How do you keep a healthy mindset with everything that’s going on – or not going on – as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak? Our lives have been substantially disrupted with very little certainly to find with the unpredictable circumstances we face. How do we cope? How do we rearrange our lives and our way of thinking to remain strong through difficult times? And how does a fitness fanatic CrossFitter like myself and many of you out there adapt and overcome these challenge? I talked to CrossFitting psychologist Dr. Susie McAfee about these very questions and more.
Show Notes
Welcome to the BoxJumper Podcast. Thanks for listening. I am your host, Jean St-Amand. I’m a crossfit trainer and weightlifting coach in Bedford, Nova Scotia. Or at least I was, until all this self-isolation stuff got started. Like you all, I’m navigating uncharted waters. Staying home every day for 2 weeks with the exception of a couple of runs to the grocery store for essentials, not going to the gym, not seeing my Masters crew from the front of a filled class twice a week – it’s playing with my head a little. And it occurred to me – that would make for an interesting discussion for the podcast.
I immediately knew who I wanted to talk to – Dr. Susie McAfee spent 10 years at the IWK Mental Health and Addictions Program in Youth Forensics, Inpatient, and Community Mental Health Services. She moved into private practice with the launch of Life Centre Psychology in Bedford, Nova Scotia in 2016. I first met Susie when I started CrossFit late in 2015. She was, in fact, the very first person with whom I completed a partner WOD. She kicked my ask, and stayed spunky while doing it. That’s Susie in a nutshell. Full of energy, very open and friendly, and, as it happens, a very knowledgable psychologist who holds a PhD. And with her knowledge and experience and her field of specialty, mixed with her experience with an understanding of the CrossFit community, I felt she was an ideal person for me to chat with about the psychology of responding to a crisis and how it might be the same and how it might be different for the CrossFit community out there, myself included.
So that’s our topic for this episode. In ten seconds I’ll chat with psychologist and expat cross fitter Susie McAfee about how the world copes with uncertainty and fear and how the CrossFit community can simultaneously be its own worst enemy and its own best friend in a time of crisis like the COVID-19 outbreak.
That’s our time – all that’s left for this episode is the AMWRAPUP.
Susie has an interesting perspective on the mindfulness-oriented approach that we can all potentially use to help calm the stormwaters of our mind as we go through this time of uncertainty. Finding your particular focus, finding the path forward that most suits your circumstances is up to each individual, but the central challenge remains – COVID-19 is our reality for the next while and a degree of acceptable is critical to our ability to figure out what comes next. I hope, with this in mind, I’ll do a better job of managing everyday things, starting with my sleep.
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More fitness talk is coming on the BoxJumper Podcast. Until then, stay healthy, WOD happy and WOD often.