MEDIA RELEASE: R00207 – 23 September 2016
The way you talk to yourself as you exercise in the heat will make or break your workout, says new Brock University research.
While high temperatures do have an impact on brain, muscle and heart functions, what you tell yourself about the heat will determine how long you exercise, how hard you work and how clearly you are able to think, says Stephen Cheung, professor in the Department of Kinesiology.
“This shows that our thoughts really can drive our performance,” says Cheung, who is Canada Research Chair in Environmental Ergonomics. “It continues the trend in research of being aware that it’s not just a physiological kind of mechanism for why we fatigue, but that there is a strong psychological component to it.”
Cheng and his graduate student Phillip Wallace instructed 18 cyclists and triathletes to perform a series of physical and mental tests that included bicycling in 35-degree Celsius heat and solving tasks that would measure their mental abilities.
Next, Wallace and Cheung randomly spilt the group into two. Half of the participants attended a two-week motivational self-talk training session where they chose motivational self-talk statements such as “Keep pushing, you’re doing well,” or “I am focused.”
The other half of the participant group – the “control group” – did not undergo self-talk training.
The two groups repeated the previous experiments.
“The group with the motivational skills training — who were just as hot, just as uncomfortable as the control group — were willing to extend the time that they were in those last stages of tolerance,” says Cheung.
“It’s not as if, by performing motivational self-talk, I don’t hurt as much,” Cheung explains. “It’s more like, I’m willing to push through and continue exercising for longer at that same very, very hard effort.”
The results can also apply to firefighters, miners and others who work in hot environments, says Cheung.
“They can train themselves to re-assess how hot they are and really use mental and motivational skills training to counteract the discomfort they feel,” says Cheung. “They should be able to use it just as effectively as an athlete.”
The team’s paper, Effects of Motivational Self-Talk on Endurance and Cognitive Performance in the Heat was published recently in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
The federal government’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program provided funding for the team’s research.
For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:
* Dan Dakin, Media Relations Officer, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca, 905-688-5550 x5353 or 905-347-1970
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