While most people would have to think twice about having a go off the rowing machine at the gym, former Leinster and Connacht lock Damian Browne decided to take things to another level.
The now retired rugby star this week completed a 4,800 kilometer journey across the Atlantic having spent 64 days on his solo rowing journey.
Browne joined Off The Ball's Nathan Murphy on the phone from Antigua, where he finished the trip having set sail from the Canary Islands, to discuss the trip and talked about the coping mechanisms he had to deal with the hard times on the water.
"I do a lot of affirmations in the mornings. Maybe for the last year I've been telling myself the odd morning 'nothing would stop you rowing across the Atlantic'. I would just repeat it to myself. I think that just helps with your mental state, so when it come to moments like that you almost revert naturally to that positive thought".
"I haven't told anyone this but I would be screaming stuff as I rode sometimes trying to get a reset. So another one would be 'you're unbreakable, you're unstoppable, you're indestructible. You're unbreakable, you're unstoppable, you're indestructible'. I would be screaming that to try get a frequency if you get me.
Browne says that these types of affirmations were of great benefit to him, and helped him through the rough moments on the Atlantic when his body and mind wanted to quit.
"You need three things; you need the positive affirmation, you need a visualisation so I would try to see myself from a height, almost like a drone shot of myself in the middle of the Atlantic, and then I would need a frequency. So I would need a feeling with that visualisation, so a feeling of power basically, so that's why I'd be saying 'you're unbreakable, you're unstoppable, you're indestructible' ".
"Sometimes I wanted to really get that frequency so I'd be roaring it at the top of my voice. Although they sound incredibly corny maybe, the phrases, they are so, so powerful and they work really well when you're in those hard times and you want to get back to a positive mindset".
Surprisingly Browne said that those affirmations were of most importance not when under incredible pressure, but in the long, slow hours of the day when he was simply rowing in open water for hours on end.
"Believe it or not I would say that at the most mundane times. Those times I found the hardest were just the hours and hours and hours of just sitting on the oars and trying to stay on the oars. A voice would come into your head saying 'just get off the oars man, just get off. Crawl into the cabin there, it's nice and cosy, who's going to know? What's the difference between 63 and 64 days?'. Then I was like, just try to rest with my affirmations and doing that kind of crazy screaming thing".
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