Endure; Finding The Limits Of Human Performance | Alex Hutchinson

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (wind blowing) Hi, friends. I…

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      (wind blowing) Hi, friends. I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year. We are kicking off 2019 with what might be the best episode that I've ever recorded. I know I do say that a lot, it's a running joke, but this one genuinely could be it. Alex Hutchinson is a writer, journalist, and an endurance athlete. Recently wrote a book called Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. I think anyone who has ever gone for a run has thought to themselves, "What makes some of us quit while others continue, and just how much of human performance is dictated by the mind and how much by the body?" It's a fundamental question which anyone who has ever taken part in a physical pursuit has considered, and today Alex is going to take us through exactly what he's uncovered. I'm absolutely certain that this is going to be a massive benefit to a lot of listeners. If it is to you, please pop it into your gym Facebook group or send it to some friends that you know would really appreciate the insights that Alex gives us. This could genuinely be a game-changer for a lot of athletes' performances as we move into 2019. So pound the share button if you would be so kind. Don't forget to hit subscribe if you are new to the channel. It would make me very happy indeed. And if you're a regular listener, please go and give me five stars wherever you are tuned in. Now let's go and improve our endurance.

   2. NANarrator1:39

      (instrumental music)

   3. CWChris Williamson1:55

      Alex, welcome to Modern Wisdom. How are you?

   4. AHAlex Hutchinson1:58

      I'm good. Thanks, Chris, for having me on. I appreciate it.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:00

      Brilliant. So I'm specifically excited about today's podcast, not least because my endurance sucks. Um, (laughs) so I am hoping, as I'm sure many of the listeners are, to find some strategies that can improve our endurance, and also, I think, probably, uh, define and, uh, better understand what endurance is, because as far as I'm concerned, it, it, it's something that I work on quite a lot and sometimes I feel like it's good and then sometimes, uh, I feel like I might have never trained before in my life.

   6. AHAlex Hutchinson2:39

      Yeah, I mean, and, (laughs) so I'll, I'll confess, uh, I started with a very narrow definition of endurance. You know, I was, I, I've been a runner my whole life, so I was thinking very narrowly and, of endurance as kind of how fast can you run a long race. But I've come to, to think of endurance as a much broader thing. And in fact, I'll, I'll, I'll jump right in with the definition that I ended up using in the book-

   7. CWChris Williamson3:01

      Fantastic.

   8. AHAlex Hutchinson3:01

      ... which is that endurance is the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop. So it's, it's, it's something that takes place over time, and it can be, you know, we can be talking about mental endurance, physical endurance, you know, at, at, at work or, uh, uh, during exercise or whatever the case may be. But what, what I'll end up arguing is that fundamentally that struggle is, is the same and the struggle to, to continue, you know, to keep studying, uh, for, uh, li- an exam or something is actually the same mental struggle that goes on when you're running a marathon and you're trying to force yourself to maintain a pace that is unpleasant.

   9. CWChris Williamson3:36

      That's a, a very, uh, artistic definition, I think.

   10. AHAlex Hutchinson3:40

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson3:40

       Much more artistic than I would have thought.

   12. AHAlex Hutchinson3:42

       Very artistic, but, uh, yeah, yeah, it, it's definitely not what I s- ... I, I, I started out thinking that it, you know, my definition of endurance would be, you know, the maximum amount of oxygen that your lungs can transport to your muscles -

   13. CWChris Williamson3:52

       Yeah, that's, that's what I was expecting.

   14. AHAlex Hutchinson3:53

       ... during, uh, mid-range exercise, but that, that definition, I, I, you know, I, I didn't just pull it out of, uh, out of, let's say my head. Uh-

   15. CWChris Williamson4:00

       (laughs)

   16. AHAlex Hutchinson4:00

       ... it's, it's actually fr- from a scientific paper from a guy at the University of Kent who studies endurance. He's the head of the endurance research group there. And that's what he concluded, that this is what the fundamental, uh, you know, bedrock of endurance is, that it's not about oxygen, it's not about muscle fibers, it's about a mental struggle, and that, that ultimately when you're, whether you're running a marathon or, again, in some other aspect of your life, struggling to continue against something that's unpleasant, uh, it's, it's, it's how you face that struggle mentally, and it's your, it's your struggle to continue against that mounting desire to stop that really matters. So that's, that's the scientific definition, even though it sounds like a, you know, I was writing a poem about endurance or something.

   17. CWChris Williamson4:40

       (laughs) Yeah. So where does endurance begin? What did you, what did you first begin to look at, and w- where does the book start?

