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Prof Andy Lane - Sport Psychologist, Interview.
94 Plays5 years ago
In this episode we interview Prof Andy Lane.
In this interview we talk about habits, visualisation, self talk and more aspects of sports Psychology for runners.
Andy Lane is a Professor of Sport Psychology and Director of Research Excellence at the University of Wolverhampton. He is a Fellow of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES). He is Health Professional Council registered and a British Psychological Society Chartered Psychologist. He began lecturing at Brunel University before moving to the University of Wolverhampton in 2000.
Given the worldwide popularity of soccer and pressures associated with winning, Prof Lane is regularly asked for comment on TV, radio, website and newspapers. For example, he worked with Adidas on videos with Glenn Hoddle and Mathew LeTissier on penalty taking (see video 1 and video 2 for example). He has led high profile research projects such as “Can you compete under pressure?" a BBC Lab UK led project fronted by former Olympian Michael Johnson. His applied work has involved a number of clients, including ranging from recreational to world championship level. He is a member of the UKactive Research Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board.
Andy Lane is a runner and once completed the London Marathon in 2:57:58.
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Transcript
Introduction of Andy Lane and His Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to this episode of the UK sports chat podcast. This week's guest is Andy Lane. Andy is a professor of sports psychology at the University of Wolverhampton. He is accredited from the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences for scientific support and research and is also a chartered psychologist with the British Psychological Society.
Andy's Sports Involvement and Activities
00:00:29
Speaker
He has authored more than 100 peer refereed journal articles and edited two books. Andy is also a member of the Emotion Regulation of Others and Self Research Network, erosresearch.org.
00:00:44
Speaker
where he investigates in motion regulation in sport and other settings. His applied work has been involved a number of clients including the English Institute of Sport and the London Boxing Association working with an athlete who's preparing for world championship contests. And he's a former amateur boxer.
00:01:04
Speaker
a runner. He remains active in sport as a runner and due athlete and after shedding 20 kilos is enjoying competition again.
Social Media and Running Community Engagement
00:01:14
Speaker
Andy regularly takes part on social media and specifically UK run chat and it was really great to spend some time chatting with him. I hope you enjoy. Thanks for joining us, Andy. Welcome. Pleasure, Joe. Absolute pleasure. Great to have you on. Thank you.
00:01:33
Speaker
I know that both you and your wife Helen join in a lot on our social channels and thank you for hosting the Run Chat Hour last night. Sure again. We've got Helen doing it again soon as well. She's hosting next week, isn't she? We sit on the sofa next to each other typing.
Global Parkruns and the Joy of Exercise
00:01:56
Speaker
There's a lot of running couples. There was one baby as well, a couple of years ago. Excellent. You had your over 450 dark ones, is it? I think you said last week, was it? 450 on Saturday, yeah. Heaven's just almost the same because we obviously don't do them together. So yeah, 450. Which sounds impressive, but it's a habit that I've been doing every Saturday pretty much for the last nine years or so.
00:02:25
Speaker
It's not actually, it's enjoyable, loads of different countries in the world, different park runs. It's all good, isn't it?
Forming Exercise Habits Effortlessly
00:02:33
Speaker
It's all good. You don't need to race them hard all the times or you can race them, run them as hard as possible. But it's great really, because it's free. I love it. I love it as well. You can do it every week. I used to enter races every week. It cost me a fortune, but now it doesn't.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Congratulations on that. And you've mentioned habits there already. It is about, with all health and fitness really, isn't it? And a lot of psychology is about getting yourself into these good habits, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And habits can be hard to get to start up. And the key part about habits is that they are effortless once established.
00:03:21
Speaker
Many people struggle to exercise because they're going through the establishment of the habit phase. If you see it as that and something, well, it's going to feel difficult because the conscious part is that you're going to have to kind of psych yourself up to go and do it.
Overcoming Resistance to New Routines
00:03:39
Speaker
It's more difficult. After a while, you're out there doing it. No one has to psych themselves up in the morning to switch the kettle on.
00:03:46
Speaker
but it's a habit that happens automatically. And we can get into very similar ways around our exercise habits by continually reinforcing and continually doing it. Yeah. Yeah. When you read about habits in some of these psychology books, you see different stats, you see, you know, 28 days straight, all that kind of stuff. Have you got any take on that?
00:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, what you'll find is that there isn't really any very good research on that, that have taken the... We will test the hypothesis that it'll be 28 days, not 27. We will test the hypothesis that the length of the thing you're meant to do is this long, the engagement is this way. I mean, there are multiple, multiple factors that go into that, which make that very problematic, what to do.
00:04:41
Speaker
Part of that is you'll want to do it, so the people who set goals to exercise on New Year's Day want to exercise but can't get into the habit, but they actually got the good intention to do so.
00:04:53
Speaker
And so that's a starting point for some people. They, they feel they, they don't really want to do it. They want to be in the habit of doing it. They don't really want to actually do the activity itself. So be ultimately much more difficult because it'll come every time you think about that, it'll come with some, Oh, I don't really want to do this.
Setting and Achieving Goals
00:05:12
Speaker
Thoughts that come along with it. So, uh, I think people should stick at it. And the point when they, when it's a habit is when they've done it effortlessly.
00:05:23
Speaker
And there's bits of around that habit. I mean, I saw it yesterday when people talk about not going for a run and not going for losing their training because of the marathon. And you kind of think, well, you're in a really good exercise habit at the moment. And what could happen is that you lose that habit because you determine that I can't go for a run because of, or I can't do X because of the virus or whatever.
