THINK YOURSELF FURTHER

BOOST ENDURANCE WITH YOUR BRAIN

At the Tour de France each year, panoramic helicopter footage captures capt res the towering Alpine climbs and on-bike on cameras record the explosive attacks, atta but the most ost important feature of the race remains invisible to all: the epic battles raging within the minds of the su!ering riders.

“Cycling is all about the mind,” says 30-time Tour stage winner Mark Cavendish. “You have to train your brain as well as your legs.” And this is true for pro and amateur riders alike. When pain courses through your legs like snake venom, will you suppress it or succumb? When the slithering tentacles of self-doubt creep across your mind, will you banish them or sink into despair? And when your resilience wobbles with 50km to go, will the battlements of your mind hold firm, or crumble to dust?

THOUGHT POLICE

The psychology of stamina has always been the dark art of the cycling world – the most mysterious skill of all. While training blocks can be printed in ink and nutrition plans logged in digital apps, the workings of the mind are nebulous and hard to pin down. We know elite riders use psychological tricks: 2018 Tour champion Geraint Thomas breaks down long rides into smaller segments to prevent anxiety gnawing at his mind. Two-time Tour stage winner Dan Martin visualises the pain in his legs as a rising level of water – a vivid image that enables him to focus all of his thoughts on lowering it back down.

Thanks to a recent wave of scientific research, it is now possible to reveal the most e!ective psychological tools for boosting your physical and mental endurance, from selftalk strategies and cue words to distraction techniques and thought scripts.

“Stamina has both a physical and a mental component,” explains Carrie Cheadle, a mental skills coach and author of On Top of Your Game (carriecheadle.com). “Mental skills don’t replace fitness, but they can help you push yourself further than you thought possible. You might need di!erent strategies at di!erent times, so it’s important to have lots of tools in your belt.”

This is perhaps the most important lesson of all. During a challenging bike ride, when bouts of hunger and su!ering will inevitably sap your energy, motivation and commitment, you’ll need to pull out di!erent weapons at varying times: a cue word here, some positive self-talk there, a calming image one moment, an uplifting a"rmation the next. Some tools work better in certain scenarios, some vary in e!ectiveness depending on your mood or level of fatigue. So the more tricks you have at your disposal, the stronger you will be.

One of the best tools for boosting endurance is self-talk – the psychological term used for all those wacky conversations that swirl around

. . . BUT SCIE NCE IS NOW UNLOCKING THE BEST MENTAL TOOLS AND TRICKS TO HELP YOU FIGHT TO THE FINISH

"MENTAL SKILLS DON'T REPLACE FITNESS BUT THEY CAN HELP YOU PUSH YOURSELF FURTHER THAN YOU THOUGHT POSSIBLE"

CARRIE & AUTHOR CHEADLE, OF ON TOP MENTAL OF YOUR SKILLS GAME COACH

your frazzled mind on long rides. You might think you’re going mad but the impact of selftalk is now quantifiable. A study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise showed that cyclists who used positive or motivational self-talk (statements such as, ‘I’ve trained hard for this, I’m going to smash it’ or ‘I’m halfway through, I’ll be fine’) experienced a lower rate of perceived exertion (RPE) and lasted 18 per cent longer when asked to cycle to exhaustion. That’s because an athlete’s perception of e ort – how hard they think they’re working – seems to be a major determinant of their endurance power, so positive thoughts really can boost your stamina.

Another study in the journal Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback found that cyclists who were given positive feedback during time trials experienced higher glucose levels, lower oxygen uptake and lower lactate production. Again, the positive thoughts had a real physiological e ect on the metabolic impact of their performance – even when the positive feedback they were given was entirely false, such as telling the riders they were cycling faster than they really were.

“One of the advantages of maintaining a sense of positivity is that there seems to be a

reduced physical cost to the work,” explains Andy Lane, Professor of Sport Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton (winninglane. com). “In our own tests we’ve also seen this among individuals who report a positive mood, because their ventilation rates were lower during the exercise.”

IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT

Positive self-talk is particularly important in the first part of races when it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the big challenges ahead. One way of cultivating a more upbeat mindset is to ask yourself short questions that inspire positive answers. A study by Lane published in Mood and Human Performance showed that vigour can be increased through this kind of technique. “The activation training involved saying: ‘Can I get through the next 10 seconds or one minute?’ And the answer is always, ‘Yes’. That increases your emotional state. Thinking about mile 93 at mile three is irrelevant.”

Intriguingly, a study in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology found that some riders raise their game by using negative or challenging