Colourful breathing is a technique that lowers your pace of breath significantly. “Think of two colours and breathe the first colour in through your nose for five breaths, hold it for two and breathe the other colour out of your mouth for five,” Dr Perry explains. This will reduce your breath count to five to six breaths per minute, which should help you feel more relaxed and put you in a better position to try the difficult movement or heavy weight again.

However, Dr Perry does add that you should only take small steps out of your comfort zone in the gym in order to avoid injury. Sometimes, your threat response may have a legitimate reason to stop you from doing an exercise or lifting a weight so try to listen to your body and find the balance.

Strength training: is the fear of failure holding me back in the gym?