   18. AHAlex Hutchinson4:50

       Yeah, so, uh, uh, actually the, (laughs) I, I, I mentioned that I, you know, I've been a runner for most of my life, and I actually, I competed for the Canadian National Team, uh, for about a decade as a cross-country runner and track and field runner. Um, so it, uh, this started as a sort of personal quest for me. And, and actually the, the wa- the place I start in the book i- is a single race that I had back in the mid-1990s when I was university student where I was, I was trying to break the four-minute barrier for 1,500 meters, which is a little bit shorter than a mile, so it's kind of, it's like a 4:18 mile, so, um-

   19. CWChris Williamson5:24

       Pretty quick.

   20. AHAlex Hutchinson5:24

       ... you know, it's a significant ... Yeah, it's, it's a poor man's four-minute mile barrier, let's say.

   21. CWChris Williamson5:28

       (laughs)

   22. AHAlex Hutchinson5:28

       It's not, it's not as, not as fast as the four-minute mile, but significant. And, uh, and it, and it, I actually was stuck at 4:01 or 4:02 for four years during high school and then university. So I had the sense that I'd approached the true limits of my endurance, that maybe I could run 3:59, but, uh, that was about all that I'd be able to. I'd been running 4:01 or 4:02 year after year. And I ended up, I ran a race, and what happened is the timekeeper gave me the wrong splits, basically. I was, I w- you know, when you run at a track race, every lap there's a timekeeper who will call out how fast you're going so you have, uh, a sense of whether you're on pace.

   23. CWChris Williamson6:03

       Yeah.

   24. AHAlex Hutchinson6:03

       And, and he was calling out...... uh, splits that were about three or four seconds off, uh, and, and basically fooled me into thinking that I was running way faster than I was. And so aft- about a third of the way through the race, I, you know, I was having this like, "Wow, this, this is way faster than I think I'm going, and yet I feel really good." And so I just had this sensation I was having the greatest day of my life, and so I just kinda went for it. I really unshackled myself from my pre-race expectations and ended up running 3:52, which was-

   25. CWChris Williamson6:32

       Oh, great. (laughs)

   26. AHAlex Hutchinson6:33

       ... like a ni- like, uh, uh, believe me, after four years of running the same times over and over again, it was, it was absolutely mind-blowing. And, and what then happened is that, uh, I was totally altered. I never struggled to break four minutes again. And in fact, I then ran 3:49 in, in my next race and 3:44 in my next race.

   27. CWChris Williamson6:50

       Wow.

   28. AHAlex Hutchinson6:50

       So all of a sudden, I went from, like, a, a mediocre college runner to, to, uh, you know, running in that summer's Olympic trials. And so that, for me, was the real foundation of, hang on, the limits of my ability, eh, when I'm up against what seems like physical limits, uh, there's something more there because I, you know, my muscles didn't change or, you know, and my, my lungs and my heart and all these other things, none of that changed dramatically over the course of those few weeks. But being tricked somehow unlocked some reserves that were otherwise there. So I, you know, I don't wanna oversimplify that the, you know, "And from that moment on, I knew I would write a book (both laughing) about endurance." But, but it kind of, it kind of laid the dr- groundwork for me of thinking, "There's something more to this. It's not, we're not just like cars where, you know, you press down the gas tank and, and your speed is a function of, you know, how many cylinders you have in your engine and, and how much gas is, is in the tank." Instead, it's something much more complex. And I think for, for anyone who has tried to push their limits in any, i- i- in any capacity, uh, you, you, you pretty soon realize that it's not just some sort of mathematical thing that I'm capable of X and that's, that's exactly what I'm capable of, that, that there's, there's more to it and that the brain plays a role in dictating, uh, in, in, in ways that we're not even aware of. The bl- the brain plays a role in setting our physical limits. So that was the start for me of, of trying to understand what, h- how does the, how do the mind and body work together to, to create what we feel as, as, as physical limits?

   29. CWChris Williamson8:17

       That's a, a very poignant way to start your journey, I suppose. It's gonna be something that's gonna, that's gonna really kick it home that you made such a, such a marked difference in your performance purely based on the fact that you had this mental barrier. Um, so what's the, what's kind of the established understanding of the limits of endurance at the moment that-