00:05:48
Speaker
But actually, you don't need a lot of space to be able to exercise, and a lot of the barriers we present are our own self-imposed barriers. So you can almost on no space at all do a circuit training session.
00:06:04
Speaker
and get into the habit of doing that and get into that as a routine and then after a while you'll start going well I did 15 squats last time, 17 like and you start getting motivated by your progress and you have this ridiculous awareness that you go I'm now actually thinking about doing squats or whatever it is and you go crikey I've really got into that and how easy that was to get into that way of thinking.
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah. Do you think those people, you think about New Year's resolutions, they tend to be huge, like overwhelming goals. And you're talking there about going from 15 to 17.
00:06:45
Speaker
Do you think people need a bit of... What's the word I'm looking for? They need to understand the baby steps that it takes to get to that big goal because so often these goals that are set are people who've perhaps never ran and go straight to a marathon or they want to go lose a significant amount of weight or... Is that called a process goal? What would that be?
00:07:12
Speaker
Well yeah, I mean it's good to have a really big challenging goal because it gives you a real sense of direction but then you've got to
00:07:21
Speaker
break that down into what that means specifically on a moment-by-moment basis, of which then becomes achievable. So if you want to be able to run for an hour, that was great, and you can't run at all. And you go, well, my goal will be able to run for an hour, and I'll be fantastic when I do that. But actually, the first goal is to get out the door.
00:07:43
Speaker
So you can say, actually, until I've cracked the activity of getting out the door, whether it's for one minute or 10 minutes or an hour and so on, if I don't overcome those thoughts, then I won't get anywhere near that. And so the first bit is basically goal number one would be to get out the door when I intend to get out the door and start the run and set that as the goal. And so that becomes a sub-goal to the main goal because one allows the other to take place.
00:08:13
Speaker
I mean, I'm not really into process goals in that you don't think about the outcome. You think about what you're doing on a moment by moment basis. And you focus your concentration on that. Because what that typically do, it helps you become absorbed into what you're doing. And once you're absorbed into what you're doing and concentrating on it, you tend to be more efficient, go a bit quicker. It can feel a bit easier. And in the end, the outcome largely takes care of itself. And I get to the end and that's
00:08:41
Speaker
You go a lot further than you would do if you're kind of jokingly saying, are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? If you're monitoring your running speed, I've got to do each 400 meters in two minutes. You do a 400 meters in two minutes five.
00:09:02
Speaker
you start going, oh, this is not worth it. I'm no good today. But if you said, right, my goal is to run and pump my arms, just possibly have cadence as your goal, I want to keep 170 beats a minute, steps a minute going, then you can achieve that whatever the speed. And you might have a slow lap, but three laps later, you might have a quick lap.
00:09:25
Speaker
You don't write yourself off and you don't get the negative the wave of it's the wave of negativity that comes when you go you get behind what you expect and How you start talking to yourself and that can become really destructive make it feel much harder
00:09:40
Speaker
And by breaking it into those smaller goals as part of the bigger whole achievement, you're having lots of positive experiences as you're going through it. Rather than that, am I nearly there yet? No, I'm not. So it's a lot more of a positive experience, isn't it? Absolutely. And it's under your...
Managing Negative Thoughts in Exercise
00:10:03
Speaker
Importantly, I think the good thing about process goals that should be entirely under your control
00:10:08
Speaker
You can have a goal to run as lightly and gently as possible. I can't be bothered to go for a run, but I want to get out anyway. I tend to feel better at the end of it. I'm going to go as lightly and gently as possible. You could try to listen to how light your feet go on the ground and how slow you can go and still run.
00:10:32
Speaker
Because part of the reason why people don't like exercising is the fatigue comes with the thought that it's a bit too hard and you get a bit of negative emotions when you think you're not going to do stuff. So you feel tired and you think you're not going to fail. It's an absolute turn off. When you're warmed up, the actual act of I've done a mile, now I feel good starts telling you you are feeling much better and then everyone carries on then, don't they?
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's the challenge, isn't it? Because even that negative thought is trying to keep you comfortable as well, isn't it? It's like, oh, don't fancy going out in the wind and rain today or stay near where it's warm and sit on the settee where it's comfy. And yet, if you do go out and do the positive, you feel better. It's like your brain's trying to protect you both ways.
00:11:25
Speaker
It is. Runners have to override the brain's defence. I quite like the idea that your brain will have a conversation with you. It comes in the form of fatigue, typically, and says you're too tired, you haven't eaten enough.
00:11:42
Speaker
And actually, it's just trying to say, we don't really want to do this. But your goal as the person in charge of that is to go, actually, my goal is to run a bit longer, a bit further. And actually, I can take a little bit of hunger. I can take a bit of fatigue. It's OK. We won't call. It won't all fall apart.
Visualization Techniques in Sports Psychology
00:11:58
Speaker
But have that conversation saying, OK, well, you said we're a bit tired. But when we get back, we'll have something to eat. So just kind of rationalize the conversation with yourself to talk yourself through it.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Great. So we had some questions coming on last night's hour, didn't we, which we wanted to dig a little bit deeper on. One of them was around visualization. Just tell us a little bit about what that is and maybe some of the how techniques that people could use. Well, yeah, visualization is a psychological skill, which most people use quite a lot of the time.
00:12:42
Speaker
in a lay sort of form. It's seeing yourself performing in essence. You can see yourself from the third person, so you are the crowd looking at you as the performer, or you can see yourself through the eyes of the performer.
