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00:00:01
Dr Josephine Perry | Performance Psychologist
357 Plays9 months ago
Listen to hear Michelle and Dr Josephine chat about how we can encourage more women into ultra-running, and secondly, mental strategies to improve performance in long distance running.
The podcast covers:
- barriers into ultrarunning affecting women
- how we can achieve gender parity in ultra-running
- setting effective goals
- preparing body and mind for an ultra
- strategies for dealing with tough moments in a race, such as mantras and visualisation
- tips for dealing effectively with panic attacks if they happen during a race
- Josie's website is www.performanceinmind.co.uk
The Threshold Trail Series website is www.thresholdtrailseries.com
And you can follow Dr Josephine Perry on Instagram
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Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi Josie, thank you so much for joining us on the UK Run Chat podcast today. Would you like to, I mean, you are a regular kind of, we regularly see you on the UK Run Chat community, but would you like to just introduce yourself to our listeners here? Sure. Yeah, I'm Josie. I'm a sports psychologist and a runner. I've been running, I worked out for 20 years this year. I go up to marathon distance as the max my body can cope with.
00:00:29
Speaker
I love racing and I love as a sports psychologist working with runners. So I do lots of one-to-one work trying to get athletes to enjoy their races a bit more, to get the most out of themselves. I also do lots of workshops with different run clubs and different groups of people.
00:00:48
Speaker
And I write books. So my latest is called The Ten Pillars of Success. And it looks at 10 characteristics that can really help you make life more successful. And each characteristic is brought to life by someone fairly well known that can really talk about that. So we have lots of runners in that book. We have Damien Hall and Lucy Gossage, who, if anyone was following the spine a couple of weeks ago, will have seen them both doing brilliantly.
00:01:17
Speaker
And we have Dane Kelly Holmes in there as well, talking about how important it was in her career to have a sense of belonging. Yeah, it sounds fantastic. I've actually got one of your books here on my desk called The Psychology of Exercise, which I found.
Career Transition and Education
00:01:31
Speaker
very interesting as I have a daughter about to well she's 10 so she's kind of getting into you know that they're not wanting to do it anymore because she's getting very bodily aware so I thought it'd be interesting to kind of reflect on how women feel exercising today. I mean how did you get into like the psychology and sports psychology? How did that come about?
00:01:55
Speaker
So I was doing, I always call it a grown up job, I was working for a big organisation as a communications director and we went over to Melbourne, me and my husband in Australia to do Melbourne Ironman. I've done most of my training in nice
00:02:15
Speaker
chlorinated 20 meters swimming pools in London. And then I stood on the beach in Frankston where this race is and oh my goodness, the waves were utterly terrifying. Everyone was looking scared. And the guy in the tan always said, you know, you can't control the waves, but you can control how you feel about them. And I was, yeah, I guess 10 years into doing sport. And it was the first time I'd realized I could use my brain.
00:02:42
Speaker
So I don't really have a body designed particularly well for triathlon, my sport. But if I use my brain a bit more, I might be able to do better. And it was just one of those moments that was proper light bulb moment. And I had a great race. And when I came back to the UK, I started looking into kind of sports psychology, which wasn't really talked about 10 years ago.
00:03:03
Speaker
and doing a bit more research into it. And a couple of months later, I quit my job. I went to do a conversion course at university for a year. I then did a year's Masters in Sports Psychology. And then I realised there were another three years of training to do in order to be properly qualified. So I had to do that as well. But then 10 years later, here I am.
00:03:26
Speaker
Yeah, gosh, what a powerful moment then for you, that one kind of meeting, how a life can
Diverse Work in Sports Psychology
00:03:33
Speaker
change. So you obviously really enjoy working with athletes. Do you work mainly with runners then or is it any kind of sports people? I think I've worked out, I've worked with 28 different sports now.
00:03:47
Speaker
And lots of the, not always just sports, a lot of the tech, the tools we use in sports psychology work equally well across. I work a lot in medicine, in education, with business people. So exactly the same tools and techniques and approaches we use with athletes also work in business too. So it's a complete mix. I do have a soft spot for runners.
00:04:12
Speaker
Yes, you were running yourself. I know you're coming back from it. Is it a broken toe you've had? Yes. Christmas Eve. I tripped over a water bottle that had been left in the middle of my living room floor. Yeah. Oh no, we've all done it. I've broken my toe. I want to duvet cover before now. Oh no. Yeah, it's just something silly that puts us out for a while. So are you back at it now? Is it feeling okay?
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, I did a run on Monday and it's still feeling a bit wobbly, so I might have a little bit more time off. Yeah. Oh yeah, we'll take it easy. Well, today we're chatting about ultra marathons and just pushing ourselves a little bit further now. Threshold Sports have arranged this chat and I was excited when I read about the Ultra 50-50 campaign because they've set an ambition, haven't they, in the Threshold Trail series to achieve at least a 50% female participation.
