The ability to tolerate pain and discomfort is an essential part of bike racing. It differentiates those who reach the highest echelons of the sport from the rest. In this blog I explain the psychology behind it, and also provide you with practical ways you can “train” or improve your ability to suffer pain and discomfort. It’s safe to say that there is no way to eliminate the pain completely, but you can certainly learn to endure and push through it!
The Science Bit
South African exercise physiologist Tim Noakes first challenged the idea that performance during exercise is limited entirely by chemical factors, such as muscle fatigue, suggesting that the brain regulates performance in order to prevent future biological danger or harm. This “central governor” hypothesis suggests that we moderate our performance in anticipation of how much effort is required to complete the current activity. In other words the brain tells us to “hold back” something in reserve if we know we have a significant amount of time left for the activity. We limit our effort because we believe that we are unable to sustain the current pace, not because we are actually unable to. If we know we are about to finish we can go flat out in the sprint as we don’t have to hold anything in reserve.
Noakes’ work has been continued by Dr Samuele Marcora at the University of Kent, who suggests that the ultimate limiter of performance is our perception of effort rather than any physiological barrier. He also suggests that mental fatigue has a negative effect on perception of effort. In other words, the more mentally tired we are (as a result of any mental activity) the harder a physical activity seems.
This is really important. Traditionally we tend to see maximal effort in purely physiological terms. How many times have you thought to yourself “I had nothing left in my legs”? But what about if you make the shift to a psychological explanation instead, such as “my brain thinks I’ve got nothing left in my legs to prevent me from harm, but actually I can go further/faster”?
The Practical Bit
Marcora suggests that our ability to tolerate suffering is trainable using various psychological techniques. These can be practised and integrated during training sessions so that they become second nature during races. I will go into each of these in more detail in future blogs, but for the moment I will summarise these as:
Positive self-talk: making motivational self statements like “I’m feeling good, I can do this” reduces perception of effort. Practise this (out loud or silently) during intense intervals until it becomes second nature.
Being in the moment: focus simply on what you are doing at that particular moment in time. You could count pedal revs in 10’s, fix on a point 100 metres away or concentrate on the wheel in front, for example. Not thinking about past or future, but only now. Again, practise when training so it becomes a habit.
Effort scaling: many of us are used to using an RPE scale of 1-10 to measure the intensity of effort, such as in Training Peaks. Instead, think of a real pain scale where the worst pain you can imagine (perhaps toothache?) is a 10, and no pain is zero. Make it personal! Now when you are doing a hard effort with this recalibrated pain scale, where is your pain/discomfort level? Try this in sessions of varying intensity so your brain becomes used to this recalibrated scale.
Training when mentally fatigued: this is a weird one. It can be accomplished by deliberately scheduling training immediately after a mentally hard day at work or study (think spreadsheets or revising for exams). Or simulated by doing a hard mental activity such as solving brain teaser problems for up to an hour before training. Doing this on a regular basis will enable an adaptation to mental fatigue and make you less susceptible to it when racing so that perception of effort is not compromised.
I hope this gives you some food for thought and practical ways to better cope with pain during intense training and racing. Happy training!