00:13:01
Speaker
And so you can, it's very, I mean, from that point of view, it's very good for re repeating performances. It's very good for repeating performances where you made a bad decision, replying them and having a good decision. So that you just the decision to slow down because you you are going too slow.
00:13:23
Speaker
And you could actually replay that and say, well, I'm going to maintain the same intensity, but I'm going to try and change my technique. So I do it slightly differently. Or you get a plan that's not just effort-based, but offers a different way of looking at it that goes, well, I can actually cope with this. Or I am fatigued. Could I have pushed for another 20 seconds?
00:13:46
Speaker
and just reframing it, re-seeing yourself performing and performing in a slightly better way, which allows, you know, the confidence comes from being successful performances and what imagery and visualization can do is create those successful performance in your head. So you've got a blueprint. When you're in that situation, you've got a way of doing it again in the future. Yeah. So it's like you've practiced, it's like you've already done it. Is that
00:14:18
Speaker
So you mentioned you can do that either looking, so you can visualize, imagine in your mind's eye, looking through your own eyes or seeing yourself in your mind's eye movie. Is there a difference between those two in how that trains your mental preparation? Yeah, looking from the third person,
00:14:44
Speaker
is less powerful than you as the performer. So you as the performer is good. When you've got experience of doing that, then you've got a memory in there to actually use.
00:14:57
Speaker
But the third person works very well teaching imagery is that you can have a video of yourself running and then you can watch the video of yourself running and then use that image you've just seen as the basis for the imagery you're about to do. So it becomes really easy to actually learn from actually that I look like this. I've just seen how I look and now I'm going to repeat that in my mind and replay it and do it differently.
00:15:21
Speaker
So, you know, slightly different ways of doing it, but the ease in which we can video ourselves makes it really useful as a strategy. I mean, and people can set these videos up quite easily, is that you just get someone to film yourself running over the top of a hill, and therefore you can create your own motivational video of you running over the top of the hill.
00:15:47
Speaker
You can then do imagery of yourself running over the top of the hill, so when you're doing reps around that, which is the idea that you run strong to the top of the hill and then accelerate over it, could be the goal, and you image yourself doing it. You watch yourself doing it, and then you watch an improved version of yourself in your mind doing it.
00:16:05
Speaker
Get confident that you can do that. Get the blueprint for how that works. As you run over the top of the hill, nice, relaxed arms, pumping, to get your arms pumping, to get your legs, as the legs get slower. And what you're doing is you're creating difference in your technique and have confidence that you can deliver that technique at the point where it matters. And you're learning to concentrate on the parts which will help you go a lot faster. And actually, you're going harder but not trying harder.
00:16:34
Speaker
you're trying to be more efficient so the imagery can help you focus on what really matters to overcome the difficult moments which I think is really key in running because simply trying harder often just creates more tension and more tension creates more fatigue.
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah. So is this useful for looking at yourself and remembering previous performance and future performance? Or how should running hobbyists, if I'm going to sit down and do my first 10 minutes of visualizing, should I sit down and think about a previous race that I've run and how that should have improved? Or should I be thinking about a training technique that I should be imagining myself being effortless?
00:17:20
Speaker
I'd say is that you've got a training session coming up, whatever that's going to be, and you go, okay, what is my training session? And then what are the goals for each different parts of it?
00:17:34
Speaker
whatever they may be. And then however you're going to measure those, see you then do imagery of yourself performing in the very session you're about to do. So you start exactly in the here and now about to go and do this session. It has goals about how I want to perform and therefore imaging yourself running, image yourself getting through to closely achieving these goals is a great starting point for that.
00:17:59
Speaker
A really good activity to use for imagery is weight training. I know people who run as user, but you can imagine yourself pushing the weight up and then you actually have a go at pushing the weight up. And it sits very nicely because you sit on the machine having a rest and which allows you to do the imagery and then you reenact what you just did in a way to actually do it again.
00:18:21
Speaker
So you could integrate that into the task quite nicely and it actually gives you rest. Because I know what runners are like when they get in the gym is that they think rest is not something they have.
00:18:32
Speaker
but they can build their mental skills and build their physical skills at the same time in that way. But I think you get a session and you go, what are the goals for this session? And you specify those, and then you use imagery to help you achieve those goals in the session. And you see yourself, you go through it how you would achieve those goals. So you see yourself doing it and you get an understanding of the process it needs to go through. It doesn't have to be that long necessarily,
00:19:01
Speaker
But it does then target. How long should it be? Well, I mean, this has been about the maintaining level of motivation. And it depends on the complexity of the task and how difficult, how many negative thoughts you'll have in to try and stop that.
00:19:20
Speaker
In essence, I don't think you need to, 10 minutes of doing this beforehand would be enough because that's very practical, allow how it would be in competition and that you can integrate these skills into the warmup going into a run, into a race. And therefore, I said an hour, an hour might be quite good for learning complicated skills and doing analysis and planning, but it's totally impractical.
Incorporating Visualization into Routines
00:19:43
Speaker
We're at 10 minutes about going through the difficult moments and doing that in,
00:19:49
Speaker
You can do that in the very early stages of a warm-up, so that you actually can start engaging the brain and the body together at the start, which then provides a context for it.
00:20:00
Speaker
I guess whilst you're travelling, if you're travelling to an event, you're on the bus, you're on a train, you could be sitting there and doing it. And I was just to go back to your weights example. So if I'm doing my hill sprints for the week, you run up the hill as you're on your way back down, when you're walking back down is when you run through that next rep in your mind's eye. You can do that. You could do that.
