In my last post I wrote about the brain and its connection to performance. This week I will continue on the subject and add a new tip of how to train your brain in a short and summarized way.

So a short recap on my last post on the subject. Your brains condition and toughness matters when you push your body hard. It is actually the brain that limits our performance. However, just like you train your body you can also train your brain to be able to let you run harder by resisting the impulse of giving up when it gets tough. In a study it was proven that participators that trained their body in combination with brain training increased their time to fatigue by 113% compared to 43% to the group that only exercised their body. Read it here: https://bit.ly/2GmmJF8

So brain training seems to be helping running performance. But what can you do to train your brain? Well, you need some kind of activity that requires your full attention and challenges your brain enough. Another relevant question is, when should you do it. Of course you can do it whenever you want but if the goal is to train your brain to be able to perform better during races, shouldn’t the training be as close to that as possible? That is my conclusion. So why don’t do it on intervals- and threshold-sessions! If you can do brain exercises when running that is good. However, a time that would be perfect to do this brain exercise, if you perfare to focus on running when running, is during the rest in between intervals. Think about, don’t you just stand around waiting for the next interval. Why not use that time to train your brain and be abit more effective. I do this and it works really good. In a way I do two interval-sessions at the same time. One for the body and one for the brain.

I have tried some different activities. Activities like calculating math in my head, just adding and subtracting numbers. It works quite well and you can do it without any devices which makes it convenient when you are running intervals. It requires some discipline to master though. A more challenging brain exercise however I find to be the Stroop-test, just like the one they are using in the study linked above. You can find many kinds of stroop-tests, there are alot of apps out there. The main idea is that you work with colored words that are showing on the screen with the challenge that the words color and the color of the word differs. To make it more difficult you are sometimes supposed to click on the matching words color and sometimes on the matching color of the word, confusing? It is harder than it sounds and you need to be alert since you are working against the clock and the goal (should be at least) is to break your record of most correct answers every time. Do this and your “body-intervals” will get tougher. That is not something I can prove, but try it and you will feel it for certain.

If I could decide I would train more. But since there is a time limit in all of ours lives we have to be more effective. In my opinion this tip is one of the best I can give when it comes to be time effective since you will not increase your total workout time. You need to rest your body during intervals but that doesn’t mean that your brain can't work out.

Try out some stroop-tests when doing intervals next time, there are a lot of apps and you might have to try a few to find the best one.

As always, if you don’t believe in it don’t do it!

Good luck!

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Emil Jönsson

IT-projektledare från Lund

Åldersgrupp: 29

Mina discipliner
10 km OCR/ Hinderbanelopp

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