When Your Mind Says You’re Not Ready - and Why I Don’t Automatically Believe It

There is a familiar moment in training where the primary obstacle to progress is not physical capacity, programming, or even fatigue, but the unexamined authority we give to our own thoughts. This tends to surface most clearly after disruption: a break in training, a return to heavier loads, or a shift away from familiar routines. The mind quickly fills the gap with interpretation - you haven’t trained enough, it’s been too long, you’re not ready, you haven’t earned the right to be here yet. What matters in these moments is not whether these thoughts appear, but how we relate to them.

My approach to this is shaped by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), not as a set of techniques but as a learned way of thinking developed through repeated practice. ACT trains the capacity to recognise thoughts as mental events rather than facts or instructions. The presence of a thought does not make it true, useful, or worthy of action. It simply reflects the mind doing what it is designed to do: predict, protect, and seek certainty. This distinction is critical in performance contexts, because the mind is oriented far more toward comfort and safety than toward growth or adaptation. If left unexamined, it will reliably argue for caution, familiarity, and reduced exposure to challenge.

This way of relating to thoughts did not develop in isolation from my physical experience. Living with Type 1 diabetes has required an ongoing attentiveness to bodily signals and their interpretation. Energy levels, concentration, mood, and physical readiness fluctuate in ways that are not always intuitive or linear. Over time, I have learned that bodily sensations are not commands, but information requiring interpretation. Fatigue does not automatically mean stop; feeling capable does not automatically mean push. This has fostered a sensitivity to psychosomatic processes and a recognition that neither mind nor body should be granted unilateral decision-making authority.

For that reason, I also use technology - glucose monitoring and wearable data - not as prescriptive tools, but as additional sources of feedback. Metrics such as sleep quality, recovery trends, heart rate, and glucose patterns do not tell me what to do; they help me test the story I am telling myself. If my mind is insisting that I am underprepared or depleted, yet the data suggests adequate recovery and physiological readiness, that discrepancy becomes something to explore rather than a signal to retreat. Technology, used well, does not replace embodied awareness; it tempers it and reduces self-deception.

However, there is a real danger in relying exclusively on internal cues, whether cognitive or somatic. Without external structure, “listening to your body” can quietly become a mechanism for staying within perceived limits rather than discovering actual capacity. Perceived limits are often no more than the edge of familiarity. To progress, there must be a willingness to become curious about discomfort and to explore what lies just beyond what feels safe. This curiosity is essential because the brain’s default position is not performance but protection. Discomfort is easily mislabelled as danger, and caution is often mistaken for wisdom.

This is why I do not abandon structured programming in favour of intuition. A programme provides an external reference point that counterbalances the mind’s bias toward safety. What ACT offers is not an alternative to structure, but a way of engaging with it more intelligently. The programme sets direction; psychological flexibility determines how that direction is expressed on a given day. Rather than rigidly adhering to a plan or reflexively adjusting away from difficulty, I test assumptions through movement, attend to quality and control, and then decide whether to maintain, progress, or adapt. Flexibility, in this sense, is not indecision but disciplined responsiveness.

When done properly, this approach becomes profoundly individualised. Training that is guided by somatic awareness, psychological skill, and evidence is as close to a truly bespoke programme as it is possible to achieve. But it demands responsibility. It requires an understanding of the technical, tactical, and physical demands of training, alongside the psychological capacity to tolerate uncertainty and discomfort. Without this foundation, flexibility collapses into guesswork; with it, each session becomes an informed experiment rather than a rigid prescription.

This is also why I increasingly believe that for many people, the most valuable integration is not another personal trainer, but psychological training alongside a tailored programme. A coach or trainer can prescribe load, volume, and progression, but a psychologist helps train the decision-making system that determines whether those prescriptions are actually enacted. They help identify when thoughts are constraining behaviour, when avoidance is disguised as intuition, and when values have been quietly replaced by comfort-seeking. In performance terms, they work with the mechanism that governs whether potential is explored or left untouched.

The most useful question, then, is no longer whether I feel ready. Readiness is often a poor guide to growth. The more important question is whether I am willing to test my assumptions and gather evidence. Progress rarely comes from certainty. It comes from curiosity, commitment, and the capacity to act in the presence of doubt - skills that, like any other, must be trained.