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With only the draw one week earlier, the combination of physiological and the psychological preparation helped Collingwood very convincingly win the grand final.

The belief and the confidence in themselves gave them the mental armory to crush St Kilda. The draw only a week early indicated that both teams were fairly evenly matched, ultimately it came down to the their belief system.

“We’ve got a very young group and they had the belief they could go all the way”

With the help of an AIS Professor Allan Hahn, using medical based recovery techniques and with their sports science director David Buttifant the players were subjected to ice baths and recovery sessions in the water.

Ultimately it came down to eliminating any doubt or hesitation that they would lose, that every member of the team could visualise the win.

With St Kilda, a similar situation happened last week when they were behind but they had the belief they they could win the Grand Final however only a week later history wasn’t to repeat itself as Collingwood maintained there mental and physical advantage over St Kilda.

Some players had no confidence in their kicking while their defence fell apart.

So not matter where you are at whether part of an elite sports teams or someone trying to achieve their weight loss goals, ultimately it comes down to your belief system for success.

It’s amazing sometimes with what you are thinking about can create opportunities or events you wouldn’t have expected or great things can happen.

Michael our North Fitzroy Fitstyler has been asking the North Fitzroy Fitmates about doing the weekly Thursday 7.15am morning run around Princes Park in Carlton, he has mentioned it on numerous occasions but decided to ask to clients personally on Wednesday morning.

Well this week Adam decided to do the run with Michael, (the first time I may add that a North Fitzroy Fitmate has done the run with Michael) and after a solid pace managed to get a quick lap time.

Later that day Adam called Michael and asked whether he wanted to go to the Grand Final, so whats so remarkable about this, or coincidental,

2.All the times Michael asked Fitmates to run around Princes Park
3.Michael asking Adam personally 3 days before the repeated Grand Final to go running
4.The fact the Adam wasn’t offered tickets to the first Grand Final last week
4.All the events that lead to Adam being in the right spot to be offered 2 tickets himself for premium seats.
5.The fact that Adam couldn’t find a person to sell the ticket to other than Michael.
5.The fact that the Grand Final has only drawn 3 times in over 100 years, the last time was in 1977 with Collingwood and North Melbourne
6.Michael mentioned that as a 12 year old boy that he predicted that in 2010 Collingwood would win the grand final, mmm lets wait until Monday to see if this happens

So while we may not believe in ourselves or what we can achieve, there are others who at either a conscious or sub-conscious level truly believe great things will happen.
Everyday we are confronted with choices about what path we take or direction we travel, by believing in yourself or about goals you wish to achieve can create these opportunities.

After last weekends AVL grand final draw, it’s going to psychologically challenging for both teams to maintain the energy and belief that they can win after the anti climax of a draw.

While both teams will be physically at their peak, granted with some injuries and fatigued muscles, the real challenge will be to have the mental strength to carry through with the game and win.

With the game last Saturday, even though St Kilda were behind in points, they made a comeback to equal the score as opposed to conceding defeat and giving up.

The real question is if one team takes an early lead, whether the other team will have the emotional energy and belief system to carry on.

Mentally they had pictured what was going to happen after the Grand Final, the ceremony if they won, the relief and the overwhelming feeling of success, the time away with their partner of family and achievement in reaching this awesome goal.

However after all the steps to achieve the goal were accomplished, it has lead to a need to re-evaluate their goals and create another step in the process.

It would be similar to what a person may go through say in a cycling event or marathon whereby they have miscalculated the finish line and focused entirely on finishing the race only to find out that they had another kilometer to go.

Mentally they would be devastated as they had given everything both mentally and physically to reach the destination only to find that the end point had moved or the goal posts had moved:))

After being at sea for 210 days, Jessica Watson miscalculated the distance to get the world record of 21,600 nautical but she continued on with the most treacherous seas experienced in the last leg of her journey.

So it will be interesting to see how the teams go with this psychologically challenging predicament.

While enjoying a relaxed ride (Bicycle) in Geelong to check out the UCI course, we cruised over to East Geelong to meet a friend who rode over from Arthur’s Seat on the Mornington Peninsula.

After a bit of miscommunication as to the meeting point and a few phone calls later, we suddenly realised that we only had 45 minutes to get to Queenscliff where the ferry terminal was located.
So we hand this micro goal of covering 29kms in 45 minutes, no problems if you were driving there in a car.

Given it was 30 odd kilometers we new it was going to be close to get to the ferry on time.

So what was going to be a nice gentle ride ended being a breathe gasping smash feast with all 3 of us taking turns at being at the front while the other 2 riders formed an echelon behind.

The point is that we never gave up, even when there was only 15 minutes left and it seemed unlikely that we would get there in time, we pushed through. Not that this was a life or death scenario but we were committed and all three of us had the belief that we will just make it on time.

Well with aching legs and fatigue as we had not sufficiently warmed up, so going hard from the very beginning was always going to be tough.

Well we just made it as the ferry was about to raise the vehicle loading ramp, so in the end we covered 29km in 46 minutes, so we were lucky that our watch was 1 minute fast.

How often do you have a goal or something that you want to achieve but it’s too hard, can’t be bothered or the likelyhood of success is low so it’s easier to give up than continue.

Everyday we are presented with situations or micro goals that we have created only to give up.

Keep focused and you we enjoy the rewards.

Very scary but this unusual exercise of skyscraper climbing is being performed by Frenchman Alain Robert who scaled this 57 story building with no ropes or climbing equipment, only his hands and climbing shoes.

As a rock climber myself, climbing with the appropriate equipment is scary enough but to do it 50 meters off the ground, mmmm, very very scary.

There have been many “Free climbers” over the years who have not be as fortunate as Alain, it takes total commitment, focus and an unbelievable belief system that you know that you will succeed, failure equals death.

I guess for Alain the Lumiere Building in Sydney’s CBD pales into insignificance when compared to his other feats of climbing the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Eiffel Tower and the big one, the 508m “Taipei 101 in 2004.

For me, climbing a 50 -100 meter cliff face is enough excitement:))