00:20:31
Speaker
That assumes there's no recovery goal. Recovery might be about getting your breaths back, getting relaxed. So you can have all sorts of plans around that. And by getting better at recovery, you could then get better at the rep. It certainly can do that. You can certainly integrate it in, and you certainly could do it beforehand as well. And you could do both and mix it up so that sometimes it's around that. It's around both of those areas, yeah.
00:21:00
Speaker
So what other things are that people can do for visualisation? So I've seen people with image boards where they've got things stuck on the fridge and I remember in an old corporate environment I saw people with a PowerPoint presentation that used to come up on the front of their...
Tools for Enhancing Performance and Confidence
00:21:19
Speaker
on the front of their screen and they wrote things as if they had already achieved them. It was written in the past tense, it was, you know, I've achieved such and such a goal and such and such a time, but why would they do that? Yeah, all they're getting there is performance reminders of that and create the
00:21:41
Speaker
mindset is that you did it before you can do it again. And when you get a bit nervous, it's really good to have those performance reminders.
00:21:50
Speaker
placed in front of you. Because when you're nervous, the brain then is very good at recording all the times you didn't go so well, and often not very good at remembering when you did go so well. So having pre-planned the reminders of when it was really good is a really good idea. It's kind of why some people are a bit negative across use of starve and all these other type of activities.
00:22:15
Speaker
But actually, if you, say, identify your five best runs and links to your five best runs, you can click them up and then you can drag the mouse, you can drag the cursor through and you can relive that really good run and you get memories of overcoming the difficult physical parts. It's a real refresher to say, actually, I remember doing that and I can do that again.
00:22:44
Speaker
are certainly tough enough. I didn't give up that day. All sorts of positives you can pull out from that. Didn't give up, kept calm, wherever they are, you've looked at that beforehand and you can put it in the notes of the run actually and then make it private if you don't want people to see that. And then you can use that as a performance reminder.
00:23:08
Speaker
The other bit to strive is that people can actually make them private and they can have all their
Handling Anxiety in Sports
00:23:13
Speaker
runs on and just make a couple private, which they then use, where they fill it full of notes, which then become really useful as a way of looking at how well he performed. Yeah, that's a great tip. So my take is on this, that everyone could
00:23:31
Speaker
is potentially brilliant at doing this because I think the natural habit for us.
00:23:39
Speaker
is that we do it the wrong way around, don't we? So we worry in advance about things that might not ever happen. So I'm a parent, I've got three children. And it's one of the most natural things that you do is you think, well, what if this happens to your child? They're going out and they're doing X, Y, and Z. What if this happens and what if that happens? And that translates into performance anxiety. What if I mess up or I don't get X, Y, and Z right in all sorts of aspects of your life.
00:24:06
Speaker
Is it just something that we naturally do the wrong way round, if you like? Is that what we do? Well, we're not going to get rid of... I think the imagery and all these techniques won't get rid of anxiety necessarily. What the imagery will
00:24:21
Speaker
can help you perform to a better standard of which your expectations that you will be able to perform to a better standard. So when you go into a race, you expect that and you become more nervous because you think you're gonna fail against your previous standard. What kind of working against themselves is I don't think we should see anxiety necessarily and always as a bad thing. And if we can accept that when we do something quite important to us, we're gonna get nervous.
00:24:50
Speaker
And then we go, okay, I'm going to get nervous. And then is what is the narrative that comes with these nerves? And then you can replay the times you got nervous.
00:25:01
Speaker
I know if it's crippling for people then it's not a good thing and we can do various breathing and relaxation techniques to reduce that and they do work really well. But for many people it's a conversation that goes on in their head that talks about them failing and you just need to kind of
00:25:22
Speaker
take a third person perspective on that and say well that you're having this conversation with me your brain is and you can give that anxiety a name you go okay your anxiety thoughts are going in my head or negative thoughts are going my head you're called you can give it an 89 you want
00:25:40
Speaker
And then you can have a conversation with that and say, well, actually, I'm not going to give up. I'm not going to suddenly give up. If I get tired, I'm going to slow down. Or I'm going to temporarily, I'm going to have a drink. Or I'm not going to walk. At what point? And you can start having going, well, it's not going to go so disastrous that I'm going to have the sort of things you're talking about. Because I've done those sorts of things before. So you rationalize with those negative thoughts away from the competition. Replay it.
00:26:09
Speaker
And then it puts it into perspective.
Pre-race Routine for Mental Preparedness
00:26:11
Speaker
It puts a lot of it into perspective that you will still be able to perform well because you have done previously when you're anxious. Kind of the most difficult bit with anxiety is just getting to the start. Once the race starts, the anxiety largely stops.
00:26:28
Speaker
So you just need to get to the start. And a lot of the work I will do is to give people a really clear plan for the first part of the race. So it's really conscious that you're not going to start as if your shorts are on fire. Is that a part of the race that people
00:26:54
Speaker
I don't know if this is going one step too far, but should you mentally prepare for the bit before you start? Because that's the bit where you potentially feel anxious. Yeah, of course. And planning the hour before a race is really important. It needs to go through your thoughts and emotions. But if you know the race starts at nine o'clock,
00:27:18
Speaker
then you know you could, you could preset your warmup for 30 minutes beforehand or wherever you want and know exactly how that goes. So you get in there and you go, right, the first 10 minutes might be very gentle jogging, walking, light stretching, and then you might have 10 minutes of it. And so in that, you know that 30 minutes, 30 minutes later, you're going to be running quite hard.
