OCT 10, 2024 xx
How To Build Your Mental Toughness For Stronger Races
Our physical performance depends largely on our physical preparedness. That’s why we train. But sometimes we forget that the brain is part of the body--a fairly key part, no?--and also needs to be trained.
In recent years, sports scientists have been looking more closely at this connection. It has become one of the more active research areas. The goal: to identify various patterns or triggers that can affect brain-body performance.
This article takes a look at several such triggers--for example, meditation. At first glance, it seems strange that practicing stillness could improve vigorous exercise like running. Yet, “Regular meditation can enhance one’s ability to remain present, focused, and non-reactive, especially in the volatile contexts of competitive sports.”
Increased resilience is another major goal. It can teach us “to view setbacks as opportunities for growth, and challenges as chances to improve. This mindset is essential for long-term success in sports, as it encourages a continual pursuit of excellence and a steady approach to training and competition.”
No one’s going to argue with that. More mental strategies at Training Peaks.
A few years back, top former triathlete Joanna Zieger, now a sports psychologist, began investigating how mental toughness (MT) can help you overcome the inevitable surprises and challenges of a long race. She found a wide range of MT in her subjects.
Females in particular showed “lower levels of confidence, self esteem, self belief, and control.” Thus, they have room for much improvement in MT. More at PLOS ONE with free full text.
Last year, a paper assessed the MT of more than 300 trail runners. Those who scored high in MT also exhibited high “resilience and performance.” More at Perceptual And Motor Skills with free full text.
How 5 Birthdays Affected The World’s Fastest 70 Yr Old Runner
Gene Dykes has gone where no runner has ventured before. First, he set a marathon world best in 2018 when, at age 70, he ran a certified and “legal” course (that was unsanctioned for record purposes) in 2:54:23.
Then--and here’s the astonishing part--he began tackling a nearly endless number of ultramarathon adventure races around the globe. We’re talking about 100 milers, 200 milers, 6-day races, and so forth. Many in far-flung lands and environments.
How has all this wear-and-tear affected Dykes’s best performances? Well, his fastest marathon of 2024 is the 3:28:43 he ran at Boston. Also, his vo2 max has dropped from 45.8 ml/kg/min at age 70 to 39.8 this year. We know this because Dykes somehow managed to squeeze two laboratory test sessions into his race-packed years.
His decline in vo2 max was big: 15.1 percent, or about 2.5% per year. The researchers note: “This is much higher than the expected reduction of 0.5 to 1% per year.”
Most of the other retest results looked good. Dykes’s running economy remained high, and he’s still racing at a high percent of his vo2 max. It’s just that his vo2 max has dropped so much that even his high-percent doesn’t get him where he used to be. His weight and body fat both increased a slight amount.
At this point, any top coach would advise Dykes to do more speedwork and strength training. But it’s not clear that he’s as interested in performance as he is in exploring the world’s great ultra adventures. It’s his life, so he gets to play by his own rules.
We remain inspired by all his performances, and thankful that he also subjects himself to laboratory testing (where you don’t even get a medal for finishing.) More at J of Applied Physiology.
Hold The Evening Carbs To Boost Weight Loss & Performance
There’s continued high interest in possible combinations of intermittent fasting and performance improvement. A new study looked at the “Sleep Low, Train Low” hypothesis.
In other words, what happens when you limit carb intake the evening before a morning workout, and also don’t carb-up immediately before that workout?
To find out, investigators used a stringent procedure, with a twist, that required two groups to consume the same total carbs the day before their morning workout. One group consumed all their carbs before 4 p.m., while the other followed a more typical all-day consumption pattern.
Result: This modest difference had a health and performance impact. The no-carbs-after-4 p.m. subjects lost weight, improved their fat burning, and (most important) produced a higher vo2 max in a followup test.
Conclusion: “This method can be used to reduce body weight in individuals with obesity and enhance athletes’ performance.”
Here are the key details. The study included 22 university students, half female. They were not serious athletes but participated in “sports club activities.”
During a 7-day period, subjects in both groups ran for 60-minutes at an easy pace before consuming breakfast. Subjects all consumed the same total calories and total carbs/day. BUT the experimental group ate all their carbs before 4 p.m., and then stopped.
After 7 days, the experimental group had lost 3 pounds. About 70% of that was muscle loss--not a good thing. Even with the muscle loss, this group showed a higher power output and vo2 max than before the experiment began. There were no such changes in the control group that consumed carbs all day long.
From this the researchers noted: “The dietary periodization strategy adopted in this experiment improved endurance.” They suggested that anyone trying this approach should consider additional protein consumption, particularly leucine, to limit muscle loss. More at Nutrients with free full text.
Amazing But True! How Exercise Changes Belly Fat
No one wants more belly fat around the middle. For beginners, it doesn’t look good. More importantly, belly fat is associated with increased risk of those chronic health problems like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
Exercise is known to be good at reducing such diseases. But researchers didn’t know if or how exercise affected belly fat specifically, and its link to chronic health ills.
Here, a team decided to find out by comparing two groups of overweight/obese individuals. One group was sedentary. The other consisted of folks who had been exercising regularly for at least 2 years.
Result: The exercisers’ belly fat had more blood vessels, fewer inflammatory cells, and more proteins that boost energy production and healthy fat storage.
Conclusion: “Regular exercise may play a role in remodeling [abdominal fat] structure and proteomic profile in ways that may contribute to preserved cardiometabolic health.” In other words, even if the exercise doesn’t lower your belly fat, it is at least making the fat deposits less injurious to your health. More at Nature Metabolism.
