You can cheat joy

You can cheat joy

07.01.2020 | Guest News No. 111 by Ulrich Strunz jun.

Cheating is a mental technique, very helpful to start running again after an injury break.

Or basically to start running again. Ingenious!

Let’s assume that you ran 10 kilometers in training at a fast pace of 4. So 4 minutes per kilometer. That’s pretty good. Then you had a fall while skiing, playing soccer, judo or cycling. No running for a few weeks or months. And now the mental ego whispers:

„You have to start all over again.
„Oh, pity and trouble, your condition has disappeared.“

Fortunately, our frontal cortex invented cheating. Make-Belief. So-Tun-Als-Ob. What the New York stock market teenagers can do, we could use to produce happiness. And motivate us to run every day again:

So what’s the trick?

Instead of a 10-kilometer run, you settle for four kilometers. Which you do at a comfortable 5-speed. So 5 minutes per kilometer.

You constantly suggest to your brain (they have time…)

it’s a three-mile stretch…

…and run it at a comfortable 5-speed for the first two weeks. The „cheated“ 4-speed.

It’s best to run alone for a change. Don’t measure it so carefully. Runs in the evening with a headlamp in the forest. Nebulises the „measurement“, takes things „not so exactly“. And just runs for the fun of it. Because:

Health, like joy, is a feeling.

The pride we feel when we have completed the „5 km distance“ in 20 minutes. On the 2nd day we already did a small sprint. On the 3rd day we managed the whole distance easily without a break…

And sneaky, just like us teasing monkeys:

The last 1,000 yards are across country, through the neighborhood. Here we give a little bit of gas. Showing off our well-toned thighs. The pedestrians prance skilfully and come home with a grin.

You can cheat yourself out of joy. Because already in the third week we run 8 km (eight!) and tell our brain: that’s 10 km. Our brain, which smiles at us…

Fake it, until you make it work!

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