How Bad Do You Want It? Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

1. The Mind, Not Muscle, Limits Endurance Performance

The organ that limits endurance performance is the brain, not the cardiovascular system and fatigued locomotor muscles.

Revolutionary model. For decades, exercise physiology believed endurance was limited by physical factors like muscle fatigue, energy depletion, or oxygen delivery. However, the Central Governor Model proposed the brain subconsciously regulates effort to prevent self-destruction. While the CGM lacks direct evidence, it shifted focus to the brain's role.

Psychobiological perspective. The newer Psychobiological Model posits that conscious decisions in the brain, primarily based on the perception of effort, determine pacing and quitting. This model argues that athletes stop not because their body hits a hard physical limit, but because they reach the maximum level of perceived effort they are willing or able to tolerate.

• Studies show muscles still have reserve capacity at exhaustion.
• The brain's motor command intensity correlates with perceived effort.

Brain over body. From this perspective, biology (like muscle glycogen or heart size) acts as input to the brain, influencing perceived effort, but the brain's output (the decision to continue or slow) is the ultimate determinant of performance. Even controlling a robotic body with thoughts leads to mental fatigue, showing the brain's central role in enduring work.

2. Perception of Effort is the Central Challenge

The most important discovery of the brain revolution in endurance sports, and the most important truth you can know as an endurance athlete, is this: One cannot improve as an endurance athlete except by changing one’s relationship with perception of effort.

Feeling of resistance. Perception of effort is the conscious sensation of how hard, heavy, and strenuous exercise feels. It's distinct from pain or muscle fatigue, representing a general feeling of resistance to the will to move, originating in the brain's motor command areas.

• High effort feels similar whether sprinting uphill or slogging late in a marathon.
• Fatigue increases perceived effort by making muscles less responsive, requiring the brain to work harder.

Primary discomfort. This perception is the main source of discomfort that causes athletes to slow down or quit. While physical training increases capacity, it also improves performance by making any given speed feel easier, thus changing the athlete's relationship with perceived effort.

Mindset matters. Perceived effort has two layers: the physical sensation and the athlete's attitude toward that sensation. A positive attitude or acceptance of discomfort allows athletes to tolerate higher levels of perceived effort and push harder, demonstrating the power of mindset over the raw physical feeling.

3. Mental Fitness is Developed Through Coping Skills

In endurance sports, successful coping is any behavior, emotion, thought, or combination thereof that yields better performance.

Coping with discomfort. Endurance sports are inherently about discomfort and stress. Mental fitness is the capacity to cope effectively with these challenges, primarily by managing perception of effort. This involves developing specific coping skills.

Beyond traditional psychology. Traditional sports psychology often uses generic techniques (visualization, goal setting) outside the sport context. The new psychology of endurance is specific, focusing on skills that directly alter the relationship with perceived effort and are developed during the athletic experience itself.

• Coping skills can increase the effort tolerated or enhance performance from a given effort level.
• Examples range from faking injury (ineffective) to drawing inspiration (effective).

Learning from champions. Elite athletes are the best source of knowledge for effective coping skills. Their methods for overcoming mental barriers are, by definition, the most effective. By understanding their challenges through a psychobiological lens, we can extract practical lessons for our own athletic journeys.

4. Brace Yourself: Expect Discomfort to Tolerate It

Bracing yourself—always expecting your next race to be your hardest yet—is a much more mature and effective way to prepare mentally for competition.

Expectation mismatch. How an athlete expects to feel during a race significantly impacts how they interpret their actual perceived effort. If discomfort is worse than expected, it can lead to panic, a negative attitude, and premature slowing or quitting, as seen in Jenny Barringer's collapse.

Acceptance reduces unpleasantness. Research shows that an attitude of acceptance towards anticipated discomfort reduces its unpleasantness, even if the physical sensation remains the same. This "bracing" allows athletes to tolerate higher levels of perceived effort.

• Studies on pain tolerance and acceptance and commitment therapy support this.
• Mo Farah expecting his first marathon to be his hardest is an example of bracing.

Avoiding complacency. Winning easily or having smooth training can lead athletes to stop expecting suffering, making them vulnerable when it inevitably arrives in a tough race. Consistently expecting the worst, while seemingly negative, is a powerful coping skill that prepares the mind for the inevitable challenge.

