Total Body Transformation Training Blog

Improve Your Exercise Gains by Not Caring?

If your goal is to lost fat or get fit how excited do you get when you start making progress? If you're training to run a first marathon, or break 400 pounds in the deadlift do you start to crave your training sessions -- looking forward to entering the results into the log? Sure, we can all talk about periodizing our workouts and not peaking too early but by our very nature human being love goals and get excited about achieving them. But is this the best way to sustain progress?

Surprisingly, the answer is "it depends." Endurance activities like marathon running, triathalons and long distance rowing are activities where it seems a little indifference goes a really long way. Psychologists have been studying human performance for decades and they have concluded that we do our best in endurance activities under conditions of rather low arousal. What this means is that it is in yours and my best interests to avoid getting worked up for training runs and week by week progress toward the eventual goal. It is especially important to remain calm on race day.

The main reasons for this are biological. Excitement activates the nervous system in ways that aren't great for marathon training or other longer distance events. Heart rate increases, blood pressure goes up, oxygen consumption becomes greater... none of which help you perform well in training for distance events. The goal is "flow" -- that relaxed almost meditative state where you are confident of your abilities and you are observing the world without being attached to its goings on.

Distance athletes spend a lot of their training cycles working on relaxation techniques for this very reason. Even when it is relatively easy to stay relaxed week to week during training, it is another thing entirely on race day. Because of this, meditation, yoga, and formal relaxation techniques are an important part of endurance training.