00:27:44
Speaker
and you can prepare what you want to do in that session. Well, that whole 30 minutes can be practiced and practiced and practiced in training. So what I'm going to do now is learn my warm-up routine so that I know it prepares me for my best sessions. So the important sessions should you can use
00:28:09
Speaker
the warm-up routine as a way of getting ready for him, if that's possible practically. I mean, 30 minutes is quite a long time for most runners. Again, that's cultural because I want to train with some sprinters and I thought we were going to do, they said my friend was a pole vault, he said we're going to do four 300s, I think he said.
00:28:28
Speaker
And so we got down there, I thought we'd be gone in 15 minutes. We were 45 minutes. And he goes, right, we'll just do some more strides. I said, but we've been training for 45 minutes. He said, yeah, we're just warming up. And we did one rep, and then we came back in again for another 10 minute stretching. I was there about two and a half hours to do. But he goes, well, that's our sprinter's train. Why do you think they're quick? Because they recover that rest.
00:28:56
Speaker
There's a big, I know, an endurance runners to go straight out to, to, to that position that's norm. But sometimes you can, you can look to other sports to see how things are differently, a way to learning what you're doing and do and maybe make some, some changes and improvements. But it would be, mine would be to the, if the
00:29:18
Speaker
anxiety is a big problem beforehand, is get a good performance routine, warm up routine, so you know that that gets you ready physically. Because when you've got trust in that, as you start it, it starts reducing your anxiety, because you get into this routine that comes along with that.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, I've been here before, I know what I'm doing. Yeah, we can, yeah. I've given you confidence. Absolutely, absolutely.
Enhancing Performance through Self-talk
00:29:47
Speaker
And you can use, you know, music's a cracker for this one, because you'd have the music for when you want to be calm, so you put calm music on. The music which is started a bit about raising energy, so you have a bit more energy level music. And then the music for when your arousal gets going on, and you can play that on your headphones, knowing that the whole thing takes 30 minutes or whatever yours is going to be.
00:30:10
Speaker
and it paces you through it, it talks you through it because you don't go into one part of the thing too early and you don't have to watch the watch to do so. As you put this on, this takes this long and this paces your warm-up.
00:30:28
Speaker
The headphone bits are cracker as well because as you put headphones on, you stop talking to people. I think one of the questions last night was about how to psych out the opponent. Going and talking to them normally psychs them out. I know when I did the park run,
00:30:49
Speaker
Bruton, one of the person would go, oh, you're looking really good today. You're not a chance of winning. You could just think that this is, you could see him go, oh, it's such a wind up for the person who gets that information. You think, good Lord. It's comical to listen, because you know what the person's doing. It's deliberately trying to get the other person wound up a bit by trying to raise their expectations that they're going to be a lot better.
00:31:16
Speaker
But you put headphones on and you can't do it. Famous James Cracknell, isn't it? What are you listening to, James? Oh, no, no. I'm not listening to anything. I just don't like talking to anyone. Put them off. Brilliant. Just going back to the self-talk and naming that voice.
00:31:38
Speaker
Potentially, those voices could be a person actually, you know, it could be a parent that voices in your head or you know, whose voice is it that's internal? Is it your own voice? Is it a parent? Is it an OPE teacher?
00:31:53
Speaker
So that's an interesting technique that you actually, you name it, I suppose you disassociate yourself from any kind of feelings attached to that, which I'd assume that usually those internal voices you are, perhaps there's some kind of negative experience that you've had or positive.
00:32:13
Speaker
Well, if you wanted, the voice could be the best version of you, so it comes in your voice. If you took great advice from someone, you could have that voice come out in their accent, but you might not believe it unless you've spoken to them. If you've had a coach, you might want to capture phrases your coach has said and have them replay to you from memories.
00:32:44
Speaker
Whatever the voice is, it's got to be believable for the first part. So the likelihood that you pick someone who's never met you and unlikely to speak to you might not be convincing.
00:32:59
Speaker
But the other side to that is it's got to be practical. I mean, we did this project on mental skills with the BBC for the 2012 Olympics where we had the sprinter Michael Johnson narrating psychological skills. I mean, the interesting finding from that is that whatever intervention people had, if they had Michael Johnson offering some encouragement, their confidence next time went up.
00:33:29
Speaker
The people who didn't have a sound card in their computer, because that was in there, but therefore didn't get Michael Johnson speaking to them, their confidence didn't go up. So that makes no relationship to whether they made a choice to skip through the intervention. They wanted to listen to the intervention, but some of the computers didn't have a sound card to play it.
00:33:51
Speaker
In other words, just, and the interventions were very different. Some of them should have raised confidence, other than should have made people feel calmer. One of them was a control condition, which just, he just talked, which meant to have no effect. Being talked to by Michael Johnson was very powerful. It raised, made psychological changes.
00:34:10
Speaker
And it's not too surprising, is it? Because a personal message about to perform given from somebody like that is potentially very, it's influential.
Overcoming Plateaus with Self-assessment
00:34:19
Speaker
And that was one of the effects with being, you know, you could replicate that study by getting someone else to do the talk, which won't be very, which is, it's only going one way really for the person who does the talking next, isn't it?