00:05:08
Speaker
you know for this this summer's races and beyond so they they do the race the king and the race to the stones which are both 100 kilometre races now this particularly interests me i i have done ultras before um at the moment i kind of i feel like that distance is beyond me at the moment i'm kind of in perimenopause so
Gender Equality in Racing
00:05:30
Speaker
i'm
00:05:30
Speaker
I'm kind of intrigued to hear your, your kind of tips for helping women, first of all, believe they can get to that point where they want to do an ultra marathon. And secondly, like how we can get the best out of ourselves. So, um, I think figures, um, they did give us some figures about female participation in UK running events. So it's actually dropped post COVID, which is quite sad, isn't it? To see, because it was,
00:05:58
Speaker
on the rise. I mean, what are your thoughts around this just initially? I can see why it dropped post COVID. I think for my perception is women had it really, really tough during COVID of taking on far more responsibilities than even before we normally have and particularly caring responsibilities. And I often know that when I work
00:06:25
Speaker
with men and they've got a challenge they're really up for. They get super excited about that challenge and they've entered and they're off doing it.
00:06:33
Speaker
Whereas women tend to take or some women will take longer deciding whether they can justify it and how are they going to cover childcare or other responsibilities. And is it fair to spend that money entering something on themselves rather than on their children? And so it does seem to be there's a lot of guilt that sometimes goes into
00:06:57
Speaker
doing something that's purely for ourselves and the time that will take away from some of the responsibilities and the caring we feel we should be putting into other people. So I can definitely see why post COVID that number went down. What really worries me is it's still down. So we know that in ultra distance racing,
00:07:20
Speaker
it's about 30% of athletes taking part are female. And there's no reason, physiology wise, why that should be. So I wonder if it is some of those caring responsibilities, maybe
00:07:36
Speaker
some worries about whether it's possible. I often find guys will enter a race and then figure out how they do the training and how they're gonna fit it in and whether it's possible, but they'll just get on with it. And women will be much more focused on, can I do that? They almost need to be in a good place first, and then they'll enter a race. A man will enter a race and then figure out how on earth you do it.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, so we kind of like to be more prepared, don't we? And no, we've got this. And in a way, that's a great thing. It's really important that we don't just go off and start trying to run huge distances. We do need, everybody needs to build up responsibly and not putting their body under too much pressure and increasing a little bit by little bit and really, really preparing exceptionally well. So it's a good thing.
00:08:31
Speaker
I just think we probably need to make more opportunities for women to see what is possible.
Role Models and Planning for Success
00:08:40
Speaker
And if you can see others doing it, you're more likely to be up for it yourself.
00:08:45
Speaker
Yes, it's true. There are some very high profile female ultra runners out there doing really well out there at the moment. I mean, I'm thinking of, you know, Jasmine Paris, well, relatively recently in the spine race and Courtney DeWalter, of course, she's she's doing phenomenally well. I mean, what what a role model for women to go run long distance. So, I mean, I mean, are there any more that kind of spring to mind that you can think of that we can be looking to?
00:09:13
Speaker
Oh anyone watching anyone doing the spine last week actually was just how people keep going when if you watch any of the videos that the women put out as they were going along it's mind-blowing that you can be basically almost at the top of a mountain in snow in a blizzard you can see about a meter in front of you
00:09:35
Speaker
And you just keep going. They are all amazing. And there are lots of different sources of confidence that we can get, but a really, really good one is vicarious confidence. So it's seeing other people that are a bit like us going out and doing things we would like to try. And you kind of look at them and go, well, if they can, maybe I can too.
00:10:01
Speaker
I am not going to go often after watching Lucy Gossage do the spine and watch her videos. There's no way I'm going to go and do the spine. But it does make me think, oh, maybe I should stretch myself a bit more. Maybe I should try something that's a bit different or that I don't feel 100% comfortable doing. Maybe that's a great thing to do and go and see what's possible. So I think the more women we have who are profiled
00:10:28
Speaker
out doing really cool adventures the better and that's why I loved what Threshold have done where they've picked these women that they can just show their journey and all of them are amazing but they all had something about them where you're like oh she's just had a baby she's got a stoma she's done this they're just like they they're people we can all relate to they're not elite athletes they're not the Courtney De Walters who's on another planet to most of us
00:10:59
Speaker
The real role models to me are the people that are, they've got stuff going on in their lives. They've got the people we'd consider normal women.
00:11:08
Speaker
But they're being brave enough to go out and push themselves and see what's possible. They're the ones that really inspire many of us. Yeah, that is such a good point, actually. Yeah, it's not just about the elite athletes, is it? I think if we can see something of ourselves in others, that's so important. I mean, a lot of women are kind of fearful of diving into these races just in case. How can we kind of tackle the anxiety and fear with regard to
00:11:36
Speaker
you know, taking the step into ultra distance. Have you got any tips for people? So there's two things. So one is really, really good planning. So you never want to get on the start line.
00:11:50
Speaker
and be utterly terrified that you don't know you can do it. You need a whole list of things in the back of your mind about the goals you set on the way there and how you achieved them, the distances you've practiced running in the build up, the evidence that you can give yourself that you can do difficult things or you can handle setbacks or you can get through discomfort.
