In preparing for a competition and in managing each and every training session, you are always focused on taking care of the physical aspects and your conditional skills such as strength, speed, and endurance. As an amateur athlete you generally devote little time to the care and improvement of technical and coordination aspects. Almost nothing is devoted instead to one of the biggest engines we have internally at our disposal: our mind. And that’s a major mistake because what can really make a difference at the end of any competition is really your mental approach. The concept that I want to transfer to you is that during prolonged exertion, whether training or competition, the cause of any failure with loss of performance is not necessarily due to actual fatigue but mainly to your
perception of fatigue
. This means that when you are able to better manage and control your perception of fatigue then and only then will you be able to exploit your physical potential 100 percent.
Your mind conditions your body
Mental fatigue is a psychological state that signals individual distress and is induced by prolonged periods of demanding cognitive and/or physical activities. What impact does mental fatigue have on physical performance? Numerous studies have revealed a negative effect on performance. In the final stages of an endurance activity you often experience a drop in your performance that is partly related to actual physical fatigue and partly to mental fatigue. If for fatigue you can continue to work on a targeted training program and proper strategy, as far as mind-specific nutrition and dietary supplementation you have to do some special work that you probably haven’t done before. An increase in mental fatigue induces an increase in perceived exertion, which is the feeling that causes you to slow down during a performance.
Aerobic exercise can go on until you reach the level of exhaustion, which is the point at which fatigue does not allow you to generate the necessary power despite voluntary effort. But is it really true that an endurance activity that requires a fraction of our maximum strength is capable of completely exhausting our energy?
Discover your “fatigue point”
The ability to sustain aerobic exercise is critical for all endurance athletes like you. You need to understand, however, whether the moment you stop or otherwise slow down during a competition is really the moment when you have reached the point of fatigue and are no longer able to sustain physical exertion. To explore this further, Prof. Marcora, one of the leading experts on the relationship between physical fatigue and mental fatigue, tested and examined a group of athletes tested to exhaustion. The researcher’s insight was aimed at demonstrating that an athlete who stops due to having reached energy exhaustion is, in fact, still able to exert effort and, more importantly, still has a certain amount of energy resources available. The test protocol involved having each athlete perform an incremental test to exhaustion by taking each athlete to his or her maximum limit until the inability to continue the athletic effort. Immediately afterwards, the athlete had to take a maximal alactacid anaerobic test of less than ten seconds duration. To have a term of comparison, the same maximal test was run under resting conditions a few days earlier. The maximal test performed immediately after the incremental exhaustion test showed a loss of 15 to 30 percent compared with the same test done at rest. This was of course to be expected. But the most interesting finding was the level, in absolute terms, of maximal effort in relation to the peak power achieved just a few seconds earlier in the incremental test. Exhausted athletes were able – on average – to express three times the wattage they were able to push 10 seconds earlier. It is clear that in a very few seconds there can be no question of recovery, either functional or energetic. Why do athletes stop if they are actually still able to express three times the load? If subjects were able to produce an average of 750 W for 5 seconds immediately after exhaustion, they should have been physiologically able to produce an average of 250 W for much longer. If it was not muscle fatigue that stopped the athletes where should we look for the cause? In the mental approach.
It now seems clear that exhaustion is often a form of disengagement rather than an inability to sustain an effort. In other words, when you stop or slow down, it is because your mind has decided to “give up.” Your perception of fatigue is higher than your actual fatigue.
How to train the mind
If the mind plays such an important role, what can you do to train it better and what are the tools you need to use to manage and control the perception of fatigue during a competition or demanding training? A first practical example you will have experienced many times. The presence of a competitor or hare. Many athletes were able to perform theoretically above their abilities because they were driven by competition and the rewarding stimulus of victory.
In 1989, during the IRONMAN World Championship in Hawaii, two competitors, Dave Scott and Mark Allen ignited one of the finest sporting battles in the history of triathlon and perhaps the sport. They raced side by side for nearly eight hours through the 3,800m of the swim, the 180km of the bike portion and 39km out of 42 of the marathon. All this while keeping a pace at the limit of their possibilities and perhaps above. Being side by side with a determination to prevail over the other drove them to overcome themselves for so many hours. The victory went to Mark Allen, who was able with three kilometers to go to try a stretch on the last climb of the marathon course. Dave Scott failed to respond because he had exhausted his energy? No, because he still managed to run at an average of 3:48 min/km even the last three kilometers. He would certainly have had the physical strength to run two or three hundred meters at a higher pace. But his perceived fatigue prevented him from attempting this umpteenth effort after an eight-hour sports battle.
A HERO IS NO BRAVER THAN AN ORDINARY MAN BUT HE IS BRAVE FIVE MINUTES LONGER.
(Main image credit sdecoret on Depositphots.com)