Psychology for Ultramarathon with Dr. Carla Meijen | KoopCast Episode 171
Episode overview:
Carla is a chartered sport and exercise physiologist and senior lecturer in applied sports psychology at St. Mary’s University, UK She has a keen interest in endurance performance inspired by her work providing mental support at running events. She researches and teaches in sport psychology and also works as a sport psychology practitioner.
Episode highlights:
(23:38) Psychology and nutrition: setting if-then plans, avoiding situations that trigger negative thoughts, plan ahead, putting good intentions into action
(43:25) Switching foci: recapping techniques, understanding attentional foci, realizing which foci are relevant to your situation, examples, avoiding rumination
(1:04:50) Process goals for training: mental strategies, running technique, nutrition, growth occurs during reflection, valuing positive experiences, instilling confidence, quality of motivation
Our conversation:
(0:00) Introduction: introducing Carla, her impact on Koop’s coaching, unique psychological demands of endurance sport,
(2:25) Carla’s book: learning from experts, combining psychology and psychology, the holistic nature of sports performance, link to Carla’s book and impact on Training Essentials for Ultrarunning
(5:39) Carla’s background: sport and exercise psychology, lecturing at St. Mary’s, Carla’s journey into endurance sports psychology, extrapolating endurance psychology into maternity
(9:37) Psychology across sports: sports-specific silos, social-cognitive thinking, bridging disciplines to best serve athletes
(12:56) Psychology of endurance: defining endurance, the four main psychological demands, discussing motivation and quality of motivation
(16:40) Duration, pacing, volitional pain: managing thoughts of stopping or slowing down during long events, managing pacing strategy based on fatigue and environmental factors, researching pain during ultras
(19:02) Advice to prevent dropping out: guilt versus pride, think of how you will feel in the future, caveats around injury and unhealthy pain, poor nutrition affects your psychology
(23:38) Psychology and nutrition: setting if-then plans, avoiding situations that trigger negative thoughts, plan ahead, putting good intentions into action
(27:27) If-then planning and Vitor Belfort: MMA example, visualizing yourself overcoming challenges
(29:24) Avoidance versus preparation: using rewards to boost mood, treat bag example, mental techniques, practice race day strategies during training, mechanisms of mental training and confidence
(32:52) Pacing: the perceived exertion endpoint interaction, failure of internal pacing strategies during extreme endurance events
(34:47) Pacing during races: self-confidence fluctuates more during longer events, Channel swim example, unknown duration events, undue pressure from outcome goals,
(36:56) Focus: focusing your attention internally versus externally, defining internal, external, narrow, and broad foci, avoiding focus traps by switching techniques
(40:06) Predicting event duration: environmental challenges, pair goals with something process-oriented, avoid setting goals outside of your control, London marathon example
(43:25) Switching foci: recapping techniques, understanding attentional foci, realizing which foci are relevant to your situation, examples, avoiding rumination
(46:51) Getting stuck in comfortable strategies: the most comfortable strategy is not always the most effective for the situation, challenges of getting trapped in one focus method
(49:08) Dissociatives techniques: ignoring problems lets them compound, dissociation inhibits problem solving, example
(51:00) Advice for internal and eternal foci: focusing internally can increase RPE, dissociating makes it difficult to adapt, work around your blind spots, create a routine with multiple techniques
(53:12) Pressure: previous episode with Jolan, challenge and threat states, exploring demands and resources
(55:25) Boosting resources: using self-efficacy and motivation, approach and avoidance, physiological effects of challenge and threat states, using imagery and self-talk to create challenge states
(58:28) Decreasing demand: drawing on past experiences, drawing confidence from training, perceived control and goal setting, physical demand analogy, recap of resources versus demands, resources are more controllable
(1:02:49) Using reflection for growth: TrainingPeaks example, putting post-activity comments before data
(1:04:50) Process goals for training: mental strategies, running technique, nutrition, growth occurs during reflection, valuing positive experiences, instilling confidence, quality of motivation
(1:09:08) Plan, perform, reflect: the qualitative training process, challenges in getting athletes to see beyond data, building a strong feedback loop,
(1:10:50) Developing awareness: technical and social goals in training, goals are more than time splits, practicing process goals for race day performance, building self-regulated learning skills
(1:14:14) Maternity and sports psychology: Carla’s new book, drawing on sports psychology techniques to help with maternity, personal example, the writing process, feedback from Olympians and casual athletes
(1:17:06) Training for maternity: using tools learned from sports, mental skills, social support, emotional decompression postpartum, building tools relevant to both endurance sport and maternity
(1:19:56) Improving post-pregnancy: athletes can use mental skills and experiences from maternity to become stronger athletes
(1:20:53) Carla’s book: release date, returning to the KoopCast to discuss endurance psychology and maternity in episode 184
(1:21:43) Wrap-up: where to find Carla, giving thanks
(1:22:55) Outro: links in the show notes, introducing Research Essentials for Ultrarunning, a monthly research newsletter
Additional resources:
How Training for Ultras Can Empower Your Pregnancy Journey with Carla Meijen PhD and Stephanie Howe PhD | KoopCast Episode #184
Research Essentials for Ultrarunning newsletter
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible
Information on coaching-
Koop’s Social Media
Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop