If you read my previous blogs, you now understand that we generally can’t push ourselves to our limits. Our brain, the Central Governor, slows us down before that.
When we began running, our brain responded quickly to every sign of tiredness. It’s as if our car had a ‘speed governor’ at 30km/h, out of fear of accidents.
The more we push ourselves in training and races, the more we get to feel and understand, that we can handle quite a lot of tiredness without negative effects. We felt totally exhausted in that workout, but we didn’t get a heart attack. We didn’t pull a muscle. In fact, after a warm shower and a meal, we feel totally fine again.
Slowly by slowly we are able to adjust that speed governor, to 50 km/h, and then 60 and then 70 (where 100 is our true maximum).
In other words, training hard helps us get closer to our limits.
And then there are those runners who are mentally super tough. They can go to 90 or 95. How do they do that? Well, I think I can tell you. Because I was one of those runners, who used to perform at 80. Or to be more precise, sometimes I performed at 80, but sometimes at 70 or 60, and in some very special occasions at 90. But after practicing mental training for two years, I was able to consistently perform at 90-95 in all my races.
And it’s not just my personal experience. I’ve read more than 70 different scientific articles about training the mind. They confirm what I have experienced myself.
If I am asked to mention one mental tool that has the most immediate effect on performance, my answer is: structured self-talk.
Self-talk is the kind of talk that you don’t say out loud. It’s talking to yourself, inside your head, for example during a race or workout. Research shows that the majority of athletes talk to themselves while racing or training, but this happens in an unconscious way. Some of it is positive, some negative, but most of it is not planned. It just happens to us[i]. There is no proven effect on our performance, when we use this type of self-talk.
However, what dóes help our performance is structured or planned self-talk: talking to yourself, in a way that you have planned, by using phrases or words that you have rehearsed.
Let me start by telling you about two studies that were done.
Marcora and colleagues asked twenty-four people to perform a TTE test (a time to exhaustion test on a stationary bike) at 80% of their maximum[ii]. After the first test, the group was split into two: twelve of them received two weeks of self-talk training, while the other twelve made up the control group. During the self-talk training, the twelve participants were asked to choose four phrases out of a list of examples. Two phrases for the first half of the test (such as: “feeling good” or “this is your day”) and two phrases for the last section of the test (such as: “push on” or “you know how to suffer”). They had to practice using those phrases during training. The control group were simply instructed to continue with their normal training. The use of self-talk was not discussed with them.
After two weeks they all did another test. The self-talk group was able to cycle almost two minutes longer, improving their performance from an average of 10:37 min to 12:30 min. The control group did not improve at all – even though most of the participants in this group also reported using self-talk, but not in a structural way.
2. Another study was done by Bradford Cooper, the CEO of US Corporate Wellness[iii].
He is a scientist with a PhD in performance psychology. He is also a marathon runner with a personal best of 2h47 and has competed in eleven Ironmans, of which four world championships. He also won the 2-person cycling Race across America. No wonder he was named the World’s Fittest CEO.
Bradford Cooper recruited three experienced athletes and asked them to do a series of 800m time trials (at an all-out effort) over the course of ten weeks[i]. They started with several baseline 800m runs. After they completed the baseline period, they received some training in self-talk. Based on conversations Bradford-Cooper had with the athletes, he would suggest self-talk words to each individual. For example, one of the athletes was asked to tell herself “Smooth and fast” in the first lap of the 800m, then say “You got this” between 400m and 600m and motivate herself by saying “Launch” in the final stretch. In the remaining time trials the athletes used the self-talk. The results showed that the athletes improved on their baseline performance by an average of 9% (17 to 25 seconds), once they started using the self-talk. This is a HUGE improvement, especially for athletes that are already experienced. They also improved their mental toughness (measured by the Mental Toughness Index) by an average of 62%.
These are just two studies, but there is a lot of evidence that structured self-talk improves endurance performance[v]. Why exactly, is this such a powerful mental tool?
First of all, self-talk improves your concentration. It helps you to focus. As a result, you will be less aware of pain and tiredness. In other words, you’re hurting less, because you’re not paying attention to it. And when you’re hurting less, you can run a bit faster. This is partly because it helps you avoid the otherwise negative or distracting thoughts you may have. Rather than thinking: “Oh, this is so heavy, I can’t do it anymore”, you make sure there is an effective phrase in your head.
A second effect of self-talk, is that you’re able to persevere when it gets really hard. Self-talk enables you to motivate yourself, on the moment when you need it most. Instead of slowing down because of the pain, self-talk helps you to keep on pushing. It teaches you to endure, to suffer.
There is also a clear effect on execution of movements: athletes are able to have a better technique, because of self-talk. Finally, there is some evidence that self-talk can decrease anxiety and improve confidence and self-efficacy.
So in short: structured self-talk is proven to be an effective tool. Does it matter how you do it? Well, kind of, but what works for one person may not work well for another.
There’s two types of self-talk: motivational and instructional. When you use motivational self-talk, you tell yourself stuff like: “You’re doing great”, or “You can do this”, or “I got this!”. When you use instructional self-talk, you tell yourself what to do, such as: “Increase the cadence”, “Stay behind that group”, or “Relax the arms.”
In endurance sports such as running, motivational self-talk seems to work a bit better than instructional self-talk. But there are differences between athletes and it’s possible that in your case, instructional self-talk works better. This is something you should try out for yourself.
From my experience, a lot of athletes find a combination of the two works well.
In the same way, it is said that talking in the second person (you can do this!), generally works better than talking in the first person (I can do this!). But again, self-talk seems to work best when you come up with your own words/phrases and find out what works for you. So: practice it in training.
What you say to yourself, should also depend on the moment of the race. There is no point in telling yourself to push hard, in the first mile of a marathon. At that point, you may want to say “this is my day”, or “feeling smooth”. In the middle part of a marathon you might say something like: “Time to focus”, or “Follow that group”. And in the final kilometers you might say: “Keep pushing”, or “You know how to suffer”.
When you use structured self-talk, you will hopefully notice the effect. But you will also realise that you can still get negative thoughts that slow you down. Don’t let this demotivate you! Just be aware that it can happen, and try to replace those negative thoughts with one of your phrases.
I like to finish with a quote that comes from an interview that Bradford Cooper had with one of his participants. She described very clearly how self-talk improved her performance:
“That was huge to show that much improvement because I had really thought I was running at an all-out effort in those six (baseline) 800s. The self-talk gave me mental purpose, mental focus. I was no longer just running kind of mindless. As your mind starts to wander, you start to feel that pain. You just naturally start to slow down and you start that negativity. This gets you some focus – some positive focus. It (self-talk) would push them (negative thoughts) aside or kind of dampen them because they were still there – I could still feel them but it just felt like whatever it was in my head was stronger and taking the focus more than what I was feeling physically.”
[i] James Hardy, Kimberley Gammage and Craig Hall (2001). A Descriptive study of self-talk. The Sport Psychologist 15, 306 – 318. In their study, all 150 student athletes reported using self-talk. Also other studies show the majority of athletes practice self-stalk.
[ii] Anthony W. Blanchfield, James Hardy, Helma M. de Morree, Walter Staiano and Samuele M. Marcora (2013) Talking Yourself out of Exhaustion: The Effects of Self-Talk on Endurance Performance, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise,
[iii] See de website of Dr. Bradford Cooper: www.drbradfordcooper.com for more information.
[iv] K. Bradford Cooper, Mark R. Wilson and Martin I. Jones (2020) Fast talkers? Investigating the influence of self-talk on mental toughness and finish times in 800- meter runners. Journal of Applied Sport psychology.
[v] Two review studies show an overwhelming positive effect from self-talk. Antonis Hatzigeorgiadis, Nikos Zourbanos, Evangelos Galanis, and Yiannis Theodorakis (2011), Self-Talk and Sports Performance: A Meta-Analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science 6 (4) 348 – 356. And: David Tod, James Hardy and Emily Oliver (2011) Effects of Self-Talk: A Systematic Review. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 33, 666-687
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