Marathon Mettle - The Psychology of Running

Marathon Mettle

Your Footnotes to Success

Dr Shane Moon

[email protected]

1

Introduction

2 © 2014 Inner Truth Sport

For any athlete who trains and competes there are multiple

factors to consider. What is important to remember is that

these factors should be a focus in training as you are preparing

to compete. Waiting until the days or week before competition

is putting you on the back foot.

The key areas to work on in training that are pivotal to

competition include:

1) Physical;

2) Psychological and

3) Emotional.

These three are the holy trio of performance equally however,

athletes tend to focus primarily on the physical leaving the other

two to take of themselves.

The following pages outline these factors and some high level

recommendations.

[email protected]

Physical

The physical seems pretty obvious BUT it is not simply just

getting the kilometres in the legs.

What is meant by physical is everything from the pre –

competition warm up; the taper; the race day warm up; and

the physical changes that your body goes through during the

performance.

If it is your first competition you are preparing for, that is

irrelevant because all of these components NEED to be part of

your training. Your training coach can provide you with the

fundamentals of a good physical taper, warm up exercises etc

From there, it is always recommended you have your pre-

competition plan well and truly sorted way in advance of the

actual competition. Don’t leave anything to chance with the

physical pre-competition plan rehearse it, test it – if you fail

physically on too many factors no way your psychology will be

able to carry you through.

3 © 2014 Inner Truth Sport [email protected]

Physical – GT

Gut Threshold (GT) Training – you probably know of threshold

training from a Heart Rate perspective but you NEED to know

your gut threshold.

Exercise Physiologist, Damien Angus and medical doctor Mitch

Anderson, both elite athletes developed the concept of GT – at

least that’s what Mitch told me when he was my coach back in

2002.

GT is that point where you can push yourself and still absorb

food appropriately. Everyone is different and everyone’s food

absorption is different. Don’t leave it to chance – it needs to be

trialled and worked out.

Identify your caloric need, how you can minimise your pre-

competition loading (who needs the extra kg’s on competition

day) & ensure your gut can manage whatever it is you are

putting into it at various stages of the competition.


Physical – Pain

Performance Pain vs Injury Pain

Pain is often misrepresented in sporting activities and often

athletes are not informed or trained to recognise the difference

between performance pain and injury pain.

Pain is inevitable in competition (particularly running) the

difference being what is ‘normal’ vs what is ‘abnormal’.

Only your long duration training will provide you with exposure

to ‘normal’ pain. Being ‘in touch’ with your body is critical to

know what is ‘normal’ vs ‘abnormal’. How your feet, legs, hips,

knees, shoulders, back, neck etc all respond to the long

duration.

Listening to music the whole time you train is NOT

recommended. Know your ‘performance pain profile’ and

practice strategies to overcome those ‘moments of ‘truth’!


Psychological

The psychological is the true reveal of capability in an athlete

and highly predictive of their performance outcomes.

There are some out there that believe psychological capabilities

(PsyCaP) is innate while others believe it is a completely

trainable outcome. From my perspective it is a little bit of both.

You are already training and competing so you definitely have

some innate PsyCap otherwise you wouldn’t even have got off

the couch!

The key components to PsyCap that will contribute to your

success are :

i) ZOP – zone of outstanding performance;

ii) Mettle

iii) Mental Toughness and

iv) Expectations.


ZOP

ZOP – is really another term for concentration ability.

Your ZOP profile reveals your ability for:

a) awareness (internal & external),

b) your strategy (your training and competing plans), and

c) your focus (closely tied to awareness).

Linked back to the physical ZOP helps you manage many of the

physical let downs that occur in sub optimal performances.

For many working out your ZOP is overlooked because it is an

exercise in paper & pen as well as in real life practice.

Nonetheless, if you have your Zone it will be a foundation for

an outstanding performance. See what distracts you, have a

plan to bring it back around. Have you got your strategy well

tested? Ensure you have practiced your focusing and

dissociating strategies.


Mettle

So what is Mettle? Mettle is about specific characteristics of

individuals that are often not easy to put under the microscope.

Mettle traits refer to your level of:

i. Confidence (how much/ little – drivers of etc),

ii. Competitiveness (how much/ little – drivers of etc)

iii. Will (how much/little drive – what drives it etc)

iv. Discipline (how much/ little – benefits, barriers etc).

Each of these factors will impact your ability to perform on the

day and also relate to how you get through the preparation

leading up to competition.

Getting through training to the performance you need to

understand how much or how little you have of each and how

to optimise your ‘mettle’! Confidence comes with training &

success go out and get it!


Toughness

Mental Toughness – there are a lot of thoughts about what

mental toughness is because every athlete wants to have it.