5. Time Goals and Pacing Are Psychological Tools

By keeping track of, and aiming to improve, personal best times for specific race distances, athletes can exploit this phenomenon to try harder than they would otherwise be able to.

Pacing by feel. In races longer than ~30 seconds, athletes pace themselves to avoid hitting their perceived effort limit before the finish. This anticipatory regulation is guided by an internal sense of effort, distance remaining, motivation, and past experience.

Time goals calibrate effort. Setting and pursuing time-based goals helps athletes interpret their effort perceptions more effectively. A specific time target transforms the abstract goal of "going as fast as possible" into a concrete, attainable objective, making the required perceived effort feel more endurable.

• Studies show athletes with quantitative goals improve more.
• Marathon finish times cluster around round-number goals (e.g., 4:00), with less slowing near the end.

Two-sided influence. While time goals can pull athletes to higher performance, they can also constrain it if perceived as limits. Breakthrough performances often occur when athletes stop viewing previous records as insurmountable ceilings, demonstrating that the psychological barrier of expectation can be more limiting than physical capacity.

6. Let Go of Outcome Obsession to Find Flow

In order to get what she needed, she needed to have it—or at least some semblance of it—already.

Choking under pressure. Choking is poor performance caused by the perceived stress of a situation's importance. It's linked to self-consciousness, where attention shifts inward to body movements and anxious thoughts, disrupting performance and increasing perceived effort.

• Self-consciousness reduces movement efficiency.
• Internal focus increases perceived effort compared to external focus.

The flow state. The opposite of choking is "flow," a state of complete immersion where self-consciousness disappears, perceived effort is reduced (or becomes enjoyable), and performance is enhanced. Flow is associated with reduced activity in the brain's self-awareness regions.

Process over outcome. Obsessing over desired outcomes (like winning or qualifying) can fuel anxiety and self-consciousness, hindering flow. Letting go of this obsession and focusing instead on the moment-to-moment process of training and racing allows athletes to enter flow states more readily.

• Siri Lindley's breakthrough came when she stopped obsessing about the Olympics and focused on enjoying the process.
• Fantasizing about outcomes can actually reduce effort towards them.

7. Adversity and Failure Are Gifts That Build Resilience

The maddening frustration of repeated failure to achieve a coveted goal has sparked many a mid-career breakthrough in athletes “spoiled” by having been given every advantage.

Resilience from trauma. Resilience, the ability to bounce back from adversity, is crucial for endurance athletes who face suffering in every race. Research suggests a moderate amount of past psychological trauma can build resilience, potentially by strengthening brain regions involved in handling internal conflict.

Sport as a crucible. Athletes who haven't faced significant life trauma may develop resilience through the inherent challenges of sport itself, particularly through the frustration of repeated failure. These "low points" can become "turning points."

The workaround effect. Setbacks like injury or physical limitations can force the brain to find new, more efficient ways to achieve performance (neuroplasticity). This "workaround effect" can lead to unexpected physical gains and enhanced mental fitness (e.g., increased focus, adaptability).

• Willie Stewart learned new ways to bike and swim after losing an arm.
• Serena Burla's brain compensated for a missing hamstring muscle, making her faster.

Sweet disgust. Repeated failure can lead to "sweet disgust," a constructive form of anger and determination that increases potential motivation and resilience. This mindset pushes athletes to fight back and try new approaches, turning setbacks into opportunities for growth.

8. Self-Trust: Listen to Your Body's Intuition

The answers to the most pressing questions that athletes face in their day-to-day quest for improvement (“Should I push? Should I back off?”) lie within them.

Hard work trap. Athletes often equate hard work with improvement, leading them to train excessively and ignore signs of fatigue. Overtraining occurs when athletes push beyond their individual physiological limits, causing perceived effort to rise even at low intensities and performance to decline.

Listen to your body. Getting the most out of training requires respecting personal limits and listening to internal cues (how exercise feels) rather than external pressures (what competitors are doing) or generalized fears of resting.

• Rising perceived effort in easy workouts is a warning sign of chronic fatigue.
• Bernard Lagat's longevity is attributed to moderate, intuitive training.

Self-trust vs. insecurity. The ability to trust one's body and intuition is a coping skill linked to self-assuredness. Insecurity and perfectionism can drive athletes to overtrain in a quest for external validation, ignoring internal signals.

