The objective of this research process and paper is to determine the effect of the brain regulatory system on the pacing and awareness of completing an exercise. The focus I'm investigating is the importance of mental training opposed to physical training. Recently it has become widely known that fatigue during exercise does not occur solely because of physical exhaustion but the mental aspect of brain involvement. An important component of an athletes success is pacing and awareness to be able to complete a task, I will be exploring the effect this has on an athlete when the duration is known vs. when it is unknown. An element that can cause different results is whether the distance is short or long, this deals with how an athlete mentally prepares for a marathon opposed to a 100 meter dash. Pacing is a common strategy used by athletes to optimise performances by planning how to conserve energy. It has been of high interest for athletes to excel in competition, some athletes reduce their speed in mid race while others excel. The intensity of the exercise is regulated within the brain involving peripheral sensory feedback and the expected amount of exercise remaining. The sensory function of the nervous system affects the athletes current state externally and internally. The mental aspect of an athletes ability to regulate the brain holds the same if not more importance than the physical ability.
II. The Importance of Mental Training for Pacing https://www.scienceofrunning.com/2014/05/the-psychology-of-mental-toughness.html?v=7516fd43adaa
https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20825087/mind-over-matter-0/
An athletes perception of their capabilities and expectations plays a major role in how they pace themselves and how strong they perform. This is influenced by the current shape of the athlete, how often they exercise, their self esteem, and mindset. According to Edwards and Polman, athletes most commonly end their exercise with the assumption of physical exhaustion due to depleted fuel sources, severe local muscle acidosis, a restraining core body temperature, and dehydration. In reality the athlete is physically able to continue the exercise but they mentally feel like they cant go any longer. Tim Noakes has stated in his book, The Lore of Running, that, “it is the brain that allows or limits endurance performance rather than the body” (Lobby). During exercise athletes feel an emotional reaction to pain, and they are forced to make the decision of stopping or pushing harder based on the signals being sent to the brain. This is especially important for long distance runners because, as fatigues increases throughout exercise the brain continuously sends signals to slow down. However, the decision is in the athletes control and progress can be made by mentally training the brain. A key aspect of mental training is past experiences and expectations, this determines an athletes self confidence and will power. Researchers at Bangor University have conducted a study to determine the degree brains function has on pacing and awareness. They compared two groups doing the same high intensity cycling exercise, one who watched a 90 minute documentary and the other one completed a 90 minute computer test. It was reported that the physiological responses to the exercise was the same between the two groups. The difference was the group that took the computer test had a higher perception of mental fatigue causing them to reach their maximum level of perceived exertion which made them stop sooner. The researcher concluded that, “the brain gave up and subsequently sent signals to the body to also cease, even though the body showed no physical signs of complete exhaustion. (Lobby). This supports the claim that brain regulation has a large impact mentally on pacing and performance. This supports the idea that mental training is justa s important if not more important than physical training. A strategy to combat mental fatigue used by many athletes is brain training or sometimes referred to as brain tricking. The more practice completed along with the more self confidence built, gives the body more leeway and allows the athlete to push past what they believed was their maximum level of exertion.
III. Unknown vs Known Duration
A common factor that affects the mental aspect of training and pacing, is the duration of the exercise. The duration of a run is what allows the runner to decide when to maximize their level of excretion in order to remain steady. The RPE ( The borg rating of perceived exertion) is a 15 point scale , used to determine one's physical activity intensity level. I think that an athletes pacing and willpower will be negatively impacted when they are unaware of the extent of their exercise leading them to have a poorer performance. To test this claim I have conducted an experiment and will be analyzing my data to an experiment carried out at the university of Cape Town by Baden, Mclean, Tucker, Noakes, and Gibon. The aim of their experiment is to determine, “Effect of anticipation during unknown or unexpected exercise duration on rating of perceived exertion, affect, and physiological function.” This experiment along with the data I have collected will investigate deeper into the mental aspect of pacing and the extent of brain's involvement when the duration is known vs unknown.
IV. Lab Report
Hypothesis: If the duration of exercise is unknown by the participants then they will be less successful than if the duration is known.