00:12:11
Speaker
So you want to plan your training, not just with the physical stuff in mind. You want to plan your training with how to give yourself all of that mental evidence that you can do these really hard things and that you've got mental skills and a toolkit in the back pocket that you've practiced that are going to get you through it. And that means you stand on the start line going,
00:12:32
Speaker
Hey, stuff might happen in an ultra in any long distance race. Stuff happens. It's part of the excitement is it's totally uncontrollable. So stuff will go wrong. Stuff will be difficult. We're never going to expect it to be perfect. But at least knowing I've done everything I possibly could in the build up can give you a real good confidence that at least you got to the start line in a good place. Yeah.
00:13:00
Speaker
other element I think is so important is knowing your why. So one of the things I loved watching with the spine was Lucy was fundraising for move charity. So she is an oncologist, but she's also an athlete. And her charity is all about getting people prepared
00:13:22
Speaker
to go
Training and Mental Resilience
00:13:23
Speaker
into cancer surgery through being much more active throughout dealing with cancer, that that makes them happier, it makes them get better outcomes. And so she was fundraising for that. So it's something she's absolutely passionate about.
00:13:37
Speaker
That means when you're on the top of a mountain and it's snowing and it's freezing cold and she said at one point she got a garment out and it was totally frozen. Those moments when you're like, I don't know how to do this, or you're doing Race to the Stones, Race to the King, and you're halfway through and every part of your body's going, this is a stupid thing to do, why am I doing this?
00:14:00
Speaker
You've got the answer for it. You know why it is. So some people that's for charity. Some of the women I met at the launch event for the 5050 Ultra
00:14:13
Speaker
they're doing it because they all do it. So it tends to be there's a group of them and they get on brilliantly and one enters a crazy long race and then gradually picks off everybody else in that group until they've all entered it. I love seeing like the WhatsApp groups where everyone's like, oh yeah, I'll have a go. And then suddenly you're like, what's he all signed up for? This is crazy.
00:14:35
Speaker
But because they're all in it together, there's that real power of community and belonging. And I'm not alone. If something goes wrong, there's somebody by my side. If the training's difficult, there's somebody else that gets how difficult that training is. But they will give me the support.
00:14:52
Speaker
And so if you know your why and you know that you've really prepared well, then actually you get on the start line and you can almost shrug your shoulders going, well, I'm going to give it my best. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. But I've done everything I can to get into a good place. Yeah. Yeah. There's some really good tips. Thank you. I'm just, yeah, I'm just having a flashback to my first marathon. I think that's how I got roped into my first marathon actually. Peer pressure. Let's do it. Yeah.
00:15:21
Speaker
So I mean there are, ultras are obviously difficult races out there so there does have to be some kind of acceptance there that it will get hard as well because there is going to be a moment in any long distance race where you think I can't do this because you're tired, you perhaps need to get some food and how
00:15:44
Speaker
How can people get over that and well prepare for it to start with and just kind of understand that that will happen, like that is a normal part of a race. Is that just about the training or is there something? No, I think it's much more about your mental approach to it. So the approach I use as a psychologist is called ACT. It stands for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
00:16:09
Speaker
And the goal with it is to notice the things that really worry you and your fears and your concerns, but you're not trying to fight them. You're not trying to get rid of them. You're not trying to hide them. You actively listen to them and you learn to sit alongside them so that you can get more uncomfortable with those thoughts of, I can't do this, or this might be embarrassing if it goes wrong or I could fail. So we're not trying to get rid of them and squash them. We're trying to go, yeah, I could fail. It's a difficult thing to do.
00:16:38
Speaker
But I'm going to do it anyway because. And that's where that why comes in. And it could be about our bigger purpose. It could be about the values that we hold very closely to us. It could be about the role model we're trying to be to others. But it's all about accepting that we're trying to do something hard.
00:16:56
Speaker
And that's a good thing. It's good to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. It's good to be able to sit with difficult, uncomfortable feelings at times and still do the thing that we want to do. So I think a lot of it is about the approach. And then a really simple thing that I see most ultra runners dropping out because of is sugar.
00:17:21
Speaker
Right, because sugar, what too much sugar or not? No, not enough. So this is the only part of nutrition I ever strive into. But our brain is about 5% of our body weight. Yeah. It takes 20% of the fuel that we put in our body. And mainly glucose. That's what it loves. That's what fuels it.
00:17:45
Speaker
When it doesn't get enough glucose, we tend to think with the wrong part of our brain. Instead of being able to access the part of our brain that is very logical and rational and makes good quality decisions, we start to think with the threat part of our brain, which is highly emotional, has lots of black and white catastrophic thinking and goes a bit haywire. Yeah.
00:18:08
Speaker
So what I see tends to happen a lot in ultra distance running is that somebody will be really good with their nutrition to start with, but they will get to a certain point where they just feel really nauseous and really sick. And the thought of having another gel or another bar just makes them want to feel really nauseous. So they stop.
