While researching The Human-Powered Home I interviewed exercise physiologists to learn how the average person could maximize his or her power generation potential (pages 65 – 69). Experts recommended strength training, cardiovascular training, staying cool and hydrated, optimizing your pace, and relying on your legs. (Being younger than 40 also helps.) Only one of the people I interviewed mentioned attitude. Now an article in the recent issue of Seed suggests that attitude might trump training when it comes to maximizing your output.The article describes a few different experiments. In one, cyclists swished energy drinks, some loaded with real fuel and some placebo drinks with no sugar, in their mouths before exercising.
“And even though the cyclists never actually swallowed the drinks, they worked harder and performed better when swishing with the energy-filled ones. Some yet-unknown mechanism tipped their brains off signaling the presence of carbohydrates in their mouths, and the brain consequently doled out extra energy to their muscles in anticipation. Such a finding suggests that our brains control performance and endurance more than do the physical limitations of our muscles, heart, and lungs.”
Tim Noakes, a professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town, theorized that the brain ramps up performance because it needs its glucose, while muscles, which rely on fat and glycogen, could have maintained a higher level of performance without the added fuel. He dubs the brain as it functions this way the “central governor.”
“Noakes’s conception of the central governor is a kind of athletic homunculus, independently operating on a subconscious level. The governor carefully compares external conditions like temperature and the expected length of the exercise period, with the body’s internal chemistry. The governor then coordinates the release of energy to the muscles and the perception of fatigue, trying to reach a pace that’s optimal for both power and safety. According to Noakes, this could explain how cyclists expend the same amount of energy during the Tour of Italy, a two-week race, as they do in the three-week Tour de France.”
The article goes on to identify competing hypotheses about the brain’s effect on exertion and call for more research.