The Psychology Behind Endurance Racing Success – In the world of competitive endurance sports, mental toughness is generally considered a highly sought-after psychological trait that allows individuals to thrive and compete at their best. However, situations in which mental toughness can have negative consequences on athletes and their performance are often not discussed.
Mental toughness is generally understood as a trait that allows individuals to thrive in demanding situations. This means it can prove effective in any setting that involves striving for achievement such as education, work, as well as professional sports [1, 2].
The Psychology Behind Endurance Racing Success
Endurance sports are a great setting to study mental toughness, because it allows us to capture what mental toughness is, at its core. Think swimming, rowing, running a triathlon or marathon. Training is repetitive and the off-season is short, so even sticking to a training plan requires a lot of mental fortitude. In competition, mental toughness manifests itself in a person’s ability to withstand physical discomfort, shortness of breath, fatigue and pain. Being able to tolerate these conditions is one of the key factors that allows endurance athletes to achieve their full performance potential [3].
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In a recent study, 10 ultra-endurance runners were interviewed about how they perceived mental toughness in the context of their sport [4]. The definition that emerges is,
“The ability to maintain and use mental skills to overcome perceived physical, psychological, emotional, and environmental obstacles in the relentless pursuit of a goal” [4].
In practical terms, mental toughness was viewed as a quality that acts as an organizer of athletes’ mental skills, influencing their perceptions and helping them regulate their emotional reactions. Runners found that mental toughness helped them in many ways during racing, including:
Studies [4] have previously raised concerns about promoting mental toughness “at all costs” [5, 6, 7, 8]. It is not uncommon for endurance athletes to persevere through injury to finish a race:
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“Many times a mentally tough mindset can become a blind spot of mental stubbornness where athletes focus on short-term gains and are unable to rationally assess the long-term impact of being mentally tough enough to push through pain in a given area.” [4]
The “at all costs” mentality is often supported by a sports culture that deems it admirable or heroic, influencing decisions made by athletes in the heat of the moment. What is rarely addressed by the culture, worryingly, is the impact these decisions may have on whether the athlete will ever be able to run again.
While the damage to physical health will be visible to the naked eye, the effects on mental health can often go unnoticed. When athletes have an unfocused focus on performance gains and are driven by a relentless pursuit of athletic success, wellness is not at the top of the priority list. An interesting take on this issue was recently provided by Lionel Sanders, currently one of the top long-distance triathletes in the world, in reflection of his most important race of the season, the 2019 Ironman World Championships:
“Finally I reached the finish line. I felt like I could leave at any moment. My dad got the car ready… It didn’t take me half an hour and 45 minutes to walk the 200 meters or so because I stopped vomiting a few times. I really felt like I put myself in a place that wasn’t good… My mom was asking me questions about race and I was like, that’s dumb, that’s not even fun, I didn’t enjoy it, actually I’d say it’s actually for me. , quite dangerous for my well-being… I am pushing myself to the limit… If I am in a situation where I have to run to my death, I want to say that I am confident enough that I can do it. It’s an asset… I think you need it to fight against the best… But it’s not something you want to do or should do… It’s not racing, it’s literally fighting for your life at that stage, which I don’t do it for. I do it to push myself to the speed limit.” [9]
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Practitioners working with endurance athletes are encouraged to help their athletes differentiate between “exertion pain” and injury pain. Specific to endurance sports, practitioners can help athletes develop goal contingency plans, preparing them to face challenges on race day, including the tough call for the athlete to withdraw from the race [4]. Enhancing athletes’ health awareness and coping skills has also been suggested to protect them from problems such as overtraining and burnout.
With the development of sports, athletes are placed at the center of highly structured systems designed to optimize performance. In addition to receiving standard sport-specific coaching, athletes can work with experts in areas such as performance analysis, strength and conditioning, nutrition or mental skills training. In a way, such systems can treat athletes like robots that can be programmed to be more efficient and deliver desired performance levels, ignoring their agency and psychological or emotional needs [10, 11].
What is seen as a modern obsession with enhancing performance in sports can be traced back to the late 19th century [12]. The high-performance sports environment has historically been viewed as an “experimental arena”, where participants are “subjects” who suffer through trial and error to uncover and determine the conditions that allow optimal performance to occur. Within this performance-driven framework, understanding the psychological experiences of the “subject” may not be of interest and systematic performance practices may remain under scrutiny until they are “tested” [13, 14].
Contrary to this view, we are seeing considerable improvement in how organizations and NGBs are supporting not only the performance of their athletes but also mental health [15, 16, 17]. The sport and performance psychology profession has seen a significant shift in that direction [18, 19] as mental health support becomes an important priority for practitioners working in high-performance environments. This has led to the emergence of new professions to support these efforts within organizations, including independent consultants, performance lifestyle and wellness advisory roles [20, 21]. In addition, many sporting cultures have shifted towards promoting mental health awareness and help-seeking behavior [22]. It is supported by dedicated organizations and charities that work towards increasing awareness and accessibility of mental health services such as State of Mind Sport, Sporting Minds, Mind, Samaritans and suicide prevention charity Papyrus [23].
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Despite all this work, the neglect of mental health support for athletes is still seen in high-performance sport, and the implications can be heartbreaking for anyone interested in sport psychology and nurturing human potential.
In 2012, Mary Cain was one of the most promising female middle- and long-distance track runners in the United States under the age of 18. As a 17-year-old, Kane joined the Nike Oregon Project, at the time considered one of the most prominent coaching programs for track runners in the country under the direction of Olympic coach Alberto Salazar. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Cain spoke of his 3-year experience of the program [24, 25], not meeting set standards about being pressured to lose weight and taking banned substances to facilitate weight loss and being regularly publicly shamed by Salazar; suffering from a red-S syndrome; Missing her periods for 3 years and breaking 5 bones; The experiences she reflected on left her feeling emotionally abused. Kane also described experiencing suicidal thoughts and self-harm that he alleged was known to people involved in the program, and how he did not get the support he needed despite going to Salazar and the program’s sports psychologist.
Since the interview, 9 athletes who were part of the Nike Oregon project have spoken out against the “toxic culture” of Alberto Salazar’s training program and the coach’s ethically questionable practices [26]. In a recent article, Jordan Haase, who said he was fairly close with Cain while they were training together in the project, says he thinks Cain’s young age made him more susceptible to the program’s tough physical and mental regime:
“People make mistakes. He [Salazar] could have handled it at different times. He was really doing his best. He wasn’t trying to cause any of the problems he described… I don’t really have a side. I didn’t feel what he felt, But I can see that it was so difficult. I think that his message addresses these issues… is he obsessed with weight, if you ask me? Yes, he wanted to cut my hair [To drag], he wanted me to wear a wetsuit to the Boston Marathon. It’s just that every little detail is covered and the weight can be one of those things… I think when you’re older and more experienced, you can talk.