Seeing Red? How Color Choices Can Boost Or Unravel Your Performance
The marathon is a big physical test, and perhaps even more an emotional challenge. A little-explored subject, color, can make a difference, according to new research that explores the links between color and performance.
It begins with an observation: “Vision is the most important sense for humans and animals. Over 90% of the information humans acquire from the outside world is obtained through vision, where we perceive the size, brightness, color, and movement of external objects.”
Okay, 90 percent is impressive. What more? “In marathon competitions and training, colors directly affect the physiology and psychology of athletes, causing emotional changes that subsequently affect their performance and athletic achievements.”
Continuing: “In marathon sports, if coaches and athletes can accurately use the positive effects of color, they will surely be able to help control emotions, overcome the irritability that occurs during long-distance running, eliminate fatigue in a timely manner, adjust and improve the athlete's physical function, and bring out the athlete's potential to achieve better competitive results.”
Okay, so how can you use this information to improve your race times? Without offering any hard evidence, the authors suggest that you should wear cool colored clothing in summer races, and “warm colors” in the winter.
Also, runners often enjoy “clothing in the colors of their national flag.” This might help you associate with something greater than yourself. More at Cambridge Sports Science with free full text.
A colorful diet could also make you fitter and healthier. More at McMillan Running.
Here’s A New Way To Choose Your Best Shoe
Our running world is full of super shoes these days. In fact, we’re faced by a bewildering number of shoes, foams, plates, rockers, and more. This makes it almost impossible to figure out which shoe is best for you.
That’s a problem, because the shoes are expensive. You’d like to know which shoe will improve your running economy the most. But how do you figure that without visiting an exercise physiology lab?
Here, a team of German biomechanists tested a substitute method. They used the popular Stryd power meter (a small pod that attaches to your shoes). The Stryd pod can measure power, ground contact time, leg stiffness, vertical oscillation, stride frequency, stride length, and more.
Subjects included 31 male runners who were training an average of 32 miles a week, and could race a 10K in under 44:00. They ran 1200 meters in each of 3 super shoes that had stack heights of 25mm, 35mm, and 45mm.
All the shoes were equipped with Stryd meters. The subjects ran on a flat, concrete surface.
Result: Two Stryd metrics--leg spring stiffness, and low vertical oscillation--most closely characterized super shoe “responders” from “nonresponders.” Thus, you could use these two metrics to pick your most efficient shoes.
Conclusion: “This study could provide the blueprint for runners to evaluate their running response to different footwear models themselves. The comparison of vertical oscillation and leg spring stiffness between runs could potentially support the choice of footwear providing better running economy.” More at Sensors with free full text. (The research received no funding from Stryd.)
Movement Is Medicine, And Exercise Beats Cholesterol
When you visit your local health care provider for an annual physical, s(he) checks your age, weight, blood pressure, blood oxygen, blood glucose, blood cholesterol, and more.
But you aren’t asked about your Strava training data or the step count totals from your Apple watch. Doctors don’t seem to care much about your exercise.
Perhaps they should. A big new study of U.S. adults aged 50 to 80 showed that recent activity patterns were a better predictor of mortality (and perhaps chronic, late-life illness) than any other measure--including your age, your BMI, and that battery of blood tests.
In other words, your health isn’t defined by the calendar or a blood sample. Your exercise level is more important.
Here are a couple of key sentences from the paper: “Movement and health are intrinsically linked. Mobility loss with aging occurs across species and is linked to deterioration of the central and peripheral nervous systems, musculoskeletal systems, and sensory systems.”
The researchers believe that “signals from wearable accelerometry” [like Fitbits] should be “collected in standard surveys” by physicians. Your health insurance pays for all those annual blood tests. It should do the same for activity monitors.
And your doctor should note your recent activity in those electronic databases that everyone uses these days. More at Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise with free full text.
How The Boston Marathon Deals With Mental Health Challenges
The Boston Marathon has long been a leader in running/marathon medical care. Boston first added a professional psychologist to its medical team in 2002. After the trauma of the 2013 finish-line bombs, the psych team has expanded dramatically. It now numbers 60.
A new journal report “critically outlines, evaluates, and analyzes the approach and effectiveness of the psychological care model provided to runners on race day as part of the Boston Marathon.” It notes that Boston’s psychology team has even developed a “Marathon Mental Status Examination.”
The exam includes questions such as “What is your name? Do you know what city you are in?” And, “How did you find the course today? Did you experience any difficult parts?” And, “When was the last time you urinated?”
The paper includes three case studies. First, there’s a disoriented runner who had developed hyponatremia. With questioning, the psychologist recognized his condition, and called in a treatment team. Second, there’s a runner who failed the mental status evaluation, and spoke with a strange rhythm. The psychologist identified autism spectrum disorder, and spoke reassuringly to the athlete, who was pleased to have his condition recognized and discussed openly.
Third, there’s a female runner in her 60s who had fallen at the finish line. She was frightened by this, as it had never happened in her previous marathons. The psychologist helped her reframe her incident as a learning experience she could apply to future races.
Conclusion: “The integration of a psychology team into the Boston Marathon’s medical support model has set a new standard for mental health care in marathon settings. This innovative approach addresses the complex physiological and psychological stresses that runners face, providing critical support during and after the race.” More at Sports Medicine.
SHORT STUFF You Don’t Want To Miss
GREAT QUOTES Make Great Training Partners
"I run with my head, my heart and my guts, because physically, I don't think I've got a great deal of talent or ability. I started at the bottom and worked up."
--Steve Jones, two-time winner of the Chicago Marathon