00:18:30
Speaker
And it isn't the physical element that that necessarily impacts, particularly. It's the mental one. So as soon as they've stopped eating and they're not fueling their brain, their brain very quickly gets to a point of, this is a stupid thing to do.
Fueling and Visibility for Female Athletes
00:18:45
Speaker
Why am I doing this? This hurts. This is uncomfortable. Let's stop. And as soon as that person has pulled out and they've eaten, they're really annoyed with themselves that they stopped.
00:18:58
Speaker
So it's a really simple one, but it's about thinking when you're doing an ultra and you're taking in your nutrition and your fuel, it is not about fueling your body necessarily. It's just about, just as much about fueling your brain. Yeah, that is, yeah. Do you know, I've never thought about that. That, that obviously all makes perfect sense. I've never considered that the fuel is for the brain as well, but that's yeah.
00:19:20
Speaker
But I'm thinking back to moments in races where I've had similar feelings because I've not been fueled enough. It's not the body, is it? It's the brain. As your brain's going, well, this is a dumb thing to do. Let's quit. And at that point, your brain goes, yeah, well, thanks. So that's just about being prepared, isn't it? And going through your training and making sure. Practicing in training so your tummy is really used to everything you're giving it.
00:19:46
Speaker
But also having a really strict plan that you're going to use in your race and not waylaying from that. So stuff will happen in any ultra race because they're so long, because you're in conditions that are not controllable.
00:20:02
Speaker
If you want controllable conditions, you're probably going to be able to do like 100 metre sprint in a stadium. Once we start to get any longer than that, we're welcoming in a lot of uncontrollables. And the further you go and the more wild conditions you are in, the more of that you get. But there should be some non-negotiables within your plan. And that should always be your fueling strategy. Yeah, that's a very good tip. Thank you, Josie.
00:20:31
Speaker
So we chatted briefly about the kind of pressures from society on women in terms of making them feel guilty. I mean, how can we help society get over that as a whole? How can we get over that? Oh, I wish we could fix that one. It's been a long time in the training, hasn't it? How can we take small steps to kind of make things different, I guess?
00:21:00
Speaker
It's hard. It's really hard. I think at a cultural level, it is far more profiling of female athletes.
00:21:09
Speaker
It's having far more sponsorship of female athletes. It's sports scientists actually doing proper research on female athletes. It's not talking about female athletes and athletes. When we see football, we should be talking about men's football and women's football instead of football and women's football. So it's just all the time. I marked university papers recently
00:21:38
Speaker
And it was fascinating that there was a coach talked about in the case study in it. And I would say at least a quarter of the papers assumed the coach was male. It was a generic name. It could have been either. No one assumed the coach was female. So there is still such a kind of hangover that sport is a man's world.
00:22:03
Speaker
And until we actively promote more and more women and make them super visual, I loved seeing, I didn't get to go to the running show this weekend. I had massive FOMO. But I loved seeing stages. There were so many women's names up on the stages. They were hosted by people like Anna Harding and Safey Power. So it just puts women front and center of running. And that is amazing. That makes you go, oh, this is a world for me.
00:22:33
Speaker
But still when we look at sponsorship levels, when we look at how much coverage you get in media, when I read the back pages of any newspaper, lucky if there's one story about women's sport and there'll be 30 about men's. So the more people that can get women out there, I work on elite trail team where we're trying to promote a team of runners going out there doing elite trail running.
00:23:02
Speaker
And we just recruited, we actively ensured we recruited 50% females to that. So with every team and every group and every media group is doing that 50% effort, then we will have far more women out there that we can all get that vicarious confidence from. We can start to go, this is normal. This is what girls do in school. This is what women get to do in their spare time. And we start to change that.
00:23:32
Speaker
It just takes a really long time. Yeah it does sadly doesn't it, it's so important and I guess now is the point to mention it's the whole debate that comes up every time we see something in the news about somebody being attacked while they're out running or it's all about women's safety isn't it, you know, do women, I guess a lot of us do fear going out sometimes or on our own, that can have an impact can't it?
00:23:57
Speaker
I remember finishing, I was working on a British athletics camp doing some online work and I finished about six o'clock on a Sunday night. I was like, oh, I'd love to go out for a run. My husband's looking at me like I'm crazy.
00:24:10
Speaker
Well, why not? And I'm like, because it's dark and it's winter and I'm not safe. And it was honestly like a little light bulb. And he was like, you have to think about that, don't you? It's like, yeah, we all do. And a guy has twice as much training time because they can just go out and run whenever they want and they can probably wear headphones. Whereas we have to think much more carefully about where we're going to be safe, where we run.
00:24:40
Speaker
at what time we do it and that massively cuts down your training time. So a woman trying to train over winter, trying to train for an ultra, is going to struggle to fit in some of those long runs to be able to get them in daylight hours when they're not supposed to be working or picking up children from school or all the other things that are on your plate.