   30. AHAlex Hutchinson8:37

       Yeah, so it, it, well, it's in flux, I would say. The, the, it's, it's, uh, it turns out that it's an exciting area to, to, to write about in terms of scientific research because there are a lot of differing views right now. And in fact, you know, th- one of the sort of, uh, m- mixed benefits of the modern world is that you can go on Twitter and follow a bunch of the scientists who are at the s- forefront of research in this area and discover that they actually really hate each other and...
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. AHAlex Hutchinson15:00

      were arguing about this central governor idea, what role the brain played, and that has sort of continued to this day. There's still a bunch of rival theories, uh, in arguing about how the brain should be incorporated, but overall I would say there's a- there's a sort of underlying consensus, which is that, yeah, y- y- you know, when you go out and if I- if I put you on a treadmill, set the speed at a- a given pace and say, "Run until you fall off the back of the treadmill," the moment you fall off the back of the treadmill or the moment you say, "Stop the treadmill before I fall off the back-"

   2. CWChris Williamson15:29

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAlex Hutchinson15:30

      ... it's fundamentally a decision that you're making, and it's not based on ... There's no measurement I can take, whether it's your heart rate or your- or your breathing rate or your body temperature or your lactate levels, there's no measurement I can take that will tell me when you're gonna fall off the back of the treadmill reliably, but there is one question I can ask you which is, "How hard does this feel?" And when you get to the point where you say, "This feels like about a 10 out of 10 on effort," boom, you're off the back of the treadmill. And so it's your- it's your- your brain's processing of all these signals from your body and processing of how you're feeling in general, processing of how you slept last night and- and how you're getting on with your partner and so on. Your brain is processing all that information into one number which or one sensation, which is how hard it feels, and that is the ultimate, uh, sort of final answer in terms of where the limits of your endurance are. So that's- that's, I think ... It's not universally agreed upon, but I think that's where the field is moving now, in contrast to the 20th century, it's a machine. If we know your lactate and your breathing rate and stuff, we'll be able to dictate your limits.

   4. CWChris Williamson16:33

      I get that completely. Uh, I recently did a podcast with some of the coaches from Reebok CrossFit Tyneside up here in Newcastle, and as a part of that, I asked them the question which i- i- essentially you're moving through the answer of now, which was if I put a bar that is five kilos above your PB in front of you and I tell you that you need to pick it up, there's a- a chance that you may be able to pick it up, but the difference between you lifting it and not lifting it really lies within your mind. And what I was fascinated by, and we couldn't come up with the solution, but you may be able to give us some sort of, uh, some spotlight on this, is what the mechanism is that works on whether or not you pick the bar up or whether you don't pick the bar up. How you, how your brain is able to choose how much of your body's performance gets deployed, if that makes sense.

   5. AHAlex Hutchinson17:23

      Yeah, totally. Well, so as ... The first thing I'll say is if- if you put the bar that with five kilos extra on it, and if I don't tell you that it has those five kilos so that you think it's just the same load that you've lifted before, that's gonna raise your chances dramatically of- of- of lifting it. If you believe that, yeah, this is ... I've done this before, of course I can do this, then you'll have a much greater chance of doing it. Uh-

   6. CWChris Williamson17:45

      Is that due to, uh, hormonal profile in the body? Is that because of just a psychological bias that we've got?

   7. AHAlex Hutchinson17:52

      Yeah. The- I think, well, it's, it- it ... I think there's a mix of things going on. Uh, w- fundamentally what's going on is your brain is sending a signal to your muscles telling how many muscle fibers should be recruited, which muscle fibers, in what order. And it ... So it's a very, very complex process of, you know, if- if you're doing, say, a deadlift-Uh, there's, I can't remember, there's something like 13 different muscles or 17 different muscles that have to contract in a very specific order. So just- just saying, just contracting more isn't always the right answer, but contracting in a way that... Y- you know, if you don't think you're going to be able to do it, then you're already perhaps contracting the, in- in a pattern that is defensive so that when you fail, you're not going to hurt yourself. But in doing so, you make it less likely that you succeed. Whereas if the neuromuscular signaling is proceeding with the assumption that you're going to be able to do it, you're maybe giving yourself a little edge because you're not holding back with the fear of failure.

   8. CWChris Williamson18:50

      And that- that probably ties into your story from your, uh, 1500 meter run as well.

   9. AHAlex Hutchinson18:56

      A- absolutely. I think there's a big connection. And, uh, you know, like when we start talking about muscle strength, it's- it's interesting because obviously lifting something once is different from sustaining something for an hour or for four minutes or whatever the case may be, but there's a lot of parallels and there's a lot of, uh, literature. So I have a chapter in the book called Muscle where I try and sort of disentangle, so what does it mean to be limited by your muscle strength? What does it mean... I- is- is- is fundamentally what happens when you reach failure is that, is it that your, you know, your muscle fibers simply aren't able to contract in a way that completes the- the motion. And it turns out to be just like with- with sort of marathon running, it turns out to be a much slipperier slope to try and figure out what your limits are.

