Conor Dunne: You've heard it all before. Your mate is on top form, flying they say. Then next week,
they're going slower than a broken-down bus. Form has suddenly disappeared apparently.
James Lowsley-Williams-Hank: That begs the question, is form physical or mental? On that
note, I think we should go and investigate. Conor: Let's do it.
[music] Conor: Now hold up because first,
GCN is about to get all deep and philosophical. Hank: Yes, I guess, here goes.
Conor: We are going back to ancient Greece to see what Plato and his
mates have to say on this subject. Hank: Mate, do we have to get dressed
up like this to get all philosophical? Conor: Yes, Hank. Yes, we certainly did.
Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, reckoned that the mind and body were two totally separate
things giving rise to the philosophical theory of mind-body dualism. Ever heard of the phrase,
"I think therefore I am?" Hank: No.
Conor: Well, that was said by a bloke called René Descartes.
Hank: He wasn't from Greece, he was French and it was back in the 17th Century.
Conor: Yes. Well, anyway Descartes reckoned that we could question the reality of
everything around us. Hank: What,
meaning that everything we know isn't real? Conor: Yes. This could all be one big dream,
couldn't it? The thing is, Descartes reckoned that because we were thinking, we couldn't
doubt the actual existence of ourselves. Hank: What, that means everything around
us is a whole lot of gobbledygook but if we think it, if we believe it, that way we know it's real.
Conor: Interesting, ay. According to Descartes, form is all mental. It's 100% up in your mind,
100% mental. The mind and body are two totally separate things.
Hank: To be honest, I think they're on way too many caffeine gels. On that note,
I reckon we should go and do some science and get out of these.
Conor: No more philosophy? Hank: No. Come on.
Conor: Please, Hank? Hank: No.
Conor: But I--. [music]
Hank: Now, the placebo effect is a really interesting point to our argument. It's
basically believing that what you're doing creates a positive outcome.
Conor: For instance, you're told that taking a shot of beetroot juice before a race will improve
your performance. You take the shot of beetroot juice and then afterwards you claim that you were
flying during the race to all your teammates. Hank: On that note mate,
I think we should give it a go. Conor: I think we should try it out.
Hank: Ready, chin-chin. Conor: Cheers mate. I
quite like it actually. It's nice. Hank: French cyclist Richard Virenque
became the unknowing subject of one rather DIY placebo experiment. Virenque's Belgian soigneur,
Willy Voet, told Virenque he had given him an injection of amphetamines before the start of a
TT in the '97 Tour. In fact, it only contained a small amount of glucose. Virenque went on
to have the TT of his life only being beaten by Jan Ullrich and claimed after the TT that
he felt incredible after whatever Voet had given him. Virenque was flying, wasn't he?
Conor: It looks like form was all in his head anyway. Best not try that one at home though. No.
Hank: No. Conor: Nothing is
going to happen. Anyway, let's get more scientific though, shall we? A study by Canterbury Christ
Church University which measured the effect of placebo on cycling performance found that
riders who believed they'd ingested caffeine for a ten-kilometer TT improved their times by 3.1%.
Hank: 3.1%? Conor: Yes, when really all
they'd really ingested was an innocent sugar pill. Hank: Wow. That's got me thinking then,
is form all in our head? Conor: Well, I guess if you can think
yourself 3.1% faster, then maybe it is. [music]
Conor: The nocebo effect is the opposite of the placebo. Instead of a gain in form, you
actually lose form. Sound familiar? Ever had a bad night's sleep, a long-troubled day, or recovered
from illness, then turned up for your first bike ride and just thought, "I'm going to ride
terribly today." You've had a terrible day as a result. You've ridden terribly, things
haven't gone well and you just haven't had a positive outlook on anything.
Well, this is a nocebo effect working its black magic. Hand up, I've been there myself.
Anyone else out there? I'm guessing yes. I think us cyclists can sometimes be the
worst for talking ourselves out of a good day and thinking ourselves into bad form.
Hank: Think about equipment. Ever had to borrow an old set of wheels
and you just thought yourself into poor form? Conor: I sometimes wonder if power meters can
do this. We see rubbish numbers on the screen and as a result, we think ourselves into a bad
day. For example, General Manager Luca Scinto of the Zabu-KTM team recently actually banned
power meters from his team during races. He was fed up with riders complaining they're on
a below-par day after seeing not the best numbers on their power meter head unit.
Hank: I guess, well, Luca's gone old school, hasn't he? He's thrown us into the bay. Do the
power meters hinder or help our performance? [music]
Conor: In recent years, functional threshold power or FTP has been a dominant method of
measuring a cyclist's capabilities on the bike but many coaches and training workout platforms
use the FTP to prescribe training workouts. Hank: Yes. Now, let's get away from all these
complicated equations and put it really basically. FTP is the power you can sustain for 60 minutes
if you're doing a full-gas effort, max effort. Conor: Our training zones are defined by our FTP,
with many coaches using it to prescribe what intensity to ride at and also just simply
explaining what we can actually achieve physically on the bike.
