they've shown is that people who meditate a lot they have better connectivity from the prefrontal cortex like where you're all your executive functioning happens to the emotional areas of your brain like your amygdala even in some cases your amygdala can shrink so you have less of that emotional reactivity um but you have better connectivity from your prefrontal cortex to your limbic system emotional centers of your brain which just allows you to approach problems with more of like a level head which i think is good in any circumstance and especially if you want to be mentally resilient you have to be able to have a clear mind when you when you go into a situation yeah if you have more tools at your disposal that you can face this challenge with in addition to like maybe removing some of the self-deprecating judgment stuff that goes along yeah like this is happening to me versus to use a manifestation phrase for me it's just happening for but like but then you can use all these different you can use uh visualization to help you set a vision and a clear goal for your life if you're lacking direction, that can really help you because you can sit down and reflect for a few minutes every day.

1:06:38Where do I want my life to go? Especially if you feel a bit lost, where do I want my life to go? And it can also help you because a lot of the time people go through difficult situations, not because things are just happening to them, but because maybe they lack that vision and they're putting themselves into positions that they don't need to be in. Like, for example, if you're in a job that it's not your dream job, It's not helping you get to where you want to go in your career. And it's a really shitty situation. Sorry if I can not swear on this podcast. Rated R, baby. Your boss is awful to you.

1:07:13You're under so much stress and so much pressure. And that's affecting your health. That's affecting your relationships. That's affecting so many other aspects of your life. If you just had this vision of where your life was going, you would actually, you might realize that you don't need to put yourself under all of this stress. You don't need to put yourself through that specific adversity. you can pick your battles so to speak right and and i think visualization can also be great for for that to help you build resilience to help you realize that you know not every battle is worth fighting yeah and a person who views themselves as like in control of their own destiny right on some level they're probably more more apt to make changes um or at least they feel more empowered to make changes versus a person who's like i have no control over this i can't do anything i'm stuck And it's like, well, you are now.

1:07:59Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. I have, this is like a lightning round thing. So just, here you go. I want to ask, I try to ask most of our guests these questions. So first off, this is a Barbell Medicine podcast. We have to talk about exercise on some level. What is your preferred exercise, like routine? I think, as I recall, you were previously in like bodybuilding, like physique competition stuff. What are you, what are you doing now? Are you a Pilates princess or what are we doing? Not after your podcast. Thank you. All right. Yeah. I listened to that. No, no, no. I know. I still love strength training, bodybuilding.

1:08:37I think for me, it just gives me a lot of structure because it's, yeah, like, I don't know. It's very goal oriented, which makes sense to me. Before I did that, I spent years, like I would always be quite active. I would always be in the gym, but I wouldn't really see any progress. And then it just kind of came to a point where I'm like, why am I spending all this time? I'm like, yeah, I feel great, but like, I do want to see some, some results. So I, yeah, I love structured and nutrition and like, yeah. Yeah. No, it gives you, it's like a, it's a good anchor, right? You're like, okay, this is the process.

1:09:10You're goal oriented. Here's my chart, my progress. Everything that I do in my lifestyle is like helping supportive. And I think for some people, especially when I was doing this, like hardcore and like, I would go for dinners and I would bring my own food. Some people thought that it was quite restrictive, and I understand that it can be, and it's not the healthiest types of exercise, especially if you're competing, which I never did. But for me, it was actually very freeing because I just hired somebody else to keep track of my progress, to tell me what to eat and what to exercise. And so that just took a lot of that mental load off of me.

1:09:48Yeah, I like that. All right, second lightning round question. I'm going to ask for either what you're currently reading or a book recommendation that you'd want to pass on to our audience. Yeah, none of the fairy smut. That's not appropriate. Let's not. I haven't even read that. Yeah, good, good, good, good. But I'm so tempted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Okay, so a book that basically changed my life and my understanding and also the course of the research that I was interested in. many years ago now, I think 2008, was The Emotional Life of the Brain. This is by, and I always mix this up and I should probably learn it, but can't be bothered, either Richard Davidson or David Richardson.

1:10:39It is by Richard Davidson. Richard Davidson, who, he is a professor from the University of Wisconsin, or was at the time but they were they really pioneered a lot of the work on you know putting monks in MRI machines understanding what's happening in the brain when people are meditating it was really inspiring to me and this was this was really transformational for me when I was in that mindset of these things are always happening to me and this is just how my life is going to look and it's just going to be one thing after the next and and I think from from that book and it might be a bit old now hopefully there's an updated version it really helped me understand how i can change my outlook on life and how i can change my brain and understand my emotions in a different way yeah i like that okay uh next lightning round question what's one thing that people should start doing to improve their mental game can i say stop doing sure Sure.

1:11:41I love that. Stop multitasking. Start monotasking. Stop multitasking. I like that. It's a trend. Just do one thing at one time. Like it's enough. Sure. And yeah, potentially combining that with like just focusing on what you're feeling, what are you seeing, what are you hearing, what do you smell, whatever at the time. Yeah. If you have something to do, just do that thing. There's, I promise you, there's going to be enough like information from all of your senses to like pay attention fully to that one thing. Cool. I like that. Last but not least, where can people find you? We'll link all the stuff in the show notes, but yeah, where can people find you on the interwebs and such?

1:12:18On the interwebs, a few different places. So I use my substack to talk a little bit more about some specific research in neuroscience, particularly to do with meditation, like wellnessy stuff um debunking some or like thought pieces on that um i use my my instagram to poke fun at a lot of the wellness trends and meditation trends so if you're if you're interested in more of like just not so serious content you can find me there my sub stack is rewire me with ann sophie like that yeah bars and then and then my instagram i don't know if i can say it yeah it's coochie it's coochie by gucci i'll uh i'll link that in the show just link it my instagram is linked in the show notes um yeah i would love to see you guys there perfect uh well thank you so much for joining us on the barbell medicine podcast where we bring modern medicine to strength conditioning and strength conditioning to modern medicine again i'm your host dr jordan Weigenbaum.

1:13:18A special shout out to Anne-Sophie Fleury for joining us on this podcast. But before you guys go anywhere, please leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps drive traffic to our podcast so we can keep bringing you all the latest nuance in health and fitness. From everyone here at Barbell Medicine, we'll catch you next week and every week right here on the Barbell Medicine Podcast.