00:34:31
Speaker
Yes. So for people who potentially haven't done this before, it's about being intentional with that internal voice and actually grasping it and giving it a name or turning it into those positive messages that you've heard and been given from others and seeing yourself performing well in your mind's eye and in yourself talk.
00:35:02
Speaker
I like to get the self-talk, again on process goals, when it's difficult, what information will be useful to help you run faster and more efficiently? Typically about relaxing the upper body, run tall, pump arms, as opposed to the sort of statements, you can do it.
00:35:26
Speaker
because you kind of want the questions about whether you're mentally tough enough for it today or you're going to have doubts, answers beforehand. In other words, it's a given you're going to try as hard as possible prior to that. Once you get in there, it's about negotiating the course and
00:35:45
Speaker
the periodic parts of fatigue the best way possible. Because it's easy to get that wrong. You go up a hill slightly too quickly. It doesn't mean you've lost fitness. It doesn't mean you're a bad runner. It means you try too hard on that hill to go up too quickly and you're going to have to work that out before you can pick up going harder again.
00:36:05
Speaker
is not berating yourself for being too tired but about relaxing in the moment of that the fatigue or pass will reduce its intensity if you can relax a little bit and that can come from relaxing your arms, focusing your arms with you. What will be the escalation of being angry that you've got a bit tired will be tensing everywhere and what will be the consequence of tensing everywhere greater fatigue.
00:36:34
Speaker
Yeah. And that's that kind of mindset that, um, so that would impact when you reach training plateaus, for example, wouldn't it? If you, um, cause that's quite a natural thing, isn't it? You have, you have peaks, you have troughs and you have plateaus and that can become quite frustrating to have in that ability to, to think logically and reasonably about.
00:36:59
Speaker
you know, whether it was that you went too fast up that hill or your previous couple of weeks training is, it would be very beneficial. And plateaus can be very frustrating for people. And often people are making very tiny, they can be making progress, but there's always a variation in performance due to the environment, due to what they've done that day.
00:37:26
Speaker
I mean, me doing hundreds of park runs, I worked out that a maximum effort
00:37:32
Speaker
It would make about a 30 seconds difference in time, based on whether it was windy, rainy, so on. And actually, before I, you know, took me about 80 park runs to get to this point, all the same course, to get to this point, to realize that you can, whatever the time was, they're all between about 1815 and 1845, in those good notes days, it's quite possible that that is just as good as the other one.
00:38:00
Speaker
and not to think, oh, what time do you do? Oh, it's this time, so that's not very good. Of course it's as good, but because the two things are different, and therefore they're different because they're slightly on the, and you need to accommodate that in how you evaluate it, which seems
Adjusting Expectations with Age
00:38:18
Speaker
obvious in a way. But actually, you catch yourself going, that was bad. It wasn't bad. It was more difficult conditions today. And then good exercise to track around Strava to go, actually, if it was bad, which bit of that could you honestly say you eased off?
00:38:38
Speaker
to go 30 seconds quicker, because the previous week did 18.15, so 18.45 would feel quite a lot easier, okay, which bit would be really easy enough? And when you say, well, there isn't really one, then it might well be that you start looking at either its tacticals or as to where those could be. And it allows you to be much more positive in your evaluation accordingly.
00:39:05
Speaker
And then you can go actually, I'll make small tiny, I'll make small goals to try and improve performance. And they'll accept that as I go for one part of the performance, it might have a negative effect on the other. So in marathon running, and I have the idea as you in your first few marathons is to
00:39:24
Speaker
ease to the first half. But it comes a point when you finish a couple of marathons quite strongly, where you go, I could have gone a bit quicker at the start. I could have gone a bit quicker at the start. And that's a massive gamble, isn't it? Because everyone who gets crippled at the end has gambled they've gone to, hadn't understood themselves, and has gone to quicker at the start.
00:39:48
Speaker
and paid the consequences. But there's a confidence going to actually, in order to make that step, I have to gamble on my fitness a little bit. I have to be confident on my fitness. I go to the edge of my area and have belief that I can live in that for a bit longer.
00:40:11
Speaker
And so your plateau is then challenged because you start going, actually, this is where I can make some progress, and I'm going to challenge that. I mean, those sorts of things can be done anywhere. I quite like to encourage people to use parkrun for the mental toughness test. And you go, okay, what you're going to do is you're going to try and run as hard as possible right from the start, as hard as possible right from the start, and you go,
00:40:37
Speaker
And they'll do it and they'll go, well, I'm not any quicker. And I said, no, no, no, I never said it'd be quicker. This was a test of can you hit the I'm going as hard as possible button for the whole race. And then you start realizing that in order to be quicker, it's about then smart, smarter decisions, but you can actually trust yourself that you hit the intensity button right from the start to the end.
00:41:00
Speaker
So work that back, then work that back and go actually, well, how can we run this a bit smarter? And how do we then learn to go a bit quicker accordingly?
00:41:14
Speaker
lost Mojo as well doesn't it? It's the same sort of thing isn't it this plateau and we get a lot of comments that oh I've lost my Mojo how do I find it again and this all relates exactly to that as well doesn't it? I think every time I see that I've got I've got a photo of the Mojo suite and I pop it out and I say your Mojo will be left under the third bench in the park
00:41:39
Speaker
The mojo is when you're going well and you're making progress and you re-find that again by continuing to go out and eventually it pops back in because you start having good experiences and then start enjoying it again.
