Building Resilience with Lisa Tamati

Inside Knowledge

Lisa Tamati – Show Notes

If you have an identity as something you are more likely to do it. It is more than just will power. Will power will eventually run out on you. But when it is a part of who you are that is where you will get the momentum to build the habit.

All those limiting beliefs disappear – “this is the new me, I am an athlete, and this is who I am”. Then you delve deep then into the sport that you have chosen. Then you start to take on that identity.

The next phase is understanding your why. Look deep into your motivations.

The importance of goal setting. Set a motivational stick in the sand. The brain is a goal orientated mechanism. It should also have a deadline for achievement.

Then you need to develop the habit by regularly getting out there.

Within three months you will become a fully formed runner.

When you start to see changes in your own body that increases your motivation. Becomes self-propelling.

Usually the first few weeks go great. Then comes the crash because often you’ve gone out too hard and fast. Injuries will come up because you haven’t done the mobility or the strength work. This curve of ups and downs is going to happen. Don’t measure yourself. New runners expect they are going to get better and better every day but that is not the human body. There are little plateaus that come along and blow your confidence. The body has certain rhythms.

Be patient with yourself. Trust the process. Don’t measure yourself, go out regularly and just do it.

She doesn’t let her athletes measure themselves in the first 16 weeks just so they can establish a routine. Because that is what is important.

When you start an exercise programme when you haven’t been moving for 20 years you are putting a load on all these muscles that aren’t used to it. You haven’t got the stability. All these things need to be strengthened alongside them to be functionally fit.

Lisa talks about the lowest period of her life when her boyfriend at the time left her and their other companions while they were making an illegal crossing on the Libyan desert. They had no support, heavy packs and only 2 L of water a day to survive on. After surviving that experience it was running that gave her her life back.

She grew up in a family where physical toughness was what was valued.

You learned a lot of skills through ultra-marathon running that could be applied in other real world situations.

Lisa details her mother’s recovery from an aneurysm – which will be included in her up-coming book.

Humans do not succeed when they are comfortable. The body and the mind are capable of so much more than we believe they are. We need goals and challenges right throughout life.