00:25:02
Speaker
You have to feel really confident or feel like you've got lots of safety mechanisms in place to be able to go and just get those hours in. Yeah, you do, don't you? I mean, I've run with my dog quite a lot. I took her out today, actually, but still had a moment where we were running through a woods out into the golf course. And there were no golfers about today for some reason. And there was a van parked there with a man in it. And your mind starts playing tricks on it, isn't it?
00:25:30
Speaker
And as I ran past, he put his van into reverse and followed me up the road. And I think he was just driving up the road and I was just in his way. I had kind of nowhere to go, but I was like, oh my God, I don't like this. So I kind of nipped onto the actual green of the golf course and kind of, and he drove off and I was kind of relieved. But yeah, it does, it's, I do seem to have these moments, as I'm sure we all do, where we just kind of have a worst case scenario, isn't it?
00:25:58
Speaker
Totally. And then the next time you're supposed to go out for a run, there's just that little bit more doubt in your brain. And if you're already on the edge of, do I really want to run or not? It's really cold. The weather's all full. I've got a to-do list of 30 things that I should be doing. It's one of those things that makes it a little bit harder to go out and do it. Yeah.
00:26:18
Speaker
But I guess that's where the power of groups come in, doesn't it? You know, if we've got a group of other people to train with for these events. There's some really, really good research out there about the power of training with other people.
00:26:34
Speaker
If you're going to do it, this is a bit manipulative, but you want people that are a little bit better than you. Yeah. So you don't want people that are worse than you because they'll pull you down and you don't want people that are too good because you'll just feel like you're holding them back or you'll actually run too fast and end up getting injured. But ideally, if you can swing it, you want people that are a little bit better than you and then they help your performance as well as giving you a safe way to run and just a more enjoyable way to run with other people. Yeah.
00:27:02
Speaker
Yeah, just I think it gives you that motivation to get out as well, doesn't it? Yeah, I know I struggle to get out on my own now, which is where the dog comes in very useful.
00:27:14
Speaker
My way at the moment is I drop my daughter off at school and then I have to run home. None of the getting out the house bit. It's just a lot quicker. If it's going to take me half an hour to walk, I might as well run for half an hour and get my running. So if you know that you struggle to get out the door or to do certain things, you can really do some planning of like, how do I give myself no choice? Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:44
Speaker
Right, I mean, should we get into just a little bit about just mental strategies generally for completing an ultra? So we're kind of, we've got to that point where we're entering an ultra, and there are going to be some tough, tough moments in it.
Goal Setting in Ultra-Marathons
00:28:00
Speaker
But how do we kind of set ourselves, you know, a challenging, but achievable goal for that? What's the kind of process for kind of how we're going to do and how we're going to plan for it?
00:28:13
Speaker
At this stage, you've got no idea if it's our first ultra how we're going to perform in it, I guess. No. So I think we can separate it into the preparation for it. Yeah. And then the tools you might want for actually doing it. And they're going to be quite different. Yeah. Preparation for it. You want three types of goals that you're working on. So you want an outcome goal.
00:28:35
Speaker
And an outcome goal is something that's really motivational, gets you super excited, almost like the twisty tummy. Can't wait till I do that. But going to be quite uncontrollable. So that might be finishing your first ultra distance. As you go through it, might be coming top 10 in my age category or something. So it could be a performance goal. It could be a participation and finishing it goal. They're great for motivation.
00:29:05
Speaker
not great actually for working towards because they're so uncontrollable. So we tend to break that down into performance goals. So that might be looking at
00:29:17
Speaker
and I race to the stones, it's 100 kilometres, I think. Well, I don't do long long distance. And right, what would it take me, what would I feel like I've done well on this type of course, looking at what other people have done who are similar to me with the amount of training time I can put in, it would be X amount of hours.
00:29:38
Speaker
So if I can get to a point where I feel I can run that distance in that time, then I'm on track to being able to achieve my outcome goal. So you've got something that's a bit more kind of concrete and something you can break down apart. And then the magic bit comes when you get the process goals. And these are when you pull the performance into little parts of like, well, how do I run that distance in that time?
00:30:04
Speaker
And that might be at least two long runs a week of at least X distance. At least one group run where I do X, Y or Z. At least a session with a nutritionist so that I understand my fueling strategy and how I can fuel it all really well.
00:30:26
Speaker
three times a week doing strength conditioning or stretching work in the gym to ensure I reduce my risk of injury. So they become actions that are all doable and all go into your training plan so that you're like you can see I've done all this stuff and I know all this stuff is likely to get me towards that performance and there's a good chance if I can achieve that performance I will achieve my overall goal.
00:30:53
Speaker
But you're not thinking about the overall goal because the overall goal is terrifying. It's a bit scary. You're looking at it like, whoa, I can't do that. That sounds enormous. But if you break it down into, yes, that's enormous. But in order to achieve that, this is what I have to do in the 16 weeks building up to it.
