As part of Working Triathlete University’s monthly book club, we recently read Endure by Alex Hutchinson. The book offers a dive into human endurance, exploring remarkable feats throughout history (the Sub-2 Project, the four-minute mile, ultra-marathons, arctic expeditions, and more) to establish the brain’s role in endurance performance. He interviews eminent exercise scientists and parses through “paradigm-shifting” studies to establish how “the seemingly physical barriers you encounter—pain muscle, oxygen, heat, thirst, fuel—are set as much by your brain as by your body.”
Rather than your heart, muscles, and lungs determining your limits, your brain may be the most important governor for maximizing performance.
Below are six trick taken or inspired from the findings in the book that athletes can immediately apply to training and racing to enhance performance.
Six Things You Can Do To Immediately Go Faster
1. Smile during hard efforts. This tricks your brain into believing that the effort is not as hard as it is, allowing you to go faster longer. The gains are not trivial.
2. Before and during hard workouts and races, engage in positive self-talk. Tell yourself you feel great, are running relaxed, feel cool in hot weather, etc. As part of Hutchinson’s reflections towards the end of the book, he said “If I could go back in time to alter the course of my own running career, after a decade of writing about the latest research in endurance training, the single biggest piece of advice I would give to my doubt-filled younger self would be to pursue motivational self-talk training—with diligence and no snickering.”
3. Use caffeine strategically. It blocks fatigue chemicals and is one of the few legal ergogenic aids.
4. Mental fatigue negatively impacts performance. If you can minimize stress and heavy mental work the day before a race, it’s worth giving yourself permission to do so. On the flipside, if you work out after engaging in mentally taxing activities during training, your performance decay on race day will be less.
5. Obsess about staying cool. Overheating is one of the main causes of slowing down. As per the three WT “ALWAYS BEs” of long course, always be wetting. Focus especially on dousing your head with water and ice. Use a hat to trap ice.
6. Consume sports drink intermittently throughout races—even during shorter efforts when your body theoretically won’t use the fluids or glucose, such as during sprint triathlons. Doing this seems to trick the brain, allowing athletes to go faster.
Conrad Goeringer is an Ironman Certified Coach based out of Nashville, TN. He is the founder of Working Triathlete and author of the book The Working Triathlete. His passion is helping athletes of all levels and with all schedules achieve their endurance goals. Reach out to learn more about coaching packages and for a free consultation.