   10. CWChris Williamson19:39

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAlex Hutchinson19:40

       So there's, there's some famous studies from back in the early 1960s, uh, and- and one of them, what they did is that they had volunteers doing a maximum kind of biceps curl contraction, uh, once every minute. So they were just supposed to do it all out, don't save anything, just once a minute, give us your- your maximum curl for a couple seconds. And- and- and they were measuring the force produced. And then before one of the- the lifts, they had one of the researchers snuck up behind the volunteers and fired a gun in their ears, basically scared the crap out of them.

   12. CWChris Williamson20:10

       Mm-hmm.

   13. AHAlex Hutchinson20:11

       And- and all of a sudden, of course, their- their strength, their- their maximum strength suddenly goes up by s- something like eight or 10%. So, and you know, we- we sort of understand this intuitively as a fight or flight response, like they were completely scared at that moment, a fraction of a second before they were lift. So bam, they- they, uh, they're able to produce more force. Now they could get a similar effect by injecting adrenaline, uh, or injecting some- some stimulants, uh, I think it was ephedrine or something, I'm not, I can't remember what the stipulant- stimulant was. Um, so- so there are chemical ways of sort of, uh, altering what's going on in- in the, in the brain which in turn changes how much of your muscle force you, you know... If you think in evolutionary terms, uh, at that moment when the bear is chasing you or- or whatever the case may be, then whatever safety circuitry is hardwired into your body, it's- it's- it's a good i- it's good for you if that circuitry is somewhat flexible and can say, "You know what? We're- w- w- we're going to disable this."

   14. CWChris Williamson21:10

       We need to recruit everything here.

   15. AHAlex Hutchinson21:12

       Yeah, yeah, let's not save, l- let's not s- save this for another day. So the... and you see that with- with- with pain too, like the, and the same thing if you're, you know, if you're a- a deer being chased by a wolf and you trip and break your leg, it's not the time to say, "Oh, I b- I need to lie down and- and let this leg get better."

   16. CWChris Williamson21:27

       (laughs)

   17. AHAlex Hutchinson21:27

       You're just gonna keep running even if you break- break the, even if the- the like snaps worse.

   18. CWChris Williamson21:32

       All four are break, broken. Yeah, exactly.

   19. AHAlex Hutchinson21:34

       Y- yeah. So- so there's- there's these mechanisms that affect both how we perceive what's going on, like pain- pain perception, but also how we send muscles, or send signals to our, from our brains to, brain to our muscles. And those can be mediated by emotional responses and by hormones, uh, and also just by, l- like we were saying before, like deception, and there are studies where they- they- they do exactly this sort of thing. They tell you you're going to lift one weight and you're lifting another weight, or they tell you you have to, uh, y- you're racing against your own best performance, but really they have you racing in virtual reality against your own best performance plus 1% or plus 2%. And they find that if you add a percent or two and you have the belief that you can beat that, y- you think it's just your own best performance from last time you were in the lab, then you beat it, until, unless it's changed too much. If y- if you speed up this- this, uh, virtual reality representation- representation of yourself by 5%, then that's too far, and you- you- you're trying to race against yourself but you know something is wrong.

   20. CWChris Williamson22:29

       Yeah.

   21. AHAlex Hutchinson22:29

       And you end up getting discouraged. So- so the- the- there's, it's never like do all of this or do... this thing always works, but depending on the context there are various ways you can tweak what you expect to go on in your brain and use that as a way of- of doing more than you were previously capable of.

   22. CWChris Williamson22:44

       Yeah. Uh, uh, what's interesting though, there's a- a funny story, I'm not too- too sure how much truth's in it, but a couple of my friends are firefighters and they say a lot of the time if there's, um, been car accidents and stuff and mothers have been known to be, to have incredible bursts of strength when they're concerned about their baby in a car and they've been able to pull handles harder than they would be able to and, you know, move things out of the way because they've got this mortal fear of-

   23. AHAlex Hutchinson23:12

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson23:12

       ... the situation that they're in and that kind of ties back to the- the bear scenario that you described. And then the same for anyone who's ever watched a powerlifting competition, if you look at powerlifters before they step up to the plate, they're sniffing smelling salts that take your face off and they're getting their friends to slap them on the back of the, the back of the neck. It's like if someone, if you went through that in a normal day-to-day, like just normal day-to-day life, you- you'd, you'd want to go to bed for a little bit. But, you know, these guys are electing to do it because they think that it's going to prime their mind into a- a state where they can recruit more from their body.

   25. AHAlex Hutchinson23:48

       Yeah, to- totally. And so that's one of the things I looked into is this, okay, is it true that, uh, you know, a s- a scared mom could lift a car off their crushed baby? And if you- if you look through news archives you find story after story like this. But it never, of course it never happens in the lab because, you know, you're not allowed to put a baby under a car in the lab.

