Lewis Pugh On Mental Toughness, Belief and the Impossible

Swimming the North Pole and Other Impossible Things In this TED talk Lewis Pugh talks about an insane expedition to swim at the North Pole as a means of...

Swimming the North Pole and Other Impossible Things

In this TED talk Lewis Pugh talks about an insane expedition to swim at the North Pole as a means of raising awareness of melting ice caps.  There are some obvious reasons that jump to mind as to why that’s a crazy and dangerous notion (the swimming, not the motivations behind it) but those reasons are all exacerbated by his regaling of what happened when he took a test dip in the water for about 5 minutes the day before his swim.

My brother is a Ph.D in Sport Psychology and I’ve had some personal difficulty embracing the terminology employed by practitioners (“self-talk” and “mental toughness” sound so much like the stuff of new-age self-help to my ears), but the more I’ve actually put energy into putting the methods into practice – regardless of how they are called – I’ve discovered the power and importance practicing and strengthening the mental aspect of sport.  There is no greater example in mind than Mr. Pugh’s story of the test swim and consecutive “game day” event of swimming the North Pole.  The mind is an incredible thing, as limiting or expansive as our consciousness will allow. (How’s that for “new age” talk?)  I encourage everyone to watch this talk, complete with footage of his impossible endeavor.  The video is a little under 19 minutes long but if it effects you the way it did me, I reckon it’s about 3 minutes that will change your mind, which will change your world.

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Mental Training for Muay Thai

A 100 lb. (46 kg) female Muay Thai fighter. Originally I trained under Kumron Vaitayanon (Master K) and Kaensak sor. Ploenjit in New Jersey. I then moved to Thailand to train and fight full time in April of 2012, devoting myself to fighting 100 Thai fights, as well as blogging full time. Having surpassed 100, and then 200, becoming the westerner with the most fights in Thailand, in history, my new goal is to fight an impossible 471 times, the historical record for the greatest number of documented professional fights (see western boxer Len Wickwar, circa 1940), and along the way to continue documenting the Muay Thai of Thailand in the Muay Thai Library project: see patreon.com/sylviemuay

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