Matt - How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

Copyright 2015 by Matt Fitzgerald

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Cover photograph by Jeff Johnson

v. 3.1

THE MIND IS THE ATHLETE.

Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

CONTENTS

Doing research to understand what limits endurance performance is not just an academic exercise. It also affects the way endurance athletes are tested, the way they train, and how they prepare for competitions. For the first 100 years in the history of exercise physiology, endurance was thought to be limited by muscle fatigue caused by energy depletion or inadequate oxygen delivery and consequent acidification of the locomotor muscles. As a result, endurance athletes wear heart rate monitors during training and have their ears pierced to measure blood lactate, erythropoietin use has plagued cycling and other endurance sports, and tons of pasta and rice have been consumed before competitions. These are only some examples of how exercise physiology has had an impact on the lives of endurance athletes.

Then, in the late 1990s, Professor Tim Noakes came up with the Central Governor Model (CGM). This model proposes that endurance performance is limited by a subconscious intelligent system in the brain (the central governor) that regulates locomotor muscle recruitment so that the speed/power output sustained over a race never exceeds the capacity of the body to cope with the stress of endurance exercise. The hypothesis is that if this safety system didnt exist, a highly motivated endurance athlete might exercise beyond his/her physiological capacity and threaten his/her own life with heat shock, myocardial ischemia, and rigor mortis.

The CGM was revolutionary because it convinced many exercise physiologists that the organ that limits endurance performance is the brain, not the cardiovascular system and fatigued locomotor muscles. Subsequent research, including our 2010 study that inspired the subtitle of this book, confirmed this no longer controversial idea. There is a big problem, however: If endurance performance was limited by a subconscious and intelligent safety system in the brain, what could endurance athletes do about it? The answer would be nothing apart from training the way they have always done to increase the capacity of their bodies to cope with the stress of endurance exercise. Indeed, the CGM has not had any significant impact on the way endurance athletes train and prepare for competitions.

Fortunately, there is no evidence to indicate that a central governor exists inside our brains, and endurance athletes have considerable control over their performance. This alternative model of how the brain regulates endurance performance is called the Psychobiological Model. Its core principles are that decisions about pacing or quitting during endurance competitions are taken by the conscious brain and that these decisions are primarily based on the conscious sensation of how hard, heavy, and strenuous exercise is, a feeling we call perception of effort.

Many of my colleagues in exercise physiology find it difficult to accept the Psychobiological Model; how can something ephemeral and subjective like a perception have such a great influence on endurance performance? Surely things that can be objectively measured (e.g., heart size and how much glycogen is inside the locomotor muscles) are more influential. This conclusion may be justified if one considers endurance performance simply as the output of a biological machine with no thoughts and feelings. However, I consider endurance performance to be a self-regulated behavior on which thoughts and feelings can have profound influences. The pain of torture (a perception) can force soldiers to betray the country they dedicated their lives to. Intense hunger (a perception) can turn civilized people into cannibals. Thoughts and feelings can also lead to the ultimate catastrophic failure of homeostasis: death by suicide. Therefore, we shouldnt be surprised that perception of effort (and thoughts related to it) can limit endurance performance. Perceptions are powerful.

Matt Fitzgerald was one of the first sportswriters to recognize the potential implications of this Psychobiological Model for endurance athletes. I still remember our first chat over a cranky mobile-phone connection in 2009 after we published our seminal study on the effects of mental fatigue on perception of effort and endurance performance. I was at a track and field meeting in Italy, and Matt was in his house in the United States. We talked for well over an hour, fueled by my passion about interdisciplinary research (and a natural tendency of Italians to talk a lot!) and Matts thirst for the latest scientific developments that may have a positive impact on his many readers. Our long-distance relationship has continued over the years with me producing more research on the psychobiology of endurance performance and Matt translating it for the general public via his articles and books.

In this book, Matt has put together an impressive collection of real-life examples of how perception of effort and other psychological factors affect endurance performance. These examples from the lives of elite athletes from a variety of endurance sports are skillfully mixed with summaries of the most relevant scientific research. The result is quite remarkable: a book that can be read as a sports biography but, at the same time, provides suggestions on how to improve endurance performance by becoming your own sport psychologist. I hope this will lead to a more widespread application of psychological principles and techniques by endurance athletes and their coaches. Indeed, the power of psychology has not been fully exploited in endurance sports, and to use it deliberately and systematically is one of the main practical suggestions derived from the Psychobiological Model.

However, as Matt points out, this does not mean that winning endurance competitions is simply a matter of willpower. Conscious self-regulation of thoughts, emotions, and behavior can have a dramatic influence on endurance performance, as beautifully illustrated by the real-life examples provided in this book. But genetics, physical training, and nutrition (e.g., carb intake and caffeine) also play a big role because they have profound influences on perception of effort. The subconscious brain can also influence perception of effort, as we recently demonstrated using subliminal visual messages. How to avoid the negative effects of some subconscious stimuli and harness the power of the subconscious to improve endurance performance is going to be one of the future developments of psychology applied to endurance sports.

We are also working on a novel kind of training, called Brain Endurance Training, that combines physical training with mentally demanding tasks to stimulate the brain areas involved in self-regulation and to increase resistance to mental fatigue. It is an exciting time because the Psychobiological Model is inspiring innovative performance-enhancing strategies that work over and above those developed on the basis of the traditional cardiovascular/muscle fatigue model.