   26. CWChris Williamson24:04

       (laughs)

   27. AHAlex Hutchinson24:04

       It's just, they just don't- don't go for it. But so I was trying to sort of figure this out and I found, I ended up finding a story, th- probably the most plausible story I could find happened about 12 years ago in Arizona. Uh, a- a guy who was, uh, a cyclist was hit by a car and was trapped under the wheels and the guy, the guy who-... came and r- r- so, reportedly, according to eyewitnesses, this guy came and lifted the car up so that someone else could pull the, the, the, uh, the cyclist out from under the car. And it, so, it turns out this guy was actually this, you know, this guy was not a guy who looked like me. He was a guy who actually could deadlift. He had a best of, I can't remember, something like 700 pounds in the gym. He was a, a, you know-

   28. CWChris Williamson24:40

       Oh, so he's a strong old, strong old boy, then. He was the guy that you wanted. If you're trapped under a car, you want that guy.

   29. AHAlex Hutchinson24:45

       Yeah, he was the right guy.

   30. CWChris Williamson24:47

       (laughs)
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Wow. …

   1. AHAlex Hutchinson30:00

      m- m- mo- moderate or change the activity of the, of the neurons that are responsible for your perception of effort. So you can make a given level of exercise feel a little bit easier. And it, and as we were saying earlier, if it feels easier, you can do it for longer or you can increase, you can do it harder, uh, 'cause f- how it feels is really what matters. So over the last five years, there have been a bunch of studies showing that this technique, you do about 10 minutes of electric brain stimulation, it changes how your neurons fire for about an hour. So you get this temporary alteration in how hard exercise feels. And as a result, you're able to...... push harder, uh, and, and achieve more. And there were athletes using this technique at the Winter Olympics this year, uh, in the 2018 Winter Olympics.

   2. CWChris Williamson30:42

      Wow.

   3. AHAlex Hutchinson30:42

      And, uh-

   4. CWChris Williamson30:43

      They're walking around with nine volt batteries attached to them?

   5. AHAlex Hutchinson30:45

      Well, they were using them in training, and, and there were, you know, there, there have been professional sports teams experimenting with it. There's a Silicon Valley startup that makes noise-canceling headphones.

   6. CWChris Williamson30:54

      Ha- Halo, Halo I've seen.

   7. AHAlex Hutchinson30:55

      That's, that's the one I'm talking about, and that's what I tried while, while writing the book. It, I, it didn't actually work for me in the sense that I, I'm bald, and, uh, apparently my s- you know, the, the, the tough weather in Canada has toughened my scalp to a degree that I, I really had trouble making electrical contact with the, the spikes that are supposed to deliver the-

   8. CWChris Williamson31:13

      Ah, yes.

   9. AHAlex Hutchinson31:13

      ... current. The, the controller just kept saying, "Insufficient electrical contact," and I'm like, "Man, I'm digging these spikes into my head."

   10. CWChris Williamson31:18

       (laughs)

   11. AHAlex Hutchinson31:18

       I ended up with, like, 24 little red divots on my head for, for the rest of the day.

   12. CWChris Williamson31:23

       Yeah.

   13. AHAlex Hutchinson31:24

       So, so anyway, all of which is ... With ... The point here is that there are ways of directly manipulating the brain that alter your perception of effort, and altering your perception of effort improves your performance, which, which is, to me, is a cool principle, because it shows that you haven't changed anything below your, below the neck. All you're doing is manipulating how your neurons communicate with each other, and all of a sudden your physical limits have changed.

   14. CWChris Williamson31:47

       That's interesting.

   15. AHAlex Hutchinson31:48

       So that-

   16. CWChris Williamson31:48

       So, so effort is, is a big mediator there. So when you're doing RPE and you say, "Rate of perceived exertion is a nine," but if the next day you then felt that that nine was an eight, you'd be able to move more?

   17. AHAlex Hutchinson32:01

       That's 100% it. That, that is, that is the fundamental truth, or at least, uh, theory, that, that, that is at the forefront of exercise physiology right now. That, that that RPE, the rating of perceived exertion, is the master controller of what you're capable of.

   18. CWChris Williamson32:16

       Oh wow. Tell us more about that.