00:31:12
Speaker
then you're ticking off things every day. And when you tick off things on your training plan, you get a little buzzer dopamine, your reward chemical that makes you feel great. And you get to see you are doing all of the things necessary to get you achieving that big thing. So it takes up your belief, I guess, doesn't it? Your self belief that you can do it. Yes, it's important.
00:31:35
Speaker
Yeah. So that I think is really important in the build up. Okay. You can stand on the start line going, look at all the stuff I've done. These things I've ticked off. Yeah, that's very satisfying in itself, isn't it? Yeah. And then in the race itself, there's two big areas to think about. And this stems from kind of basic biology. So when sports science began
Motivation and Efficiency Techniques
00:32:02
Speaker
around 130 years ago now they started really trying to study how people could get the best out of their body and they used to think that you would put fuel in your body and it would share itself around and you would use up your muscles until there was no fuel left in them and then you'd collapse and obviously we've got a bit more sophisticated than that now and they actually do things like muscle biopsies when someone says they're at total exhaustion
00:32:28
Speaker
And they found that when they do that, there's still about 30% of energy left in your muscles, even when you feel like you can go absolutely no further. So simply remembering that fact, some of my athletes have found very helpful that when their body is screaming at them, I can't do anymore. They're like, you got 30% left, you're absolutely fine. So if there is 30% left in those muscles, there is something else that is stopping people.
00:32:56
Speaker
And the latest theory on this is a biopsychosocial model, which says that to push ourselves further, we first need to increase motivation. And when that is totally maxed out, we need to reduce our perception of effort. We need to make what we're doing feel easier. How do we do that then? So to increase your motivation,
00:33:23
Speaker
You need a really good reason to be running. Yes, which we've already... That's the why, right? Yeah. So if I was to give you a million pounds to finish Race to the Stones...
00:33:36
Speaker
I'd reckon you'd do it. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely an incentive, yeah. So we can up the motivation pretty high. However, if I was to say, I'm going to give you 2 million pounds, that wouldn't really make any difference. Hopefully, unless you're a millionaire, an extra million is probably not going to make that much difference. So we can definitely max out our motivation at points of like, yeah, this is as much as I have to put into what I'm doing.
00:34:04
Speaker
And at that point, we need to reduce perception of effort. So we need to make things feel easier. One of the things that she used a lot by runners is caffeine. Yeah. So caffeine doesn't just help give us that kind of that almost feeling of physical energy and alertness. One of the things it does is actually reduce how difficult things feel.
00:34:28
Speaker
So it can be incredibly helpful in the later stages of a race to help things feel a little bit easier. Another one is smiling. Yes.
00:34:42
Speaker
really simple, but I love it. Where the research suggests when we smile whilst we're running, it reduces the, or improves the efficiency of our running, but it also tricks our brain into thinking what we're doing isn't as difficult.
00:34:59
Speaker
as it is, so it reduces the perception of effort. And this one's tricky in ultras because there aren't many supporters in most of them. But there's additional research that says when somebody smiles at you, you also tend to do better. Yeah. They put cyclists on lab bikes and they flashed up subconsciously pictures of smiling people and grimacing people. And the people that saw the smiling people
00:35:29
Speaker
were able to go, I think, 12% longer than the people that got the grimacy ones. Wow. That's a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not so helpful on an ultra because there's far fewer people watching. But certainly for like big city marathons, big 5Ks, 10Ks, to be able to look into the crowds and smile at people and have them smile back is a really nice boost. And to build it into a mantra, smile every mile.
00:35:57
Speaker
It's a really lovely one. So every time you go under a marker or to the side of one, you smile, tricks your brain. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. I like that.
00:36:09
Speaker
Do you use mantras? I have used them before and they are effective actually. What's your favourite? It's usually just keep moving. I just kind of repeat it to myself. Just keep moving and it does work. It kind of gets my brain in the rhythm, kind of say it rhythmically. It does help. There's two types we tend to use and both of them then again help reduce the perception of effort.
00:36:35
Speaker
So one will be a motivational mantra and it's usually reminding yourself why you're doing it. So that's particularly relevant. If you're doing something for charity, you're running for charity, thinking about those people that you're doing it for is very good. If there's a specific goal in mind, I'll often work with people that are trying to qualify for something.
00:36:57
Speaker
or younger athletes that are trying to get their first England vest or a GB vest, and having that in mind for them is incredibly helpful. When your body wants to back off a little bit, but you're like, I want that vest, I want that vest, helps keep you going.
00:37:14
Speaker
other type of mantra is an instructional one. So like you'll just keep moving, which can either be an instruction to your body, which is quite generic, keep moving one foot in front of the other, keep pushing forward, or it can be quite technical. So for me, the technical one I have is head up.
00:37:35
Speaker
because I know when I'm tired in a race, my head starts to go down, I slouch, I don't get as much oxygen in my body, and I'm shuffling along, I'm more likely to get injured or trip. Whereas if you lift your head up, your shoulders go back, chest goes forward, you lift your legs, and you run far better, and you pick up the pace without even meaning to. Yeah. In fact, if I've used a similar one before, it's usually armpits down because I hunch my shoulders when I get tired. So it's armpits down. And that's from, yeah, my Pilates teacher.
