{"id":17321,"date":"2024-02-22T10:54:35","date_gmt":"2024-02-22T18:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/?p=17321"},"modified":"2025-06-19T06:25:23","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T06:25:23","slug":"triathlons-holy-grail-increase-your-effort-decrease-your-pain-in-training-and-races","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/triathlons-holy-grail-increase-your-effort-decrease-your-pain-in-training-and-races\/","title":{"rendered":"Triathlon\u2019s Holy Grail: Increase Your Effort & Decrease Your Pain in Training and Races"},"content":{"rendered":"

The goal for every determined triathlete\u2014the Holy Grail of our sport, you might say\u2014is the ability to maintain or even increase effort and decrease (or at least minimize) the exertion pain you feel during hard\"\"<\/a> workouts and in races. The problem, as we can all attest to, is that it is extremely difficult to resist the pain you feel deep into a hard workout or toward the end of race.<\/p>\n

Achieving this elusive goal comes down to, oddly enough, an issue of evolution. Increasing your effort and resisting the pain you experience in training and races is a constant battle between your primitive brain (specifically, your amygdala<\/a>) and your evolved brain (specifically, your prefrontal cortex<\/a>, PFC for short).<\/p>\n

A brief lesson in neuroanatomy (it won\u2019t be on the test!). The amygdala is responsible for processing \"\"<\/a>information from the outside world, immediately identifying any threats to life, and, if so, instantaneously triggering our survival instinct and flight-or-flight reaction. This reaction produces psychological, emotional, and physiological changes that for eons helped us survive.<\/p>\n

The pre-frontal cortex only exists in humans and serves the purposes of weighing risks and rewards, assessing short- and long-term consequences, planning, and, most importantly, making deliberate choices that are in your best interests. In sum, the PFC gives us the capacity to resist our amygdala\u2019s primitive\u2014and no longer effective\u2014urges and allows us to think, feel, behave, and perform in ways that will help us to not only survive, but also thrive in 2024 triathlon life.<\/p>\n

We humans and, in fact, all living beings, have evolved to avoid pain at all costs because, for most of history, if living creatures experienced pain, death was likely to follow soon after. Unfortunately, what\"\"<\/a> worked on the Serengeti 250,000 years ago when we first officially became Homo Sapiens doesn\u2019t work in our triathlon endeavors in 2024.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the challenge we face in training and races: Our amygdala has spent the last 250,000,000 years perfecting reactions to pain that increased our chances of survival. But, as I noted above, our PFC has only been around for about 250,000 years. In other words, our PFC is seriously outgunned by our amygdala! Moreover, our amygdala doesn\u2019t know the difference between the pain we would have felt eons ago as primitive people and the pain we experience training for and racing triathlons.<\/p>\n

Being able to push yourself to your limits, in either training or traces, comes down to your PFC\u2019s ability to \"\"<\/a>minimize or override our primitive instincts, emotions, and reactions. Fortunately, there are a number of strategies and tools you can use in your triathlon life that can either prevent your amygdala from \u201clighting up\u201d and taking over or reduce its sensitivity (and, thus, its power) when it experiences pain in your training and races.<\/p>\n

Pre-workout or Race<\/strong><\/p>\n

A mistake triathletes can inadvertently make is to prime their amygdalae (that\u2019s the plural form) prior to a challenging workout or a race with negative thoughts (\u201cI really am not psyched for this workout.\u201d or \u201cThis race is going to be really hard!\u201d) or pre-workout or pre-race anxiety. In both cases, you are sending the message that your \u201clife\u201d is going to be threatened. In reaction to this message, of course your amygdala is\"\"<\/a> going to marshal it\u2019s 250,000,000 years of experience to prevent you from \u201cdying\u201d (remember it doesn\u2019t the know the difference between pain indicating impending death and the pain you feel in a hard workout or a race). Even before the workout or race begins, it goes into DEFCON 1 (the term used to indicate the highest level of military readiness in preparation for an imminent attack). With this high state of alert, your PFC has little chance of intervening and calming the situation down. And, in this state, you have little chance of giving your best effort, in either a workout or race, and achieving your goals for the day.<\/p>\n

One way to prevent your amygdala from going into DEFCON 1 before a workout or race is to preemptively \"\"<\/a>send the exact opposite message. You can tell your amygdala to \u201cstand down,\u201d before it gets the chance to \u201cstand up\u201d in the following ways:<\/p>\n