The Mental Game
How your perceptions influence reality
The last time I mentioned dating in my blog, I got the most hits in my blogs history thanks to my spiel about breaking up with a girl because she did crossfit. So I figured I should use that same tactic again, to attract more visitors who don’t find my scientific treatise on various studies…
Read MoreRule Breaking is Contagious- How the Brain causes social concepts to spread
We’re all familiar with the idea that germs and diseases can be contagious. It makes perfect sense that if our family or social circle has people who are sick that our chances of getting sick if we are around them increases. It doesn’t mean we automatically get sick, thanks to the strength of our immune…
Read MoreThe Psychology of mental toughness- Willpower, self-control, and decision making
In the sport of distance running, we are used to embracing the idea of mental toughness. Whether it’s embraced through your standard Steve Prefontaine quote about guts and glory, or from the recent front running, make everyone suffer tactics of marathoner Shalane Flanagan, runners take pride in their ability to hurt. We spend countless hours…
Read MoreWhat changes from High School to College?
A couple posts ago, I asked for help on a survey about transitioning from High School to College running. It’s an attempt to answer the question of why kids success or struggle with transitioning to college. Admittedly, this question is something that strikes close to home, on two fronts. First, I’m a college coach at…
Read MoreDeception, Lies, and Performance
In a recent post on the placebo effect, we delved into the idea of deception being used to boost or impair running performance. I’d like to follow that up with the discussion of a recent review paper published in Sports Medicine by Jones et. Al. entitled “Physiological and Psychological Effects of Deception on Pacing Strategy and Performance:…
Read MoreThe High School to College transition:
Our sport is one of transitions. We have to transition from HS to college and then, if we are fortunate enough, often from college to pro. Often times our success depends on mastering these transitions and making sure they go as smoothly as possible. Way back in the day, I had to make this transition,…
Read MoreThe Placebo Response- belief, expectations, and why it matters in the world of sport
The Placebo Response. Just say the words and you generally get a negative response. People think of a placebo as some no good trick used by devious people to deceive some unsuspecting innocent person. It’s accepted in the medicine and research world as a way to test true effects of a substance or intervention versus…
Read MoreBlind Feedback Workouts- Why feedback matters and how to ignore it
Times, splits, seconds, minutes. They are so ingrained in our head as runners, sometime cruelly, that we cannot escape them. We become slaves to watch and knowing exactly where we are during every workout and every race. But what happens if we take it all away? The role of feedback in performance is an intriguing…
Read MoreStep away from your Specialty
Step away from your specialty This month a scientific journal article came out that discussed what it would take physiologically to run a sub 2 hour marathon. This paper first grabbed attention a couple months ago when it was discussed on such websites as http://www.sportsscientists.com/. While the paper was interesting, what caught my opinion were…
Read MoreDigging Deep- Willpower and running
In my last post I asked the question of how many times we could go to the well in training. Implied in the discussion was the idea that going to the well fatigues us in a profound way and that if we go there too often we “overtrain” or “burnout” and don’t bounce back like…
Read More