   19. AHAlex Hutchinson32:18

       So I, I mean, it, it ... RPE just, for, for listeners who aren't familiar with it, rating of perceived exertion, it's, it's, it's a very simple concept. Uh, and there's, you can, it's a n- if I, if I'm doing an exercise and someone asked me, "Hey, how hard is this exercise on a scale of ..." You can either use a scale of six to 20 or a scale of, of one to 10, so let's just say the one to 10 'cause it's a little simpler, and I say, "That's a seven out of 10," then they'll say, "Okay, that's great," and they know then roughly how long I'll be able to continue doing that, and once I get to 10 out of 10, that's it. By definition, I'm done. If I'm saying this is as hard as I can go, then they know that I'm not gonna be able to keep going there. Now, when people first hear about this, they k- they kind of think, "Well, that's sort of an imperfect, rough, vague description of how you're feeling," and, you know, what one person will call seven out of 10 another person might call six out of 10. And, you know, that's all true, but the fact remains that it turns out to be a really reliable guide to how, how, what you're capable of doing. And, and people go, "Well, it's not as reliable or accurate as your lactate levels or your, you know, your, your, uh," whatever else the case, your heart rate or your, your breathing rate or all these other things. Your, your rating of perceived exertion incorporates all of those.

   20. CWChris Williamson33:29

       I was gonna say media- it's mediated by all of those things, isn't it?

   21. AHAlex Hutchinson33:31

       Yeah. So it's, it's, it's, we're talking about a different level of explanation. Of course your, your heart rate matters, but it only matters insofar as it makes exerc- or is associated with exercise feeling harder. And what's ... The, the, the key thing is that, yes, rating of perceived exertion reflects all those things that are going on in your body, but it also reflects what's going on in your mind, and that's what's, wha- or, or in your brain. And that's why you can alter your rating of perceived exertion using something like electric brain stimulation, and then you're able to keep going, or lift more or run faster, even though you haven't changed anything about what's going on in your muscles or your heart or your lungs. And so there've been a number of studies that have demonstrated that to be the case. If you find a way of manipulating perceived exertion, then you've effectively found, found a way of changing your physical limits. And that's a cr-

   22. CWChris Williamson34:20

       That's crazy.

   23. AHAlex Hutchinson34:21

       It's, it's a super powerful insight because if it's true, then it changes your whole perspective on what are my limits? 'Cause when you feel like you've hit your physical limits, it doesn't feel like it reflects, you know, your feelings or your, your perceptions.

   24. CWChris Williamson34:33

       Mm-hmm.

   25. AHAlex Hutchinson34:33

       It's like, no, I, I sw- I swear to you, my legs could not take another step. And, and what this research is saying is yeah, they could have. Yeah. If, if a lion had jumped out from behind a tree and started chasing you, you would have taken another step.

   26. CWChris Williamson34:45

       He just needed a little bit more motivation.

   27. AHAlex Hutchinson34:47

       Yeah. And of course, you know, in some circumstances, let's say it's the Olympic final, motivation is already pretty near to maximal.

   28. CWChris Williamson34:52

       Yes.

   29. AHAlex Hutchinson34:52

       So it's not like, uh, y- you, people aren't trying hard. But even in that situation, the fundamental, uh, determinant is that the, the reason you stop isn't that your legs are completely incapable, it's that you've reached the point where it's absolutely at your maximum abil- e- effort. It's, it's as hard as you can push. And so-

   30. CWChris Williamson35:12

       I love, I love the, um, the idea of this. I often think about the very, very granular nature, the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, about just how much more could you have squeezed out. You know? Okay, so the lion jumps out, and then oh my god, the lion's attacking your wife, and then oh my god-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   I, I did. In…

   1. CWChris Williamson45:00

      their limits will know that some days it goes in, and, and you can go into the gym, and it feels... E- everything just clicks. For whatever reason it is, your, your rate of perceived exertion, it's like, it's like the ceiling's just been lifted. And then there's other days when you go in and, like, gravity just feels so, (laughs) so much heavier than it should do. Uh, I think working off that rate of perceived exertion s- it makes so much intuitive sense to me. Um, I, I, I really like it as a concept. So I wanted to talk, uh, one of the things that I certainly thought would have been a big impact would have been pain and, or discomfort, I think. Um, did you look into pain and discomfort and, uh, uh, and such?

   2. AHAlex Hutchinson45:47

      I, I did. In fact, there's a whole chapter in the book on pain. (laughs) But it was a fun one. Um, so yeah. So, uh, again, I'll, I'll, I'll... I know I'm sort of saying this over and over again, but I'll say that there is disagreement among scientists. And in fact, this is one of my f- favorite examples of disagreement because there's two guys at the University of Kent, uh, a guy named Samuele Marcora and a guy named Alexis Major, who are colleagues. And Marcora is basically the leading advocate of effort is the be-all and end-all, and Major is, uh, the leading researcher on the role of pain in exercise. And so they have totally, uh, d- you know, different views on what is, uh, more important.

