Q & A with Coach Tamara Akcay
Earlier this month, we sat down for a Q&A session with the lovely Tamara Akcay to find out a bit more about her coaching, what it means to train fitness and mindset together and why it’s so important. Enjoy!
Hey Tamara! Thank you so much for joining us today, we’re so happy to have you here. To kick things off, could you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?
Hey guys, sure! My name is Tamara and I am originally from France. I moved to London in 2016 and have been a CrossFit coach at District Fitness London since April 2019. I specialise in injury prevention and rehabilitation and a major part of my work is teaching people to really understand their bodies and use them better.
I am also a Mindset coach for Mindset RX'd, an online journalling platform for athletes and anyone who wants to improve their performance.
What led you to CrossFit?
I have always loved training. I have been involved in a lot of different sports and hobbies since my childhood including, ballet, horse riding, tennis and skiing - just to name a few!
Before discovering CrossFit, I was doing HIIT classes and I was really enjoying them. But they soon started to become quite repetitive, so I looked for something new.
At the time I was living in my hometown of Paris and CrossFit was the new and trendy thing over there, so I tried it, and I have honestly never looked back.
You said that you were also a Mindset coach with Mindset RX'd, what is Mindset training?
Mindset training is our ability to understand where our negative thoughts come from, acknowledge them, and converse with them. It is very different from mindfulness meditation or becoming mentally tough (getting hyped by motivational cues).
At Mindset RX'd, the way we work is that we become familiar with our unconscious thoughts and we process them with self-awareness. We do this entirely by journalling.
Wow, that sounds amazing! What would you say first got you into mindset training?
I’ve always been fascinated by sports psychology. The idea that with the mind alone we can better ourselves in all areas of our performance was very intriguing to me.
So four years ago, when I heard that Tom Foxley (founder of Mindset RX'd) was going to do a seminar at my gym, I jumped in and I loved it. I had a chat with him after the seminar ended and later became a part of his Mindset RX'd Coach team!
So, are you currently coaching people in Mindset?
Yes, of course! I coach members of both my home gym, District Fitness and also members of Mindset RX'd.
The process is the same for both groups: I give feedback and offer perspective on their daily journalling and twice a week we do a zoom class where we go over specific themes.
What else are you currently coaching?
I coach CrossFit and I also do personal training at District Fitness but when the gyms are closed, we take our training outside!
As a personal trainer, I coach individuals of all sorts of ages and backgrounds who want to move better and more often. I focus on helping them to recover from injuries and to prevent any future niggles. I also coach athletes who are willing to develop specific skills in the sport of CrossFit, such as Olympic weightlifting and gymnastics.
I enjoy getting to know my clients and we spend a lot of time perfecting drills and movements. I’m a fan of scanning every little detail of their training.
Everything I teach comes from my own experience. I have a coach in both training and mindset, and I practice what I preach. It’s essential to me to keep learning in order to give back and stay at the top of my game.
We are so excited about our upcoming Fitness & Mindset retreat in the spring. Can you tell us what you will be coaching?
Me too! I will be coaching Olympic weightlifting, conditioning workouts and of course, mindset training. In regards to the weightlifting, we will be focusing on good movement and technique. For the conditioning workouts, we will be getting our heart pumping! And for the mindset training, because it will be quite a new topic for most of you, I will be introducing the pillars of mindset through short workshops throughout the weekend. I can’t wait!
One of the most common questions we have been asked about the retreat is how physical fitness training works in parallel with mindset training. Could you give us an idea of how these two go hand in hand?
Sure. For example, when we are at the gym, focusing on a skill movement or trying to keep up an intense pace in a workout, certain thoughts will come to mind that allow us to understand the current mindset that we are in.
If these thoughts are negative, we might find that our mindset is holding us back from giving our best effort. If our thoughts are all positive, then that’s a great place to be in! The good thing about training our mindset in a gym environment is that it is a lot easier to spot and take note of the thoughts that come to mind. The gym is an excellent playground where we can explore our thought process and so a great starting point to work on mindset.
Could you tell us about something you’ve been able to achieve entirely because of mindset training?
One of my most memorable achievements to date was becoming a group exercise trainer. I came into fitness from a different industry, and only succeeded by using all of the tools I had learned in Mindset RX'd and by putting in a lot of hard work.
For months, I journalled, identified my limiting beliefs, played out the audition in my head hundreds of times, and planned the small tasks that would lead me to success.
Along with the journalling, I repeated the movements, learned how to project my voice, how to cue, move around a room and I even organised staff classes to practice and test myself.
When the day finally arrived, I had two auditions to go through and I had been visualising both for months.
At the end of the first one, the fitness manager came to me and told me that I didn’t even need to go to the second one because I had already passed with the first. After months of visualising and planning to attend both auditions, when the plan changed before my eyes I actually started to panic a little bit! I had done the mindset work in such a powerful way that the vision I had imagined for so long had become my reality. That to me is mindset: being so immersed in the process and the planning that I actually became the person I dreamed of being.
That’s really powerful! I can see how this will help absolutely everyone at the gym and in life. Okay, now can we shoot you some rapid-fire questions?
Sure, go for it!
Favourite CrossFit movement?
Strict handstand push-ups
Favourite music style?
Trance
Favourite book?
Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
Favourite film?
Edward Scissorhands
One thing you’re looking forward to in 2021?
To see how far I can unleash my potential!
Thank you so much Tamara, this is all really powerful and we can’t wait to have you with us in April!
In the meantime, you can find out more about our Fitness & Mindset retreat by following the link below.
And finally, over to you…
Is there anything you’d like to ask Tamara? Email us any questions, or leave it below in the comments!