00:42:00
Speaker
But it's again, I mean, some of this is about then reframing how you judge your performances and people as they get older, ridiculously harsh comparisons, judgments on their performance. And, you know, why not try and compare yourself to what you did last week? Yeah, instead of when you were in your peak. Yes, right. Yeah. And over periods of time, you can get different reference points. I have now the
00:42:28
Speaker
I had the post 40 part where I lost a whole load of weight. That was quite good. And I got quite close to the 25 year old version of me, but we're now in the post 50. And so the age rated percentages take on the whole new game, really. We don't worry about a 25 year old who can't do 70%, you see.
00:42:55
Speaker
And they point out that the 25-year-olds is likely to be at the same speed as Mo Farah. And I say that's not my fault, that I'm 50, too.
Influence of Social Media on Mental Performance
00:43:05
Speaker
And that I don't have to run very quickly anymore to get over 70%. And the same for the good for age in London. There's positives everywhere, you see? Yeah. So what...
00:43:22
Speaker
You're very active on social. What's your take on the impact that social media has on people's mental performance?
00:43:35
Speaker
It can be very, very bad social media. People can get all wrapped up in the ideal images and the ideal states that people put forwards and kind of nothing worse than seeing a great run today and then a picture of their dinner, massive great dinner beside somebody who's really thin and you're sitting there having just salad for lunch and struggling with everything you're doing. That makes comparisons awfully difficult.
00:44:03
Speaker
Social media, I think it's very useful for many ways. It allows you to get information on different events. So if you wanted to know what, if I'm going to the London Marathon, where does everyone stay? What are those hotels like? Where are you parking? What are the problems with that? And you get loads of information going, but you have to be quite good at teasing it out. But it is quite useful for getting that information from people you wouldn't have done previously. And if you flip that back,
00:44:33
Speaker
while quite a long time ago before the internet and etc was going on you struggled like anything to find out about these things and so there's a there's a lot of useful information that can get can be got from that. Strava and those such activities could put those to it you go for a run you get back in and you find that 11 people have liked your run
00:44:57
Speaker
And that's cray of those adulations of clapping your home.
00:45:06
Speaker
is not to get too carried away from that. I think Strava is excellent. I've got loads of segments I've got on there and I stopped. I've created segments from where I do intervals, so I don't have to press the button on the watch. So I know I get home and I can see all the scores. There's 900 scores in there from years back, which allow you to
00:45:32
Speaker
to make comparisons to how you're going and that's quite useful you can make that all as i said earlier you can make it not public you don't want people to see it so which is you know we have training diaries it's a great it's that that regards with the new watches it's a great training diary
00:45:51
Speaker
stops and you can use it in that format. When I go to a different park, when I'll do any race, I find the race on the Strava. Let's have a look at the profiles. So you can track through that. YouTube allows you to see all the courses. London Marathon is a fantastic video of London Marathon from the view of the runner.
00:46:22
Speaker
and you go out and you go actually when you look at that you go most not not all of it looks great do you think that social media's had
00:46:36
Speaker
as it had more of a positive or more of a negative impact on people's performances. You know, going for likes, you know, we talk about, as I mentioned, the number of likes that people get there. Do you think people hang on to that? Is that a bad bit of it? Or, you know, just being part of communities, is that a good bit? How does it impact people's performances? Has it been a good thing?
00:47:04
Speaker
The number of likes, I get all of that, and it can be a bit obsessional in that regard.
00:47:13
Speaker
I personally think it's quite a good thing. It allows people to connect with other people they don't necessarily see, so you can get an idea that lots of people go for these runs and you can get into groups and discussions with other runners that you may not have anyway. You can join a running club, but your running club may not be that social anyway because you're running and you haven't got time to talk and there isn't a lot of time pre and after training.
00:47:42
Speaker
there's only, there's a relatively few people running. And for people at the, there may not be any one of your standard at the running club, either ends of the spectrum, there may not be your age group running club. And so allows you to meet with people in a way that connects in someone similar to yourself.
00:48:04
Speaker
I mean, again, flip to other sports. Rowing, Concept2, which does all the rowers, connects to the Concept2 hub, which connects all of the data. They have online challenges, online competitions. And it's fantastic because you join in lots of groups and you can rank yourself. So you go for a row on your own and then you go, okay, right. To get on the front, I mean, I do this. To get on the front page,
00:48:32
Speaker
of the age-related thing, you've got to get under, and it might be 38 minutes for 10k. You say, okay, well, I can have a crack at that, I'm close to that. Well, that's helped you shape your goal. So when I first started rowing, first I'd row, I could run faster than I could row, it's gone the other way around. You had no idea what good was all about. It allows you to see what other people are doing. It allows it to be normed, reference.
00:49:03
Speaker
Well, if you run up a really great big hill, you can see what other people struggle on that really great big hill as well. You go, actually, I'm not... I know you shouldn't need validation to be okay, but it helps people to have that validation. Yes, yeah. And you mentioned the technology there as well, that can...
00:49:24
Speaker
I suppose that could be both positive and negative as well because it can, it can combine perhaps that people are on a plateau. But like you said earlier on, what are the conditions that you're running in and it's about having that kind of level, um, level headed approach to, to the stats that you're seeing. Um, yeah, don't share it. If you don't like it, you click the button that says don't share this one and you can keep it in your training diary, but not everyone else's training diary.