However, to give the concept some substance MT is about:

i. Resiliency (ability to bounce back);

ii. Consistency (training outcomes & any performance

tests during training);

iii. Decisiveness (how you make decisions);

iv. Performance under pressure (how you manage your

anxiety & stress).

The key is a balanced approach. Be hard on yourself and not

hard on yourself, keep it realistic. Accept good days and bad

days. Identify what made up a good day and a bad day.

Remember negative experience serves an adaptive function,

that is, you need to have negative experiences in order to get

better! If you don’t know what made a good day good or a

bad day bad you cannot replicate the good and negate the bad


Expectations

Very little is talked about in sport about expectations, however,

much is riding on our performance when it comes to what you

‘expect’ will happen.

It’s not exactly like the old saying ‘expect the worse and it then it

won’t be so bad’ rather it is more like ‘prepare for the good, the

bad and the unexpected’. The truth is Expectations Shape our

Reality.

So be truthful with your expectations across everything in your

training, your performance goals and ensure you have a firm

grasp on what you are expecting to achieve, what you are

expecting to happen and how you expect to manage with all

that go into competing.

Very importantly, know what your expectations are for your

ability to regulate your negative mood. Research shows those

that have higher positive negative mood regulation

expectancies perform better!


Emotional

Every sporting event has a ‘roller coaster of emotions’. It is this

roller coaster of emotions that makes them attractive to some

and avoided by others. Their loss, I say because they are losing

out on value skills that assist with the daily hassles of life.

However, it is important to understand there is two sides to

emotion:

i. Conscious side or what you know as FEELINGS and

ii. Subconscious which you may know as INSTINCT.

The conscious side of emotion is easily distracted and fooled so

it is with this part of emotion that you need to develop

strategies for to deal with. It is the conscious side of emotion

that determines what your actions will be – do I stop, do I go

slower, faster; do I eat now or later; do I drink now or later etc.


Feelings

Feelings are what we describe our experience to be (i.e. good,

bad, happy, sad, angry, excited etc). There are over 300 words

in the English language to describe feelings but we typically only

use a handful of ‘feelings’ words up to 10 for the average

person.

From a sporting context it is important to keep it even more

simple when trying to capture the experience. It is

recommended you stick to a scale (or some variant) of:

The key is to keep it simple and determine all the factors that

coincide with those descriptions. Now train with it in mind and

understand how it changes over the duration of training

sessions (long and short) & between different sessions.

Compete with it too if you can before your big race!


Very good – good – fairly good – neutral – fairly bad – bad – very bad

Instinct

Instinct is the deep part of the brain that we do not have access

to but in life and in particular in sport drip feeds information to

the conscious brain or force feeds it very quickly. This part of

the brain is constantly monitoring our body for signs and signals

that something is not quite right and then initiates signals to

conscious brain to take corrective action. As an athlete you

need to understand how your subconscious operates.

Learn to monitor the outcome of your subconscious by noticing

the very subtle changes in your attention and thinking during

longer durations or short harder durations. The little blips on

the radar are a sure sign that the subconscious is trying to

influence you to stop, slow down, do something different.

Everyone is slightly different but often it is little self-doubt

messages; focusing on other runners too much; analyse

training rather than doing training; little physical ‘niggles’

creep up from nowhere, little things start to become annoying

& distracting etc. Notice and re-focus!


Conclusion

Having an outstanding performance is a balance between

science and practice (i.e. training). No matter the level of the

athlete there is always room for improvement if the desire to

find it is there. My belief is unless there is some medical reason,

anyone can complete a marathon.

If you cover off each of the sections in line with your mileage

training there is no reason you cannot have a successful

marathon.

Of course there is always the risk something goes wrong on the

day but preparation is all about getting that risk to as close to 0

as you can.

Completing a marathon is both a journey and a destination and

all successful athletes focus on both and relish in experiencing

both! Good luck, good training and keep it real!

Dr Shane Moon


About ITS

Inner Truth Sport is a performance practice that has a focus on

the neuro – physiological – psychology factors of sport. In other

words ITS focuses on the brain, the mind, the body interaction

when it comes to performance consulting.

While we do a lot of work in a office with athletes we also work

in the athletes realm.

So, if you are a runner and need help with emotional profiling

during a long run – we are there for the long run beside you. If

you are a swimmer, we are at the pool; a football or soccer

player we are on the grounds maybe capturing your eye

movements with our eye tracking technology. Where you are

we are because we are passionate about sport and

performance! Contact us today on:

Email: [email protected]

Web: Innertruthsport.com.au

Mob: 0419 727 505


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Marathon Mettle - The Psychology of Running