Норвегийн шигшээ багийн довтлогч Эрлинг Холанд сэтгэл зүйн өвөрмөц арга барилаар бие махбодоо дээд цэгт нь хүргэн, Дэлхийн аваргын шөвгийн наймд шалгарлаа.
Манчестер Ситигийн бэлтгэлийн баазад өндөр халуун болон хүчилтөрөгчийн дутагдалтай орчинд бэлтгэл хийдэг Холанд ядаргааг зөвхөн сэтгэл санааны байдал гэж үздэг. Тэрээр Бразилыг хожсоны дараа “Викинг” уухайгаар багтайгаа хамт баярлан, хагас шигшээд шалгарахын төлөө бямба гарагт Английн эсрэг тоглохоор бэлтгэлээ базааж байна.
Спорт сэтгэл судлалын судалгаагаар тамирчид өөртөө эерэг үгс хэлэх нь ядаргааг үл тоон, тэсвэр тэвчээрийг 18 хувиар нэмэгдүүлдэг болохыг тогтоожээ. Холанд ч мөн “Би ядарсангүй” хэмээн өөрийгөө зоригжуулах замаар ачааллыг даван туулж, дэлхийн шилдэг довтлогчдын нэг болох сууриа тавьсан юм. Энэхүү арга нь бие махбодын бодит ачааллыг өөрчлөхгүй ч, тархины ядаргааг мэдрэх мэдрэмжийг бууруулснаар тамирчинд илүү удаан хугацаанд өндөр эрчимтэй тоглох боломжийг олгодог байна.
Дэлгэрэнгүй эх сурвалжийг харах
Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.
One day last fall, Erling Haaland was doing something he did not want to do.
Sitting on an exercise bike inside Manchester City’s training facility, he was pumping his arms and legs inside a hypoxic chamber, a controlled environment that simulated high altitude and intense heat, reducing the amount of oxygen in the room.
To meet his goal, Haaland had to raise his heart rate to 150 beats per minute, which required a momentary sprint.
“Did I want to be doing this? No,” he said, looking into a camera lens. “Will I do it? Yeah … because why not? It’s good for my body. It’s good for my mind.”
Haaland, a 25-year-old Norwegian striker, is one of the breakout stars of this World Cup, a 6-foot-5 Viking meme with angelic blond hair, otherworldly athleticism and a gift for viral content.
He’s scored seven goals, leading Norway to the quarterfinals for the first time, and six days after leading the “Viking Row” chant after a victory against Brazil, he’ll be guiding the boat Saturday against England.
And yet one of the most interesting things about him might be his mentality — a simple, almost unintentionally profound method for pushing his body to the limit.
“If you tell yourself you’re tired, you’re going to be tired,” Haaland said. “If you tell yourself, ‘I’m not that tired, it’s OK,’ you’re not that tired. Simple as that.
“So it’s also a really psychological thing because our bodies can handle so much more than we think. A lot is in the mind.”
Haaland, of course, is not alone in this philosophy. Distance runners are known for using positive self-talk to survive marathons. LeBron James, the NBA superstar, declared that “tired is only in the mind.” And former NFL quarterback Tom Brady once put it more bluntly: “F— your tired body.”
For years, sports psychologists believed in the power of such words. Yet the scientific literature struggled to come up with adequate explanations, viewing the strategy as an oddity of the brain, a motivational trick to dig deep for more energy.
“You would see it encouraged, particularly positive self-talk,” said James Hardy, a professor in sport and exercise science at Bangor University in Wales. “But there wasn’t a lot of data that supported it.”
What do the lemons on Mauricio Pochettino’s desk mean?
Elise Devlin
That started to change in the last two decades, and in 2014, Hardy and a group of researchers published a paper that examined the effects of self-talk on endurance performance. Their study built on the work of Samuele Marcora, the paper’s senior author, who had proposed a psychobiological model of fatigue.
Athletes did not stop exercising because their muscles became unable to produce the necessary force; they stopped because their conscious mind decided the effort or pain was too much to withstand.
According to the model, endurance ended when either:
- required effort exceeds willingness to continue, or
- perceived effort reaches a level where continuation feels impossible.
Which meant anything a person could do to alter their “perceived effort” should benefit their endurance. The way Marcora saw it, it really was all in your head. At least, much of it.
To test the model, the researchers recruited a group of 24 young men and women and asked them to ride a bicycle to the point of exhaustion, over and over.
The participants were split into groups of 12, each equal in age, fitness and ability. First, they were given two baseline tests, including a time-to-exhaustion ride, which measured how long they could pedal at 80 percent of their perceived max effort. Then one group was given two weeks to come up with and practice a series of personalized self-talk phrases, such as “feeling good” or “you’re doing well.”
The group that employed self-talk improved their time to exhaustion by 18 percent and reported that the pedaling felt easier, and the other group saw no benefit, which was an extraordinary gain in sports psychology. But even more intriguing was that other physical metrics, including heart rate and blood lactate, had stayed the same.
In other words, their physical exertion had not changed, but the self-talk had changed their perceived effort, which allowed them to keep going.
“It’s almost like there’s an efficiency gain,” Hardy said.
When Haaland uses self-talk, he uses a simple phrase: “I’m not tired.” But Hardy said research suggests other words such as “keep going” or “push through” might have the same effect.
There are other examples of beneficial self-talk. Jeff Galloway, one of the pioneers of American distance running, would repeat three words during a race: “Relax, power, glide.” Or consider an example from the film “Finding Nemo,” in which the character Dory provides a useful mantra: “Just keep swimming.”
Haaland’s straightforward mental approach has helped him become one of the best goal scorers in the world. His training regimen and diet are detailed and comprehensive. His performance is defined by an ease that belies his brute-force domination.
It sounds so simple. I’m not tired. But when Haaland tells himself this, it is changing his perceived effort. It allows him to keep going.
In fact, research by Ethan Kross, an experimental psychologist at the University of Michigan, has found self-talk might be most beneficial when it’s “distanced,” or not in the first person.
So the most effective way to emulate Haaland, Hardy said, might require a simple tweak.
The next time you’re on a run and you feel yourself start to drag, use these three words:
You’re not tired.