00:49:51
Speaker
I know exactly what you mean is that you have a slow run, everyone goes, oh, why are you running so slowly? Right. And, you know, okay, well, because this morning's run was just a going for a gentle jog. What's he got to do with
Coping with Event Cancellations
00:50:06
Speaker
you anyway? That sort of kind of thing. And I can, you know, you go on to Strava and you can see all the, we can see quite a few famous runners, athletes on there, they post it all and you can, you get a
00:50:18
Speaker
You can see how many likes they've got. Steve Way does the marathons. He's a big following. Five or six hundred likes. I hope he's telling the notification off his phone because that must... his leg will be permanently vibrating.
00:50:39
Speaker
Go and get in your pockets there, Steve. There's the trauma. I think the good bit about social and all this ability to share is that actually it's usually the person who's self-critical and it's the people that you share it with, specifically in running, that gee you along.
00:51:03
Speaker
and support you. That's one of the great things about the running communities. It really, really can help. And it can be motivational. I used to.
00:51:16
Speaker
my friend Dave used to run, he used to have various segments, he was the winner for. And so you'd go out and you'd go for a run, you'd get to the segment, rested completely, he didn't do it like this when he's broke the segment, and have a go at his segment. And you'd get in and I'd get in and I'd go, what are you laughing about? I'd say, wait for this, wait for this, wait for this. This watch will go in and then we'll wait for Dave's response. And there it is.
00:51:44
Speaker
because you know he's going to get someone stole your thing sent to him and he'll go out and he'll go out and I think that's in his good harm is his good fun
00:51:59
Speaker
Yeah, it is. Our former chairman of our running club, Steve, he used to do segment busting runs. He'd go and see this run he'd go on, like an absolute red scribble. He's worked out all the segments out and he'd look on a clip, he's got 54 new records or something ridiculous like that. Just breaking hearts across Derby it was.
00:52:24
Speaker
Brilliant. Well, why not? That's very much their goals to go after, aren't they? Last question from me, Andy. With all of these, there's obviously lots of events that have already been cancelled with everything that's going on at the moment. And there's potentially potential for more.
00:52:48
Speaker
What are your tips for people who've perhaps trained and who have trained and are looking forward to these and perhaps if an event does cancel, it's been their A race for the last three months. How do they cope with that and move forward? It's not going to be easy because we don't know
00:53:13
Speaker
how we don't know what the future is in that sense of how this is going to spread, what the response to it before. And four weeks ago, if we'd have said, oh, they're going to be canceling Premier League football matches, because one person's got, they coughed, one person's got the virus, go, no, they won't. But that's what they just did.
00:53:34
Speaker
And so we can't control that. We have to accept that we can't control that, and we are in a pretty good state of fitness. So that is a good thing, actually. Well, I'm going to try and get something from this. So you could then either set your own challenges up, so you might want to do a
00:53:52
Speaker
a treadmill run to do an hour on the treadmill, how far can you go? Try and set some real challenging goal which is very personal to you that might be able to use the benchmark for your fitness in future. I mean 30 minutes on a treadmill, how far can you go? It's a pretty agony session and quite good for marathon runners right the way up and down.
00:54:15
Speaker
I mean, what you said doesn't really matter as long as it's personal to you. It could be a mile, and you could set yourself up some challenges. And to make that more meaningful so that you take it seriously, you tell all your friends, you say, I'm a bit disappointed. So what I'm going to try and do, I'm going to try and do this. And therefore, you get some buy-in to it that'll ask you about it. And you can use social media to ramp the importance up is quite useful for that.
00:54:41
Speaker
And so you create some sort of mini events which are under your control to have a go at, which is a massive great third place against what you want to do. But at least it's something. At least it allows you to be motivated for the next training session because currently the effect is that you think might not be on and therefore
00:55:03
Speaker
your motivation to push yourself and therefore get any fitter is reduced to try to break that up and go actually I'm going to try and get something from my fitness if that because it might be you know the races are cancelled.
00:55:16
Speaker
So you try and set those goals up from that. And then the other part is the greater perspective on this is the reason they're canceled is that it's genuinely unsafe for people. And the containment of this is miles better than my PB on a race that puts everyone's at risk. And you kind of think, I mean, it doesn't take much to think through. If this is that contagious, we all have people who are in the high risk category.
00:55:46
Speaker
your mum, your gran, your friend's mum, and so on, for whom you wouldn't want them exposed to this. So you going into an event where there's potentially loads of people carrying it means that you can come back and transmit it. You go, well, actually, that's not worth it, is it? So you think you have to put it into perspective. I think you have to put it into perspective.
Episode Wrap-up and Listener Engagement
00:56:08
Speaker
If governments, they canceled flights to America this morning, and this is, I mean, they canceled flights to America this morning, unless you're from the UK. So if you did have it, you could just come over to the UK, don't you, now? Yeah, yeah. Go through the UK. Thanks, thanks. Andy, thanks ever so much. Where can, where's your home park run?
00:56:35
Speaker
Oh, Home Park Run is Bruton, but I've done that 260 times, I think, 270. We don't go there as much now. We have the 450th. It was my first in Litchfield where I live. So the first time I've come out of my house to go to a park run, all the rest I've had some driving in or a hotel the night before. Why is that? Is Litchfield a new one? It's a new one. Beacon Park's a new park run, yeah. Lovely one around Beacon Park. Great new local one then.
00:57:05
Speaker
So if people, anyone listening wants to say hello, they can see you at Parkland and then, and like we said at the start, both you and Helen are very active on the chat channel. So if anyone wants to chat about anything we've spoken to today, they can drop us a tweet and carry on chatting. It'd be great to have you on again as well. Pleasure. Thank you very much. Cheers, Andrew.