Hank: Now, I think it's important that we have a look at these
numbers in table form, don't you think? Conor: Yes, I think so. Let's go through it.
[music] Conor: Active recovery,
endurance, tempo, threshold, VO2 MAX, anerobic capacity,
and finally the big one, neuromuscular power. Hank: I guess, all our training zones and the
power we can achieve in each zone is directly linked to, you guessed it,
FTP or a percentage of that number. Conor: I think, to look at it in this way,
it's fair to say that form is purely physical. If you can achieve X amount of watts for 60 minutes,
then you can achieve y amount of watts for five minutes.
Hank: Yes, so I guess you're only as good, on any given day, as your FTP,
meaning, well, is form physical then? Conor: Maybe this is where the robotic criticism
of modern-day riders and Ineos or Sky comes in. People say that we are looking at our watts too
much and we're just too robotic in our approach to cycling. The modern-day cycling has got so
scientific with the numbers that maybe we're just getting too good at analyzing our fitness of being
in the correct form. We've lost that guesswork and the mental aspect of cycling has decreased a bit.
Hank: I guess, I was thinking, whereas the old school cyclists are more mentally strong cyclist
than a modern-day pro. [music]
Conor: It's an interesting point, maybe we're relying on what we can achieve
physically to define our form too much. Hank: Yes. I guess if we think about Kenyan
runners. They've dominated the long-distance running scene. The interesting feature of
their training is that from beginner to professional, they train to exhaustion.
Conor: Instead of just completing a prescribed intensity for their
training or a certain time frame during the interval, they simply try to stay with
the front group and run until they're dropped. Hank: They rely on the mental dimension, don't
they? That how had you can push yourself mentally. Conor: Yes, and I think it's a familiar point in
cycling when we really push ourselves hard and we get to that point where we stop the effort,
we just can't take it anymore, we're dropped, we're done, and we're finished. It's over. I
think this strikes me as a very mental point. It's quite like-- It's just all
in your mind when you just can't go on and you just start, "Ugh, no. I'm done."
Hank: Yes. I'm totally with you there. It's how mentally far you
can push yourself. Conor: Yes.
[music] Conor: Now, whether physical or mental,
there's no denying that when pushing yourself to the absolute limits, it's going to hurt.
Hank: Pushing through this pain in my view is a very mental act. Think about it. Your
physical strength can only get you to a certain point. From then on, it's your
mental strength that's going to keep you going. Conor: Yes, and there are some rather strange
mental techniques to push on through this pain barrier. I myself use to
use a mantra of orange, pineapple, pear, banana, every time the going got tough.
Hank: You think about fruit? Conor: Well, it's just the mantra. It's
just the words you repeat in your head. I actually first used it in the World Tour in 2018 on the
advice of my then-teammate Larry Warbasse Hank: Interesting.
Conor: Yes. I was struggling in the race a little bit and it was rather painful. Larry said to me,
he said, "If you're suffering just repeat the mantra in your head and it will distract you
from the pain." I think there was one stage I was going, it was really tough, and I just thought,
I'm going to have to use Larry's advice and just go for the mantra. I was in the gutter suffering
and I just went, "Orange, pineapple, pear, banana, orange, pineapple, pear, banana." It worked.
Hank: I like it. I like the use of fruit. Mine personally was, "Pain is temporary,
quitting lasts forever." Pain is temporary, quitting lasts forever. Pain is temporary,
quitting lasts forever. Pain-- It worked. [music]
Hank: God, if I'm totally honest, I don't think we got the knowledge. We got the
experience but we need some scientific facts as evidence, do you not think?
Conor: Yes but it's funny you should say that actually, Hank, because we've roped in a true
professional on the matter. Chartered sports psychologist no less, with a master's degree
in Sports and Exercise Psychology. Josie, Josie, thank you very much for coming on the
show. I really appreciate your time. I guess we'll start off by asking, is form mental or physical?
Dr. Josie Perry: As a sports psychologist, I'm always biased on the importance of mind
over body, but actually I think the really interesting element of this is the mind and
body working together. Often, there's a lot of trickery involved, and so we can feel like
we're doing really well because we've seen numbers. Or we can be training naked, as in,
we don't have watches, or GPS, or anything on us, feel like we've had an amazing day,
and get back, and actually, we haven't been doing so well at all. It's a really difficult
one because our minds can easily trick us. There was some brilliant research that's done
in weightlifting where the weightlifters were told they were actually lifting their weights
than they were and so they were able to carry on lifting actually much higher weights than
they really could or usually could. Then as soon as they found out they'd been lied to,
they could no longer lift those really heavy weights. Our mind is incredibly powerful at
tricking us sometimes that we might be in form. But that's actually really good to know because
if we then learn some mental tricks, we can make ourselves feel like we can perform much better on
the bike, and then we do perform much better. Conor: When you go from you're on a good day,
you've just gone out on your local ride or something and you've said, "I'm in amazing
form. I'm really feeling great today," and you get the buzz of the good form. Then the next day
you go out, and for some reason, you just get-- I don't know what it is, but you start to think,
"I'm just not on the same day today. I'm in bad form." How can that change happen so quickly?
