Have you heard of the importance of the mental component of athletics performance? If you’re like me, then yes, maybe hundreds of times. While I tend to just shake my head and brush off these basic, generalist types of statements, i.e., “Running is 90% mental and only 10% physical,” I do recognize the obvious fact that there’s something more beneath the surface than the day to day of the training.
Why do some runs seem to violate the fabric of space time, ending almost as soon as they begin, while others drag on and on in misery. Why are we able to tap into pure instinct in some races, but overthink others. We give up or fall off the pace group, and end up kicking ourselves for days or weeks afterwards for a performance where we obviously didn’t squeeze out every drop of effort? We feel great, but it just wasn’t our day, and then sometimes we feel as if we’re pulling our feet through drying concrete, but crush a PR anyway.
I happen to believe the explanation for these sorts of struggles, where fitness and performance are misaligned, the ones that be excused due to poor weather and poor competition, lie somewhere within our mind frame, willpower, and mental stamina.
Framing the Issue
Getting straight to the point, however cliche it may be, if there is any thread of truth to the statement that running results are the outcome of 90% mental and 10% physical inputs, or even if they are only the result of 10% mental and 90% physical inputs, then the mental aspect deserves a deeper dive. In my development as a runner, no one even remotely suggested HOW to become mentally tough, or HOW to generate more internal motivation! Runners just either were tough, or were not!! Why aren’t we leveraging mental prowess to our advantage if it really is an untapped value, even if only a 5 or 10% driver of overall performance? I assume it’s possible that everyone besides myself is secretly working on this, behind closed doors, but who’s coming to practice bragging about how powerful their morning meditation was, or how much they believe in themselves? This is someting we should be talking about much more, but that’s what we’re about here. We want to try the things that no one is talking about, the things that seem to go slightly unnoticed but may have the ability to make a difference.
What I’ve been asking myself lately is whether our mental strength is something we can improve through a form of active mental training, or if it’s simply a fact that because we’re human, and not driven to run by pure instinctual fear that we will always talk ourselves into running slower than we need, to not hurt so bad. We all have the subconscious ability to rationalize, “you know body, this running thing is stupid. Why would we decide to start a long grind at mile 18 because we’re only a measly 15 seconds off sub 2:19 pace?” Ultimately, mid-race, excuses start to seep in. We should slow down because it hurts really bad and we still have 2 years before we need to qualify for the trials, and yada yada yada. The curse of the frontal lobe, our reason. I believe in the power of the mind, however, and that the mental component can be drastically improved to achieve a gain of 5%, 10%, or 100% in mental toughness. This incremental mental strength, I hope, will have a direct impact on my running, and also on my daily demeanor.
So here we go…I’m going to focus quite a bit on the mental aspect of training in a series of posts, which I am looking forward to as a way of keeping myself accountable.
Part 1: I want to talk about meditation
I’ve been experimenting with a daily 5 minute meditation practice. 5 minutes just feels like a good number to start with and something easy to accomplish right after I wake up in the morning. I sit here on the floor, where I also do most of my writing, and I try to think about nothing, continuously clearing my mind the endless stream of thoughts that creep in. It’s challenging, and I can never go 5 minutes without thinking of what I have to do at work, or whatever else I was stressing about before I went to sleep the night before. But you know, it’s gotten better, much better. I think of it like doing the dishes. If you work on clearing out the sink of your crummy dishes every single day then it always stays relatively clean, but the longer you wait, the harder it gets to scrape off the crusty sweet potatoes. That is your mind, full of sweet potatoes…keep it relatively clean with a consistent mental practice. It’s a skill that takes constant diligence, much like marathon training, so this is why I’m making it a daily habit of mine.
When I’m meditating, I’m focussing mostly on clearing out the mental junk that makes me anxious, self-conscious, and unconfident on a daily basis. I may not be fixing the fact that I’m behind on a project at work, but I can feel that it buffers me from the worry and stress through improved mental strength. Why worry about that which you cannot change?
When I’m running, I’m similarly focussing on clearing out the mental junk that makes me anxious, self-conscious, and unconfident during the marathon. I may not be solving the fact that it hurts, that it’s a physically demanding and challenging race, but if through meditation I’ve developed the mental strength to control for the inevitable moment that negative and self-doubting thoughts creep in, then I should be able to push myself through more challenges mid-race. There is (almost) always a time when you say, either consciously or subconsciously, “That’s it, I can’t hang onto this pace, this group of runners, and I’m done.” There may be several of these during a marathon, but this is what we’re trying to solve for. How can we get this subconscious thought to vanish? It’s through honing our skill of being able to push it away, because honestly how often do you really need your conscious thought while racing? Let’s just worry about putting one foot in front of the other and breathing well.
Maybe we can…just stay there in this mental purgatory where we manage to push out the self-doubt, which is obviously better than the burden of managing it! Even more, maybe if we can just keep out the self-doubt we can also figure out a way to talk ourselves into the fact that we can like, pick up the pace or something equally as crazy. I think the mental component is a snowball, and that if we can just push out enough of the junk then we can build to some sort of mental position that we can truly build off of.
I’m not a scientist, but a few sources say:
1. Meditation may ease anxiety and mental stress, based on a meta-analysis performed in 2017 (link to study).
2. Brain Activity is significantly altered during meditation, leading to an slowing of frontal lobe activity.
3. Meditators, based on a 2012 study, perform better on cognitive tests challenging a participant’s ventral posteromedial cortex (“PMC”) stability (whatever this is). The PMC, a region linked to spontaneous thoughts and mind-wandering, lies on the underside of the brain, in the middle of your head.
These represent just a few links, after a quick search, of the hundreds and thousands that boast the mental benefits of meditation. Meditation is an ancient Eastern practice which has been popularized, but nowhere near normalized in Western society. How many can actually say that they’ve truly utilized the mental benefits from a structured meditation practice? Maybe everyone but me! But I don’t know that!
So there I go. My theory is that meditation can solve a piece of the mental puzzle. If we manage to strengthen our mental capacity by even 5%, especially if you believe in the old adages of how large of a factor the mental side of marathoning is, then why wouldn’t that make a discernible impact on our running performance?
I’m going to explore a number of other interesting theories to developing mental toughness in other parts of “Can You Think Your Way Marathon Success?” but for now, this is a good place for me, and my audience of 0 to start.
Give it a try, worst case scenario, meditation is supposed to make you a friendlier and more compassionate person, so what do you really have to lose?
Do Good,
Young Austin
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