Based out of the sunny Bay of Plenty City of Tauranga in the upper North Island, Mariane Wray has established a branch of Warrior Fitness in New Zealand. 

Mariane was a Warrior Coach in Penang for three years from 2013 – 2015, and loved the values, community spirit and inclusiveness of Warrior Fitness. These are the things she is attempting to re-create with Warrior New Zealand.

As a psychologist with a military background, Mariane has extensive experience in the area of Performance Psychology, and on return to New Zealand in 2016 spent two years developing and implementing a High Performance programme for Navy Divers. It is this experience of developing mental wellness and excellence, coupled with the passion she holds for physical fitness, nutrition and well being,that underpin the ethos of Warrior New Zealand. 

Warrior New Zealand has two elements to it – mental and physical fitness. Mariane is a firm believer that optimum fitness cannot be achieved without attention paid to both the physical and mental aspects of performance. Peak performance comes from understanding this, and training both the mind and the body to cope with demands and challenges – whether it is competing and winning Spartan events, or thriving in an everyday world full of environmental stressors and pollution.

Warrior New Zealand provides group and individual performance based workshops and coaching, largely for elite level athletes, but also for the weekend warriors, as well as for businesses and within the Education sector. Warrior New Zealand also provides Personal Training, and before school ‘Zero Hour’ fitness classes to enhance the ability of primary school aged children to focus, concentrate and achieve in the classroom. 

One of the tools Mariane teaches to athletes is ‘Focus on the Process’. Our minds become distracted when we focus on outcomes, such as our placing in a Spartan event, or winning an Olympic final, or beating our personal best in a race. When we think about events in this light, we often experience a sense of fear. This fear can impact upon our performance, and stop us from performing at our best, or interfere with our ability to really give everything we have, because we are afraid of failing. 

Most of the time, outcomes remain outside of our control. We have  no control over how our competitors will perform on the day, or what the weather or course conditions may be like. 

Instead, what we need to do to perform well is to set ourselves process based goals that we can control. Process based goals are things like ‘feeling proud of the effort I put into my event’, ‘getting the timing of my right hook and footwork correct in my fight’, ‘swimming a beautiful race’ and ‘maintaining my pace across the distance’. Process based goals are things that remain within our control, and we can practice in our training. With practice and focus, we can improve the processes we use to compete and achieve, and these can significantly aid our performance under pressure when we need to be on top of our game. 

Focussing on processes also provides us a mental space where it is ok to fail. We can learn an awful lot from failure, and without ever allowing ourselves to experience failure, we are unable to know what works best for us and allows us to succeed. We should never fear failure, especially in our training.

If we create meaningful process based goals, focus on achieving through well designed training programmes, and expect failure along the way, we are able to compete and finish our events feeling like winners. We are able to feel proud of our achievements, regardless of the outcome.

Should you ever find yourself in the sunny Bay of Plenty (at least it’s mostly sunny between October and April), feel free to look Mariane up for a run up Mt. Maunganui (pictured) or, if you prefer a more relaxing activity, a flat white on the beach. Mariane can be contacted on mariane@warriornz.co.nz

 

COMMIT, FOCUS, BELIEVE, ACHIEVE!

Comments 0

Leave a Comment