The Neuroscience of Ultrarunning with Scott Frey, PhD | KoopCast Episode #182
Episode overview:
Dr. Scott H. Frey is an internationally renowned neuroscientist and psychologist, accomplished endurance athlete, author, and teacher. Scott helps individuals and groups identify and realize their aspirations. He can be reached at: Scott@CerebralPerformance.com
Episode highlights:
(33:42) Factors that reduce pain tolerance: sleep deprivation, anxiety and stress, limited mental bandwidth, maximizing cognitive reserve, automate your race strategy
(44:49) Time-course for adaptation to pain: physical analogy, relatively acute increased ability to recruit motor units over the short term, chronic adaptations to training, psychology follows a similar trend
(55:48) How to practice mental skills: mental skills for intervals are different from mental skills for long runs, simulate the race environment mentally as well as physically, CerebralPerformance.com
Our conversation:
(0:00) Introduction: appreciating the role of psychology in sports, introducing Dr. Scott Frey, pain and perception of effort, strategies to improve performance
(1:46) Setup: physiological coaching bias, wrapping your mind around your mind
(3:23) Scott’s background: experimental psychology and brain imaging, studying cognitive activity, how the brain controls actions and how actions reshape the brain
(6:09) CerebralPerformance.com: putting neuroscience into action, focus on interdisciplinary amateur athletes, ultrarunning is the perfect test case for sports psychology
(8:22) The brain as a prediction machine: behavior is a product of sensory feedback, past experience, and prediction, trail running example
(11:06) Challenging the central governor theory: psychology across different sports, Tim Noakes’ theory, Marcora, and similar models, the role of prediction, examples of manipulating feedback in sport
(15:06) Perceived exertion endpoint interaction: Marcora, using prediction to modulate effort, role in pacing, examples
(17:18) Prediction and duration: weather forecast analogy, predictions gain error with duration, predictions gain accuracy with skill, doubting your predictions
(20:14) Long duration prediction process: normalizing predictive error in ultras, emotional and cognitive reactions to predictions, emotional reactions to pain, comfort with being uncomfortable
(22:29) Sensory feedback does not change RPE: cycling study, challenging traditional schools of thought
(24:04) pushing through pain, differentiating effort-induced pain from injury-induced pain, pain is subjective, the emoji scale, underfueling example, pain tolerance and contextualizing pain
(27:13) Evolving psychological models: the central governor theory, Marcora’s model, why a demanding day makes you feel tired
(28:25) Training emotional responses to pain: mental components to training programs, getting comfortable with discomfort, tolerance and regulation of pain, physiology plateaus and mentality becomes the differentiator in elites
(31:28) Pain tolerance and performance: Jack Daniels’ Running Formula, gaining fitness versus tolerating more suffering, examples
(33:42) Factors that reduce pain tolerance: sleep deprivation, anxiety and stress, limited mental bandwidth, maximizing cognitive reserve, automate your race strategy
(37:43) Priming your psychology: warm-up examples and preconditioning pain, cycling examples, preparing for pain
(40:09) Pain from intensity versus volume: phantom limb example, quantitative aspects of pain, acidity and inflammation, nociceptors, whether pain qualities translate is an open question
(43:02) Warming up before ultras: physiological versus psychological mechanisms, banter
(44:49) Time-course for adaptation to pain: physical analogy, relatively acute increased ability to recruit motor units over the short term, chronic adaptations to training, psychology follows a similar trend
(48:48) Pain is a warning: knowing when to ignore that warning, intensity-induced pain, volume-induced pain, athletes who run collegiately have better pain tolerance
(51:00) Swimming example: the perfect example of comfortability with pain, kids learn to tolerate pain from a young age, swimmers do intensity and volume conjunctly
(52:03) When to practice mental skills: learning is specific and context-dependent, practice mental skills while training
(55:48) How to practice mental skills: mental skills for intervals are different from mental skills for long runs, simulate the race environment mentally as well as physically, CerebralPerformance.com
(59:00) Hyperspecificity: fitness rules physiology, mental specificity must be greater than physical specificity, elite athletes all have similar fitness, motor skills do not translate well
(1:01:46) The ultrarunning needs pyramid: athletes are not Jedis, fitness and mental training are both important
(1:04:18) Mental skills help all athletes: psychology makes a difference for elites and non-elite athletes, examples, coaching and programming analogy, bringing mental skills to the commercial coaching space
(1:07:09) Wrap-up: bringing neuroscience to the everyday athlete, build your mental tools, enjoy what you do, giving thanks
(1:08:32) Outro: recap, apply mental skills to your training, coaching roundtable follow-up podcast next week, share the KoopCast
Additional resources:
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible
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