Design
The known duration was tested first, as I explained to the participants that they would be running 1 lap timed, individually. Each of the eight participants ran their lap on their own to eliminate factors that could have affected their pacing, such as competition. The participants were also instructed not to watch the runner, so the pace of the runner wasn't affected and the next runner wasn't influenced. After collecting the data for the known duration, where the athletes were informed that they would only be running one lap, I told them that they would now be running until I instructed them to stop. This experimental variable was implemented to see if it affected the participants pace drastically. The participants again would be running just one lap but wouldn't be aware of this, so I could accurately compare the control and experimental group. They continued to run individually while being instructed not to watch so the unknown duration wouldn't be revealed. This experiment is a simple way to determine whether unknown vs know duration has a significant impact on the way an athlete paces themselves. In addition to keeping the experiment consistent it was important to make sure the participants would not skew the data. The participants chosen were all athletes but not of the same sports so some could be naturally more skilled than other. Fourtanly two test were conducted so I can compare results individually so there were limited interfering factors between participants.
Participants
A purposive sampling strategy was conducted to choose participants that are athletes and have experience in running. However there wasn't a large pool of participants to choose from so they all have different lifestyles to a certain degree. The participants range from soccer players, basketball players, cheerleaders, baseball players, and golfers. It has been noted that these sports don't demand corresponding physical intensity but this isn't a impeding factor as they all have a basis in athletic skills. In total there were eight participants that agreed to participate in this experiment,this is enough to test the effect of the experimental variable but a larger population would allow for more precise and generalized data. The gender of the eight participants is relatively even and won't have any significant impact. These participants have been selected based on past experiences and actives along with their willingness to agree to the guidelines set.
Materials
A basketball court
A timer
8 participants
Paper
Writing utensil
Clipboard
8 consent forms
Procedure
Plan a time and location that is a suitable place to conduct the experiment
Gather volunteers willing to participate in experiment and use the purposive sampling strategy to choose participant who have a basis in athletic skill
Brief the participants by making them aware of what the experiment entails and that they will be asked to run one lap and another unknown duration of running
The participants will remain anonymous and each assigned a number in order to record data
As a group you will instruct the participants that they will be running one lap individually around the basketball court while being timed, you will not provide any information about the intensity and pace they should be running
You will instruct all participants to remain turned around
You will time and record data for participants 1-8
In the same order as before you inform the participants that they will be running around the basketball court until you instruct them to stop
Again instruct the participants not running to stay turned around
Stop each participant 1-8 after one lap and record data
Debrief the participants
Results
These steps were then carried out to see if the athletes awareness or unawareness of the duration has an effect on how fast they completed the lap. The data has shown that six of the eight participants ran the lap faster when they were aware of the distance, revealing a connection to pacing and awareness. The two outlying athletes who performed better when they were unaware of the distance of the run could have overestimated the run and started off stronger along with other possibilities. However, there is still a clear trend in data and enough evidence to support the prior claim.
My Data
Time of 1 lap (seconds)
Time of 1 lap (seconds)
Participant
Known duration
Unknown duration
1
33.42
44.3
2
27.62
46.7
3
29.55
41.12
4
33.93
31.18
5
29.31
45.89
6
31.15
37.8
7
35.9
28.87
8
25.7
42.9
The graph table above visually compares the time it took the participants to run a lap when they were aware of the duration(blue) and unaware of the duration (red). It is easy to tell that the known duration was run faster then the unknown duration. The average time of all 8 participants when the duration is known is 30.882 seconda and the average for the unknown run is 39.845 seconds. Meaning on average the athlete ran the lap 8.963 faster when they were aware of how long they were running, this evidence shows that they had to be some sort of pacing strategy. It is common for runners to be less encouraged to run when they are unaware of the intensity, length, and conditions. Athlete in general tend to perform worse when they are in unfamiliar conditions and circumstances. The runner wants to store their energy and doesn't want to maximize their level of excretion to early in the exercise, so they tend to hold back. This is challenging for the participants because they don't know how to distribute their efforts even if it is subconscious. This data supports and explains the importance of pacing to the success of the performance.