   3. CWChris Williamson46:27

      Working out at the same university as well.

   4. AHAlex Hutchinson46:29

      Yeah. And, and what's great and what's, uh, what's, uh, what I think is really, really wonderful and speaks well of both of them is that they collaborate on studies, and they do them together. And d- and, you know, they may disagree about the interpretation of the results, but they're, they're trying to tease apart the relative role of pain and effort. And so my reading of it is that pain matters. Uh, uh, it could definitely matters. The more unpleasant something is, uh, the worse you'll do at it. And, uh, um, but that pain is subordinate to effort. Pain mostly matters because if something is painful, you'll, you'll, it'll influence your sense of effort, and you'll feel like it's harder. But in a sense, it doesn't matter what's subordinate to what 'cause the, the point is since pain contributes to that feeling, how you handle pain will influence how you perform. And there's some really interesting research showing, uh, that, you know, the difference between athletes and non-athletes in terms of how they manage pain and how that affects their performance. So, uh, there have been a, a, a lot of studies over the years that show that ath- athletes have a greater pain tolerance than non-athletes. So you take some arbitrary, uh, way of inflicting pain, whether it's with blood pressure cuffs or ice baths or, uh, pressure, you know, sticking, poke- poke- poking people or whatever the case may be.

   5. CWChris Williamson47:41

      (laughs)

   6. AHAlex Hutchinson47:41

      What you find is that... First of all, what you find is that p- their pain sensitivity is the same. Athletes and non-athletes, it's not that athletes have some sort of magical way that they don't feel pain. In fact... And so the, the threshold at which they say, "Hey, that hurts. Stop that, you bastard."

   7. CWChris Williamson47:57

      Yeah.

   8. AHAlex Hutchinson47:57

      Uh, is, is roughly the same. They feel pain the same. It's just that the athletes are willing to sit there and endure it for much longer. They'll be, they'll, they'll say, "Okay, keep on going. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay. It hurts, but I can tolerate it." And, and their maximum threshold is much higher. So the next question then is, is this because, uh, that s- the people who become athletes are those who are born with a high pain threshold? Or is it p- by being an athlete you learn to have a higher pain threshold?

   9. CWChris Williamson48:22

      And, yeah, exactly. Which, which way is the arrow of causality moving here?

   10. AHAlex Hutchinson48:26

       Yeah. And my, my default answer in these cases is that it's, there's probably a bit of both, but I think the strongest evidence is towards the second idea that which is that by, by training on a regular basis, you increase your pain tolerance. And, and again, this isn't because you stop feeling pain. It's because you learn to cope with it. You develop psychological coping mechanisms. If you go to the gym every day and put yourself through some discomfort, you gradually get better and better at...... various things like distraction. You get better about thinking, of thinking about something else instead of just thinking about how much some, you know, this exercise hurts. You also get better at interpreting pain as information, so taking away the emotional response. Not like, "This hurts. Ah, I hate this. This, you know, a, a this is a disaster." No, just thinking, "This hurts, therefore this tells me, it gives me some information about how hard I'm working and whether I can continue for an..." So, so it's almost related to sort of mindfulness, which is of course a big buzz, buzzword these days. But one of the definitions of mindfulness is non-judgmental self-awareness.

   11. CWChris Williamson49:24

       Yeah.

   12. AHAlex Hutchinson49:24

       And by exercising on a regular basis, you start to be able to be non-judgmentally aware of pain. It's just information. It's not, it's not a signal that you're about to die.

   13. CWChris Williamson49:35

       Yeah, I think a lot of people, especially when they get into pain, if they're, if they're not, uh, used to training, they will begin to either push it away or identify with it quite heavily, because it's such a foreign sensation. But the same as with anything, if you s, uh, acclimatized to it and you've been here before, wherever here may be, then you'll be able to deal with it more comfortably.

   14. AHAlex Hutchinson50:00

       Yeah, and I think e- e- you know, everyone understands that let's say you're a sedentary person who's never, who doesn't do any exercise and you decide you want to run a, a 5K with your friends in six months, and so you start a, a sort of run walk program, do a little training. Everyone understands that in six months your body will have changed, that you will, your lungs will be more powerful, your heart will be stronger, your b- muscles will be more efficient. What people don't realize necessarily or I don't think give enough credit to, is that their mind will have changed a lot too. So when you start, uh, you know, and you ha- you're not familiar with running, you go out and do a bit of running, and pretty soon your legs start to burn and you're panting heavily and a- all sorts of s- alarm signals are going off in your brain and you're thinking, "W- oh my god, this hurts so much."

