Forums >Off the Beaten Path>Mental Prep For Running and Pain Management
I just finished a little book called Explicate Fitness for Runners: Mind Shaping Body. I have done yoga a few times and this philosophy seems a bit like that but this book gives a completely different perspective how the body works from the way most people approach fitness. It talks about the ego as a place where we can consciously store memory to activate more muscle fibers. How to control pain mentally.
I would like some feedback on this from competitive runners as to whether this approach is valuable for extending endurance and hopefully increasing speed
Feeling the growl again
I just finished a little book called Explicate Fitness for Runners: Mind Shaping Body. I have done yoga a few times and this philosophy seems a bit like that but this book gives a completely different perspective how the body works from the way most people approach fitness. It talks about the ego as a place where we can consciously store memory to activate more muscle fibers. How to control pain mentally. I would like some feedback on this from competitive runners as to whether this approach is valuable for extending endurance and hopefully increasing speed
How well you mentally deal with the discomfort of running hard does absolutely nothing to increase your speed or endurance. That requires conditioning.
Frankly it sounds like new age fluff to me.
"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand
I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills
Obviously the mind and the body are connected. I would think conditioning both is important. I haven't read the book.
Live the Adventure. Enjoy the Journey. Be Kind. Have Faith!
How well you mentally deal with the discomfort of running hard does absolutely nothing to increase your speed or endurance. That requires conditioning. Frankly it sounds like new age fluff to me.
Being mentally prepared can give an edge, things physical being equal. Visualization techniques work and like interval training you have to work at it. Most of us probably don't do visualization for running but jus thinking, planning, or simply daydreaming about an upcoming race are forms of mental preparation.
Not exactly the same, but this reminds me of an article from Runner's World (one of the good long-form ones rather than the "lose 5 pounds" ones): http://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/fixing-dianes-brain?page=single
Basically, this woman became one of the best ultra-runners in the world following surgery to stop her seizures. They removed a portion of her temporal lobe, and although the mechanism isn't completely understood it benefited her running. It's thought that her brain doesn't process time or distance, so in a way she has no idea how long she's been running--and it's possible that reduces the actualy fatigue her body experiences.
The reason I bolded a section of the OP was to highlight that my reply was indicating that thinking games and learning to deal with the discomfort of hard running will nto "extend endurance" or "increase speed". Those are physiological changes requiring training.
Can you end up with a faster race time because you train your mind to push through discomfort and pain better? Yeah. But that's not the same thing.
The reason I bolded a section of the OP was to highlight that my reply was indicating that thinking games and learning to deal with the discomfort of hard running will nto "extend endurance" or "increase speed". Those are physiological changes requiring training. Can you end up with a faster race time because you train your mind to push through discomfort and pain better? Yeah. But that's not the same thing.
I'm not disagreeing with you. The original post had some hubris about the physiology and training muscle fibers through mental imaging or whatever and I ignored that. Nevertheless, I think good mental training can make a 1-2% difference in the outcome for a reasonably well-trained athlete. And for a newb, or someone lacking experience the leaps in improvement are both due to physical training and to learning to accept and manage the discomfort of running hard and the anxiety it all.