Clever Brain

There are a growing number of experts who believe that the muscle fatigue felt after vigorous exercise is actually caused by the brain. If you have ever been running, swimming, cycling or the like and have suddenly felt heaviness and the urge to stop, this was your brain telling you to stop. There are ways that you can train your brain to allow you to carry on. In other words, improving your brain will make you a better athlete and give you much better performance.

Improved brain power improves athletic performance.

Studies have been done involving sensors that are meant to measure the electrical activity within muscles. The amount of activity in muscles indicates that the brain works very hard in order for muscles to perform. Further studies have been conducted that show an involuntary drop in the performance of many athletes during cycling sprints. This drop was also accompanied by a decline in the electrical activity of the muscles. In other words, the fatigue that these athletes felt was not coming directly from the muscles that they were using. It was coming from their brain telling them that their muscles did not want to continue.

In order to improve your brain for better performance, you need to train it. You can train your brain to increase your pain tolerance. Since fatigue limits your athletic performance, you need to teach your brain to allow you to do more and go further before it begins telling you that you are fatigued. Generally speaking, those athletes who are just beginning normally have a lower tolerance for pain. If you simply stick with your workout and “push through” it then your brain will learn to not be so overprotective of the minor aches and pains of muscle soreness.

It is important not to over-train. High-intensity workouts will stimulate the release of cytokines. These immune system cells help to coordinate your body’s response to the stresses caused by exercise. IL-6 is one of the cytokines that enters the brain and causes fatigue. After these high-intensity workouts, your cytokine levels will likely remain elevated. Elevated levels of cytokines are typically found in those who work out too much or at a level that is too intense. The key is to rest between workouts, particularly if you are engaging in high-intensity exercise.

Another trick to train your brain for a more intense workout is to set higher goals for yourself. Research has shown that when athletes are competing in running events, they run much faster in races against other competitors than they do in solo time trials. This is simply because their brains are telling them to run faster in order to beat the competition. They may feel that they are running as fast as they can during the trials, but they tend to run even faster during the actual event. Your brain has a safety switch that will prevent from running your fastest simply to reduce the risk of harm. The more you become motivated, the smaller that safety switch will become, thus giving you more athletic ability than you had before. Competition can shrink the safety switch, as can setting goals. If you set goals for yourself and push yourself to achieve them, your brain will begin to believe that you can do these things without causing injury to yourself.