• Paula Newby-Fraser's 1995 collapse stemmed from abandoning her intuitive, minimalist approach due to insecurity and external pressure.
• Self-trust allows athletes to base decisions on internal observation, not fear.

9. The Group Effect: Performance is Enhanced by Others

The group effect that is exerted through behavioral synchrony does not have to be acquired. It is a coping skill that exists latently in everyone, ready to be activated by the right situation.

Power of synchrony. When people work together in synchronized activity, their brains release more endorphins, which can lift mood and suppress discomfort. This "group effect" allows endurance athletes to perceive less effort and perform better when training or racing cooperatively.

Micro and macro effects. The group effect operates on two levels:

• Micro: Any group workout or team competition where athletes work together.
• Macro: A broader sport culture with numerous motivated groups training and racing together often (e.g., Kenyan running culture, past American running clubs).

Success breeds success. National dominance in sports is often fueled by a passionate culture where large numbers participate and push each other. This creates a powerful social force that elevates performance beyond what individuals might achieve alone.

• Kenya's running dominance is attributed significantly to its vibrant running culture and the group effect, not solely genetics.
• The resurgence of American distance running is linked to the creation of post-collegiate training groups.

10. Expectations, Fueled by Audience and Success, Drive Performance

The yellow jersey doesn’t increase the physical capacity of bike racers; rather, it inspires them to use more of the ability they already have.

The audience effect. The presence of others, especially a supportive audience, influences behavior and performance. This "sociometer" effect causes people to hold themselves to higher standards when observed, seeking positive judgment.

• Studies show people lift more weight or perform better on treadmills when observed or encouraged.
• Home-court advantage in sports is partly due to the audience effect.

The success effect. Experiencing success in a task increases self-efficacy (perceived competence), leading to higher expectations and improved subsequent performance, even if the initial success was unmerited.

Raising the bar. Both the audience effect (external validation) and the success effect (internal validation) work by raising an athlete's expectations for their own performance. Higher expectations can lead athletes to tolerate greater perceived effort and get closer to their physical limits.

• Thomas Voeckler's unexpected success in the 2004 Tour de France yellow jersey fueled higher expectations and better performance in subsequent years.
• Subliminal cues (like happy faces) can even unconsciously raise expectations and reduce perceived effort.

11. Passion and Positive Personality Sustain Performance Longevity

If you ask me what is the most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress, and tension.

Psychology of aging. Research shows that personality traits like openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and low neuroticism are strongly linked to longevity and health in old age. These traits are associated with less time spent in stress states, reducing wear and tear on the body.

Preserving performance. These same positive personality traits are linked to greater physical fitness and slower age-related decline in muscle strength and aerobic capacity. While aging is inevitable, a positive coping style can help sustain high performance levels longer.

Passion as a driver. A strong passion for an activity, regardless of innate personality, can act like a "personality makeover," reducing anxiety and promoting well-being. Passionate athletes like Haile Gebrselassie, Natascha Badmann, and Jens Voigt demonstrate that an inexhaustible love for the sport fuels sustained high performance well into older age.

• Ned Overend's longevity is attributed to his passion, love for variety, and balanced approach to training.
• Passion allows athletes to find joy in the process, making the inevitable slowing less discouraging.

12. Finding Personal Meaning Makes the Suffering Worth It

The intensity of an athlete’s motivation to achieve the best performance he or she can is determined largely by the value placed on it.

Motivation and value. How badly an athlete "wants it" in a race is fundamentally about motivation, which is driven by the value placed on the outcome. This value is often tied to the personal meaning the sport holds for the athlete.

Brain valuation system. The brain has a system that becomes active when thinking about valued things. Anticipating the reward (the personal meaning) can help athletes tolerate higher levels of perceived effort, acting as a distraction from discomfort.

Meaning is individual. The specific meaning attached to trying hard varies greatly among athletes.

• Catherine Ndereba found meaning in fulfilling God's purpose.
• Steve Prefontaine found meaning in self-discovery, embodying toughness, and performing for others.

Talent vs. meaning. While natural ability can be motivating, a lack of world-class talent is not an insurmountable barrier to wanting it as much as an elite. Recreational athletes can find equally powerful personal meaning in their sport, driving exceptional effort despite lacking elite genes. John Bingham, the "Penguin," found profound meaning in cycling and running despite his lack of talent, demonstrating that the value placed on the effort is key, regardless of the outcome or innate ability.

Last updated: May 5, 2025