00:38:04
Speaker
So thank you Louise for that, yeah, armpits down. It will be different for each of us depending on the weaknesses that tend to arise when we get tired, whether that's shoulders or neck, and the distances we do. So for my sprinters that I work with, a lot of theirs is about pumping arms, push arms, push arms, or high knees. So it'll be very adapted, but it's the, I always say it's the one thing, if your coach was watching you in that moment,
00:38:33
Speaker
what's the thing they would yell at you? That's kind of a really good instructional mantra because it helps improve your technique, which then helps you push yourself harder, but still reducing the perception of effort. It doesn't feel so hard because you've got good technique. Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. So what about visualisation? Is that a useful tool people can use? How would they go about kind of starting to make that helpful in an ultra?
00:39:02
Speaker
I think visualization is probably the most underrated mental skill there is. I wrote a book a couple of years ago for teenage athletes called I Can. And in there I interviewed ten elite athletes about kind of different elements of their approach to their sport. And almost all of them said one of the most important mental skills they had was visualization.
00:39:27
Speaker
And yet it's probably the one athletes like working on the least because it actually takes up a lot more time than you imagine. It is not closing your eyes and daydreaming about having the best race of your life.
00:39:41
Speaker
It's very technical and it's very much about planning exactly how you would want the most difficult part of your race to go. So we actually write a script for it. When it is most effective is when all your senses are engaged.
00:40:03
Speaker
So it's based on this idea of functional equivalence that in your brain, when you learn how to do a skill, you do it over and over again, and your brain neurons connect in the correct way so that over time it becomes a habit and you do it automatically. The idea of visualization is that our brain can still make those connections, even if we're not physically doing it, but if we are imagining it in the right way with all our senses engaged.
00:40:31
Speaker
So when we write a script, we would be writing about what the athlete can see as they're running through that environment, what they would be hearing, what they can smell, what they can taste, what they can touch, like the stickiness of the hand when you've got gel on it, or the smell as you run through the countryside and you've gone through fields with manure on them. They might feel quite obscure, but it really brings it to life.
00:40:59
Speaker
There's a race I do most years in Windsor, Windsor Triathlon. And every year, because it's in quite a popular part of the Thames, you can taste the diesel.
00:41:10
Speaker
And all I need to do is smell diesel anywhere. And I'm suddenly transported back to being in that river. Oh, wow. Yeah. Very powerful sense, isn't it? Yeah. And so smell and taste can really, really bring things alive. So I will often get an athlete watching a YouTube video or even like the promotional race videos that are made of parts of the courses. Ideally, they'll go out and do bits of the course.
00:41:34
Speaker
So if you're doing something like Race to the Stones and it's the big race of your year, this is the one you really care about. Go out over a couple of weekends and do different sections of it, really, really get to know it. Yeah, so that your imagery is really realistic.
00:41:52
Speaker
Because the more realistic it is, the more when you get to that point in the race, your brain goes, oh, I feel comfortable. I've done this before. I know what I'm doing. Nothing's going to be thrown at me out of the blue. I can do this. So we want to write a script. We want to make that script super realistic. And then we want to record the script and listen to it a couple of times a day.
00:42:20
Speaker
You only want it to be two or three minutes long. So you don't want it to, you're not speeding it up, you want to do it in real time. So it can be really good to think about a part of the race if you're worried about the technical aspects.
00:42:34
Speaker
So if you're doing some downhill running where you know there's going to be rocks and stones and you're a bit worried about that, you can practice downhill running on difficult surfaces as your visualization. Or if you're worried about 70 miles in a 100 mile race tends to be the point where your brain goes, stupid thing to do, let's stop. So perhaps you want your visualization to be about that 70 mile point.
00:43:01
Speaker
Yeah. And how you want to practice when your brain says, I don't want to do this anymore. How are you going to keep going? And you can practice keeping going two or three times a day in the build up so that when you get to that point, you're much better equipped to be able to go. No, I know I can carry on. I'm going to. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's really fascinating, actually. So in this kind of script and the recording that you do for yourself, are you talking in the first person or are you actually talking to yourself as in you will do this? What is there a
00:43:31
Speaker
Is there a right way or a wrong way to do that? No, that's a really interesting question because there's no best practice that I have seen. So some people like to watch from above and see themselves as the little runner on the trail and what they're doing. And other people like to see it through their own eyes.
00:43:49
Speaker
And I've yet to see research. There is research into it, but I've yet to see one that says one is better than the other. Or for different environments. I think it tends to be what works for you. How do you like to see things? Yeah. Oh, fascinating. Well, yeah, I've never tried it that way. I've just kind of tried the actual visualisation. So I'll definitely give that version a go. So yeah, if you're listening out there and have tried it, let us know how you've got on.