Josie: Sports psychologists have done lots and lots of research into all the stresses
and all the different pressures we have on us when we're trying to do a sport.
I have heard numbers starting from about 126 different types of stresses, up into-
Conor: Wow. Josie: - the many, many hundreds.
There are all these different elements, and however good we are at our data analysis or
tracking everything in a training diary, we are never going to be able to track all of those
different elements that are having an impact on us. We can make a good stab at it and we can start
to try and learn what gives us a good day, but we're never always going to be able to spot it.
Then we have physical things thrown into the mix. Actually, those days where you've really struggled
and you get back and you find out your tire was going down, or your brakes were slightly stuck on,
so it was actually much harder to train. Or you've got a cold coming on that appears in three days,
and suddenly you're like, that's why I've been feeling rubbish on the bike. There are so many
different variables that influence how we perform. It's not surprising that we're going to have lots
of different stuff going on on different days. [music]
Josie: Form or sometimes we might even call it flow, will come when you truly are enjoying
what you're doing, and when you love what you're doing. If you are only racing for somebody else,
so you're racing for a pay packet, or you're racing for the prestige. Or you're racing for
somebody else, that you don't necessarily care about, it's much, much harder to find that form
and to find that flow. When you're racing because you just love being on your bike, and you love the
feeling of it, and you love that exhaustion in your legs after six hours, then it's much easier
to find form and much easier to find flow. That's why we spend a lot of time with people
even if they are in a team and are having to race for another reason, helping them find their own
reason to do it and reconnecting with why they may have started cycling in the first place.
[music] Conor: Is there anything
you could advise to get yourself into that mental mindset before a race and to just focus on those
processes? Is there anything you'd advise? I personally actually used to listen to music.
I used to just put my headphones in on the bus, and I have a playlist and quite often it'll be
the same playlist throughout a race, and it would just get me-- Once I listened to certain songs,
it would just put me in the place I needed to be. Josie: It's phenomenal, and it's something I
do with every athlete I work with, of creating a performance playlist-
Conor: Oh wow. Josie: - and great big headphones
so everybody leaves them alone. We pick about 10 tracks that either amp them up to get them into
that optimal level of performance or actually tone them down. Some people will be just too anxious,
too nervous before a race, and listening to a load of really amped up house music,
it's not going to help them in any way, shape, or form. It's just going to get them way over
their levels of optimal functioning we call it. For them, we'll be listening
to something that's much more chilled out, and we'll be using music to calm them down.
[music] Conor:
What advice would you give to those people who are maybe feeling a little bit on the edge of talking
themselves out of a hard ride at the weekend with their friends, and they're talking themselves
out of it like I used to do as well sometimes. Josie: [laughs] It's just all about just being
quite rational. Am I just in the wrong group? Am I in a bad place? I got a cold coming, and actually
me going to hammer myself for four hours is going be really bad for me. Yes, I do actually and to
be realistic and maybe drop down and do my own ride. If you know you're liable to making excuses,
then actually having some kind of mantra as to why you need to work, and how much better you'll
feel at the end of it, it's really good. You can sometimes make it about your goal
and that will be that coffee at the end of this ride will feel phenomenal, and I will
feel really proud of myself for hanging on. If you've got a real purpose for doing that ride,
and a big picture of what you're aiming towards, that can work really well. When you find the right
mantra, it is really powerful. In running, they found it will take the equivalent of about ten
minutes off your marathon time. Conor: Really? Wow.
Josie: Just by talking to yourself, not in a negative, "You're rubbish,
you're going to fall apart, you can't do this," way, but in a, "Look at all your
strengths you've got. This is why you're doing it. This is why it matters to you." It can make
a huge difference to your time. It's well worth trying to find something that works for you.
Conor: I always did used to look forward to my fruit salad. [chuckles]
Josie: Salad, there you go. Maybe it worked. Conor: Well Dr. Josie thank you so much
for agreeing to come on the show and sharing your knowledge with us. It's
been really enlightening actually, and that definitely adds to the debate. I'm starting
to think that form is a lot more mental than I thought it was. So, thank you for sharing.
Josie: Then I've been persuasive enough. Conor: I think I'm swinging towards mental
yes. But no, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
Hank: What do you guys think? Is form physical or is it mental? Let us know
in the comments section below, and if you enjoyed this video then give it a big like.
Conor: So what was it again Larry? I thought it was oranges,
apples, pears, lemons. Can you remember? Larry: It was easy peasy lemon squeezy. Orange,
pineapple, lemon, pear. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Conor: Easy peasy lemon,-- No. No. It was oranges,
apples, pears, bananas. [00:17:34] [END OF AUDIO]