When competing in endurance events like HYROX, perception of effort plays a major role in your performance. This article will look at perception of effort in detail, and help show how understanding this important topic can improve your training and race day performances.
What is Perception of Effort?
Perception of effort refers to how difficult or strenuous an exercise or activity feels to you. It is influenced by both physiological cues (like heart rate, respiration, fatigue, and pain), as well as psychological factors (like motivation, past experience, and your belief in your abilities).
A key point is that your perception of effort may not always match your actual physiological strain or work rate. You may start out feeling good, when exertion is high. Or feel exhausted without much physiological cause. Perception of effort is more related to what’s going on in the brain, as opposed to being directly correlated with what’s going on in the muscles. And because of that there will be steps that can be taken, over and above your typical physical training, that can help your performance.
Impact on Endurance Performance
Increased perception of effort directly affects endurance performance in numerous ways:
– Alters Pacing & Speed: You may slow down or take breaks to compensate. This reduces average speed/pace across your race.
– Impacts Energy Output: Feeling like you are reaching your limit makes you unwilling to push harder or sustain outputs. You may ease up or quit altogether.
– Affects Technique & Focus: Feeling exhausted can impact coordination and focus, reducing technique and form quality on exercises (such as the burpee broad jumps or wall balls, for example).
– Hurts Mental Stamina: The sense of severe fatigue can sap motivation and your mental willpower to ignore discomfort and keep fighting.
– Can Lead to Mistakes: When perception of effort is high, we can easily lose concentration. Running an incorrect number of laps, or performing the stations in the wrong order, for example, can be very common in HYROX, in no small part due to the toughness of the event.
10 Tips to Manage Perception of Effort
Here are 10 useful strategies to manage perception of effort during endurance events like HYROX:
1. Prepare for Effort
Much of your perception of effort during a race is driven by the expectation of how you think you should feel at that point during the race. If you are feeling reasonably tired early on (say, by the sled push) that might cause you to slow down to preserve energy. Whereas, if you have the same feelings of effort later on (at the lunges perhaps) that might give you a boost and cause you to speed up.
The expectation for how you should feel at certain point largely comes from experience. However, when going into a race, it can be a useful strategy to tell yourself it’s going to be very tough, rather than kid yourself it is going to be easy and getting a shock when that’s not the case.
2. Reframe Sensations
Try to see pain / discomfort as fuel gauges, not threats. Expect and welcome them as signs you are pushing your limits. Put differently, appreciate that perceived effort isn’t just about how you feel, but also your interpretation about how you feel. What is your attitude towards feelings of high effort? When things get very tough, do you have a negative feeling / self-talk, saying “oh no this is awful”, or a more positive attitude of “Yes! This is why I’m here, to test myself!”. Do you accept the pain, rather than try to resist it? That interpretation of the effort will impact your perceived effort, and then impact your performance.
Disclaimer – not all pain should just be ignored or welcomed! But if you can embrace the toughness of the event (without risking injury, medical issues, etc), that’s normally a better strategy than fearing it.
3. Motivation
Be clear in your mind about what is motivating you. When perceived effort is high, focusing on your reasons for competing can help to ease the fatigue.
4. Use Anger
Sometimes, when things get really tough, even focusing on your motivation can not be enough. In those times, utilising anger (by thinking of things that frustrate / annoy you) to help drive you may be helpful and distract you from your high levels of perceived effort.
5. Chunking
Rather than dwell on the total distance of your event, and how long you have left, instead break it down, mentally, into smaller, manageable chunks.
For example, in a HYROX, when working through the burpee broad jumps, don’t focus on all you still have to do in the race after that station. Instead, just focus on the here and now, and completing the 80 meters of BBJ to the best of your ability. Once that’s complete, shift your focus to the next part.
“Chunking” is something that sports psychologist Josephine Perry spoke about with us on the Rox Lyfe podcast (you can listen here or watch on YouTube).
6. Smile
Smiling during exercise has been shown to help reduce your level of perceived effort. Sure, it can be easier said than done when in the depths of a race, but it can pay dividends.
One study showed that runners who smiled during a treadmill test had a lower perceived rate of exertion and were, on average, 2.8% more economical, using less oxygen. This can translate into a reasonably significant improvement in running times. Eliud Kipchoge, one of the greatest runners ever, uses this tactic when he is racing. He said himself “When you smile and you’re happy you can trigger the mind to not feel your legs.”
7. Caffeine
Caffeine is believed to block adenosine receptors in the central nervous system, which are responsible for feelings of tiredness. By blocking these receptors, caffeine may lessen the sense of fatigue and make a race effort feel less difficult at a given exercise intensity.
Some research has indicated that trained athletes are able to produce higher power outputs, or maintain faster paces, with less subjective exertion, when they have caffeine in their system.
Essentially, with caffeine, athletes may feel like they are working less hard compared to placebo, even if their actual physiological outputs are similar or better. It’s worth appreciating that people respond differently to caffeine, so this isn’t something that will work for everyone.
8. Supporters
Having supportive friends and family cheering you on, especially at key points of the race, can really help reduce your feelings of exertion. Research has shown that athletes perceive lower effort and increased pace when they receive support, compared to when racing alone. This may be attributed to release of uplifting hormones and neurotransmitters or simply feeling accountable to run hard for those who have come to support them.
One of the beauties of HYROX is that spectators can normally watch you / support you throughout the race. Having them cheer you through the burpees or lunges, for example, could be a big help!
9. Proper Preparation
Of course, your actual HYROX training will play a part. Training appropriately for an event like this is obviously important, and that can be done in many ways. However, some specific training, that prepares you for the movements and intensity which you’ll experience can help your perception of effort come race day.
10. Mental Freshness
It’s important to realise that if you go into the race mentally fatigued (perhaps due to stress in previous days, high amounts of mental activity / workload, etc) then this can have an affect on your perceived effort. A large part of a taper period before the race should be about mentally tapering as well as physically tapering. For more on this important topic check out this article.
Summary
In conclusion, actively managing perception of effort can help maximize your performance in demanding endurance competitions like HYROX. Use the tips outlined here during your preparation and on race day!
