It's All In Your Mind

"The major breakthroughs in all running distances will now be reserved for those who train the mind on a regular and consistent basis" Jerry Lynch

100 burpees 7:17
summit trainer 30 minutes, 10 resistance, 2.23 miles

I have been going with a mind over matter theme on the blog for a few days now. Here is the last one in the series. It is a link to a scientific study on fatigue which concludes that fatigue is a psychological, not a physical phenomenon.

Sports Science - Perception is Everything

“It is traditionally assumed that exhaustion during high-intensity aerobic exercise occurs because fatigued subjects are no longer able to generate the power output required by the task despite their maximal voluntary effort…We have demonstrated for the first time that this is not the case… [I]f our subjects were able to voluntarily produce 731W for 5s immediately after exhaustion, they must have been physiologically able to produce 242W for much longer. The most likely explanation for the very high MVCP produced immediately after exhaustion is psychological. Subjects knew that the final MVCP test was going to last only 5s, and such knowledge motivated them to exert further effort after the time to exhaustion test which had a longer and unknown duration.”

As intuitively sensible as this explanation is, it is scientifically revolutionary, as it supposes that the true cause of endurance fatigue is perception of effort (i.e. psychological suffering).

Picture of the Day

Everybody has their own motivation. This was one guy's way of challenging himself to take the more difficult path.