Demystify conception of perception

"If you always train the same expect the same"

My and daughters hand in perception talk in Canada

In this article I will try to bring some new concept to review your training, I could do training plans or tell you exactly what to do, but with the internet I am sure you can find that information already. So let’s try something a wee bit different.

It always amazed me how athletes have psychological barriers in sports. The sub 40 min 10km is one of them. Similar to the sub 4-min mile barrier in the 50 and 60's, they are the ones of those times in training that seems impossible to break, but once broken is easy to accomplish time and time again. I call them “perception time and distances issues” which in terms of goal training for a 40 min 10km a can be frustrating. Time, Distance, Skills, Physiology and Training.

"Distance"

When I explain this perception distance to my athletes as a self belief and educational problem I give them the well know example of a runner who runs on his home 10km route for training, when the runner achieve a certain time, with expectations to compete based on their training time, but even if psychologically it helps this calculation is not accurate. I can hear you thinking from here “I have a GPS” and yes they are accurate but you route will always be different than the races one in terms of terrain etc. So do train on different surfaces, different distances, different routes, hills and weather, be ready for the unexpected. Coaches do cheat from time to time to make their athletes believe that they are faster than what they are, I would not recommend it. It will certainly work once, twice but after a while you might lose the athlete’s trust which no coaches can afford to do. But the main factor will always be the way you feel during training and consequently on the day of the race.

My and daughters hand in perception talk in Canada

"Time"

The second concept “perception of time” is interesting; the sub 40min barrier is one of them. We can go back on make the athlete believe that they are faster than what they are, but it has it’s limitations. What I try to do is to demystify the time concept, which is very human…. Running to a certain time or distance, basically we are creating the barriers….I call them walls or stone. I use the word stone with the expression “use it as stepping stone”. What I do with some athletes to train for 10km is actually getting out of the 10km routine training; ask them to pace not every km or mile but maybe every 800m or 1200. So their time concept changes. Do Time trials over 2.8km, 5.9km, it is only a mathematical issue for the coaches.

"Skills and performance"

The quicker you get the more difficult the improvement, the less frequent pb s will come, reaching a physiological barrier, with the kind of training you have, or just because your reach your body limitation. Some will ask : “is there one?” well so far studies says there is one, my facts says “not”, world records keep falling down, and please don’t come back to me with the doping story, check the top 10 performance in all athletics sport and compare them to the last 16 years.

In 1999 I presented a small research to some of my international colleagues which would certainly been seen as extremist and unethical but ideas does not always mean implementation.

“Performing in the coma principle”

So lets start with the presumption that coma is a state of surviving extreme pain or body been under high risk of shutting down the various system which keep us alive, the simple example is accident or even been really drunk. It is like a safety switch to stop your body to deal with a problem too intense to manage. If you apply this to the world of sports no athletes so far achieve to push their physiological limit to the stage that the body could not take it anymore to the level of switching off itself. Is this could mean the end of athletics? Or limitation of safety to athletes? If you think about it the body work with different security levels: tired, pain, exhaustion etc….. like a car, when you reach the red light of the petrol tank, does it mean that you can’t drive anymore ? I always compare the athletes with this, their job is to go the furtherest they can in this red zone. The one who can make the longest distance, been efficient and avoiding mistakes to save the spare litre of petrol will succeed. Let’s go crazy and thinking that we can push ourselves running a sprint without limitation…. Would we be able to let our knees or hips dislocate themselves?

Sebastien Locteau

First published on runireland.com 16/10/08