Limitations
Although his experiment was successful and supported my initial claim there are a numerous amount of limitations that could have affected the accuracy outcome. The most notable being the fact that it was a short distance exercise, in which pacing doesn't play an as critical role then it would in a long distance exercise. In addition the runners didn't have to push themselves and could run at a pace that was comfortable for them, meaning they didn’t experience factors such as exhaustion. This was limited due to the participants availability and willingness to run for an extended amount of time. Another limitation is the lack of trials conducted, these two sets were only performed once. If the trials were repeated multiple times it makes that data more accurate, easier to spot a trend, and a better way to avoid skewed data. In addition another limitation is the sampling technique used to pick the participants, the primary focus was to ensure they all had a basis in athletic skill. However the participants played many different sports that demanded different physical conditions, for an example golf is less demanding cardio wise then a sport like soccer. This could lead to an inaccurate interpretation of brain regulation when in reality it is just the physical condition of the athlete. The number of participants was relatively small consisting of only eight participants so the results can be taken as a generalization of a great population. Since this lab consisted of many limitations I used it as a basis point and will be analyzing my results along a similar study conducted by the University of Cape Town.
University of Cape Town Data
Introduction
Scientist from University of Cape Town conducted an experiment with the aim to determine the effect of unknown exercise duration and an unanticipated increase of exercise duration during treadmill running measured with the RPE scale. This study consist of reliable more precise data with fewer limitations that has a parallel aim to the experiment that I conducted.
Design
The participants consisted of 16 well trained male and female runners who completed three different bouts of exercise. Their participants are picked from a purposive sampling technique and are split evenly by gender. They went to the extent of recording the participants age,height, mass, body fat percentage, and training history. They also determined each participants a peak treadmill running test to calculate maximal aerobic capacity. (Baden)The participants were informed that they will be running on the treadmill for 20 minutes for the first trial at a peak of 75 %, and for the second bout of exercise the participants were told to run for ten minutes but at then end were instructed to run for another ten minutes. This first bough of exercise is the known duration and the second is an unknown duration that is unanticipated for the runner. What the third bout of exercise entailed was completely unknown for the participants as they were not told how long they would be running, but to keep it consistent and comparable they were stopped after twenty minutes. During all three trials of exercise stride frequency, heart rate, oxygen consumption were all recorded. (Baden)
Results
The results drawn from the three bout of exercise data was performed to test the contrast between anticipated and unanticipated exercise. According to the scientist that coordinated this experiment, “ expectation of task duration and anticipation of an end point influence subjective ratings of fatigue, RPE, associative thought processes, and neuromuscular efficiency.”(Baden) This was particularly evident in the bout where the participants had an anticipated endpoint after ten minutes of treadmill running but in the last minute were told after to run another ten minutes. The RPE decreased significantly from the tenth minute to the eleventh minute. This shows that the participants were caught off guard when they were informed they had to run another ten minutes, distributing their pacing and distribution of effort. An important factor to note is that the change in effort had no correlation with a change in heart rate and blood pressure, but the subconscious physiological response. In conclusion, The university of Cape towns findings were consistent with my results and support the claim, that unanticipated duration has a subconscious effect on the brain that results in a poorer performance due to the absence of pacing.
Conclusion
The primary aim of this essay was to establish, how and to what extent does brain regulation control the pace of exercise. This knowledge was specifically obtained by investigating the difference between mental vs physical training, psychological responses, and unanticipated vs known durations. In summary it has been determined that pacing and awareness is an undeniable factor in the performance of an athlete. A common misconception athletes have is stopping an exercise because they are believe they are in a state of physical exhaustion, but it has been settled that the brain limits the performance rather than the body. In order to master mental training you have to be comfortable and aware of a pacing strategy to distribute efforts steadily . My hypothesis is that an athlete's pacing and willpower will be negatively impacted when they are unaware of the extent of their exercise leading them to have a poorer performance. I put this hypothesis to the test by conducting my own experiment which supports my claim but also contained a numerous amount of limitations and human errors. In order to resolve this issue I found an experiment that paralleled mine to backup my claim with adequate evidence. The study performed by Baden gave a time specific detailed explanation as to why the unknown duration has a major effect on the runner. In conclusion the claim that mental training and awareness of duration have a overriding effect on how the brain regulates pacing is supported based on the evidence provided.