00:44:14
Speaker
I just want to ask you one more question, Josie, while you're on, because I've experienced a couple of occasions during races where I've had panic attacks. Do you have any advice for, A, getting over them quickly, and B, just preventing them really, kind of preparing for them and avoiding them? Because it's not a nice place to be when it happens. It's not. No. We did the whole podcast to go through the reason
00:44:41
Speaker
why they appear. And maybe we can do something in future where we go through that whole kind of why people get performance anxiety. And that's what I spend most of my time working with athletes on is performance. That's quite common. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Particularly for a specific group of people, very intelligent perfectionists.
00:45:04
Speaker
You're quite perfectionistic. You really, really want to do well. It tends to trigger much higher levels of performance anxiety. So we won't go into the why they happen because that needs lots of time. But there are two really cool tricks I tend to use when they happen. And the very short version is that when you're feeling anxious, your brain sends two chemicals around your body in order to handle the threat that it is found. Cortisol and adrenaline.
00:45:33
Speaker
And one of the places they tend to go is your heart rate and your breathing rate speed up. So most people, most runners certainly will probably have a respiratory rate of about 13, 14 breaths a minute. If you get super anxious before a race or even in a race, my breathing rate will probably go up to about 20 breaths a minute. And the problem with that is
00:45:55
Speaker
The threat system in your brain is constantly scanning your body to make sure there's no threats. And if the breathing rates only go super high, it goes, oh, look, breathing rates high. There's a threat. And it sends around more adrenaline and cortisol. And you get into a really horrible cycle, which is what tends to cause the panic attack. So there is a breathing technique that I find super effective called colorful breathing. And the idea is you breathe in through your nose a color
00:46:24
Speaker
for four seconds. You hold for two and you breathe out a different colour through your mouth for six seconds. So you can pick whatever colours you want.
00:46:37
Speaker
So the slow breathing gets you down to about five or six breaths a minute. So it stops triggering the continued release of the adrenaline in the cortisol. And the colours mean you're focusing on the colours, so your brain stops ruminating about all the things that are going to go wrong. There's no head space left to ruminate, you're just focused on colours. Yeah.
00:47:00
Speaker
So usually five or six rounds of that are really good to being able to start to slow everything down so your brain stops panicking.
00:47:10
Speaker
Also, a really good tool to use if you can't sleep the night before a race or any night. I use it a lot with my seven-year-old. If she can't sleep, we do colourful breathing. She gets to pick the colours. Well, she picks the colours so then they feel in control. But it's a really nice pattern that they can start to follow and then fall asleep in line with because it's basically tricking your brain into thinking. It's a lot calmer and more chilled than it actually is.
00:47:39
Speaker
That one's really effective. The other one is a grounding technique because what makes us anxious is usually not anything physical because most of our lives now, we don't have physical threats. It's psychological threats. And the psychological threat is usually the outcome that we're worried about and what that means about us and our identity.
00:48:03
Speaker
So we want to move away from thinking about outcomes and focusing on what's going on now in the moment. What kind of tasks do we need to do? And so one nice way to do that is called a senses ladder. Because one of the other things that happens when your threat system is triggered and you've got the adrenaline and cortisol flooding your body is your senses switch off. Because if you're being chased by somebody, you don't need to smell or taste.
00:48:32
Speaker
touch anything, you just need to be able to run really fast in a straight line. So we want to switch back on your senses. So to do this one, you look around you, and anyone listening to this can do this at home right now, and we want you to say out loud five things that you can see, four things you can touch and what they feel like,
00:48:55
Speaker
So you're actively having to really feel to be able to go. My laptop is cold and hard. Three things you can smell. That one is easier outside than in. Two things you can hear. So you're tuning into what's going on outside around you. One thing you can taste.
00:49:17
Speaker
And if you do those, it switches your senses back on. And again, your cognitive focus is on the things you can see and where you are right now. And it stops it shooting forward too. These are all the things that could possibly go wrong and how it might impact my own self-identity. So try those ones and see how you get on. I will do. Thankfully, that's not happened to me for a while, but I thought, well, I've got you here.
00:49:42
Speaker
Yeah, other people might find that useful too. So yeah, please let us know. Well, thank you, Josie. It's been absolutely fascinating chatting to you all about the kind of psychological side of running today. It's not a topic that we often delve into, but we should definitely do more. So just remind us about your new book that's out. It's called The Ten Pillars of Success, and you can hopefully get it anywhere.
00:50:10
Speaker
And where can people find you on social media and online if they want to? So I have a website which is performanceinmind.co.uk and there's a section on there called Performance Zone. So there's lots of worksheets and blogs and toolkits you can take off there and help
00:50:28
Speaker
yourself develop that kind of psychological side. And then I am on Twitter far too much or X now as Josephine Perry, or I'm Josephine Perry 76 on Instagram.
00:50:42
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, lovely. Well, thank you again for coming on and thank you to Threshold Sports and just remind you for everybody that the Threshold Trail Series is happening this summer. You can find out more at www.thresholdtrailseries.com. So thank you very much. Thank you.