   15. CWChris Williamson50:40

       (laughs)

   16. AHAlex Hutchinson50:40

       "I, I'm you know, I'm gonna put myself in hospital. I need to slow down and stop." But the more times you kind of hold your finger near that flame, the more you realize, "Oh, I can hold it there and I'm not gonna die. So I can hold it a little bit closer next time or hold it there for a little bit longer." And over time, uh, you're, you, you're actually pushing your body much harder even relative to your fitness. So you're getting fitter but you're also pushing deeper into the well with experience. And, and one important thing about that, um, there's s- there was a, a classic study in the early '80s with Scottish, the Scottish National Swimming Team, of all, of all places, where they measured pain tolerance not just once but throughout a season. And what they found is with these elite athletes who'd been, you know, training hard for at least a decade in most cases, their pain tolerance waxed and waned throughout the season. So their pain tolerance was highest right before their most important competitions, then it was lowest in the off season when they weren't training. So these were very experienced athletes. They'd spent plenty of time in the pain cave. But it still wasn't a question of just, like, once you learn to handle pain, that's it, you n- you now know and you've mastered this trick, you never need to think about it again. It's something that you have to constantly work at every day to remind yourself ... Or not every day necessarily but on a continuing basis you, you, i- uh, you have to keep teaching yourself how to handle discomfort, and if you, you know, you take a month off then your body gets a little softer and so, but so does your mind.

   17. CWChris Williamson52:01

       Yeah. I think the, there'll be a lot of cross-fitters, um, that are listening and some power lifters and s- strength athletes as well, and I, I certainly think that of all of the signals that our brain is receiving which is influencing our rate of perceived exertion, pain will definitely be one of the ones that's at the forefront. You know, not enough oxygen manifests itself as a, a painful breathing and a discomfort, and a lot of people would probably confuse that being out of breath with pain, and the muscular burn and the leg burn and e- you know, all of these things manifest as pain. It, it sounds like pain would probably be a, a pretty big gatekeeper to, um, a lot of performance.

   18. AHAlex Hutchinson52:43

       For sure. And, and I think it's, it's sort of like, I don't know, being a, a, a wine lover or a cheese lover or something. The more sophisticated you get, the, the more you can distinguish between the subtle flavors of pain ...

   19. CWChris Williamson52:57

       Yes.

   20. AHAlex Hutchinson52:57

       ... that when you start out it's just like, "Holy crap this hurts."

   21. CWChris Williamson53:00

       Overwhelm.

   22. AHAlex Hutchinson53:01

       "E- e- everything hurts and it's all the same. It's all just one big pain."

   23. CWChris Williamson53:04

       (laughs)

   24. AHAlex Hutchinson53:04

       Uh, you know.

   25. CWChris Williamson53:05

       Yeah, yeah.

   26. AHAlex Hutchinson53:05

       Whereas once you've become accustomed to it it's like, "Ah, I feel that my l- you know, I feel the lactate in my legs. Oh, and I think I'm going a little bit hypoxic. I'm g- I'm running out of oxygen. And ooh, I think I detect a subtle undertone of, you know, muscular fatigue or whatever."

   27. CWChris Williamson53:22

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   28. AHAlex Hutchinson53:22

       So you, you get to appreciate all the, the nuances of pain.

   29. CWChris Williamson53:26

       I totally get that. I mean, anyone who's ever sat on an assault bike and, um, tried to slow down their breathing as they're going maximally will know that your, you can actually control your breathing quite well. You can focus on breathing in and out rhythmically, breathing deep and controlling that, but the, the pain in your legs doesn't stop but the pain in your lungs oddly does. So you can actually, if, you know, if anyone is sitting on an assault bike tomorrow I urge you to try it. Do warm up and then do 30 seconds of max cals, but focus on breathing in for two and out for two as deeply as you can, and you'll notice that you can control your breathing up until the point at which you need to start to pant. You can control your breathing quite nicely but the pain (laughs) , the pain in your legs doesn't go away. But you've been able to isolate the two as opposed to, like you say, this kind of nebulous coating, this glazing of just discomfort that goes everywhere.

   30. AHAlex Hutchinson54:16

       Yeah. And, and, and with familia- with familiarity as we begin to, to, to, uh, isolate and, and g- get familiar with them, they're less scary. It's just, it, it, instead of this one big, uh, sort of unpleasant feeling, we have all these different sensations that we can, like you said, we can control or, or move up and down as desired and, and, uh, yeah, then, then you're willing to, to handle it for a little longer or for a little more.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:09:40

   (laughs) …

   1. AHAlex Hutchinson1:00:00

      can measure what's going on in their bodies and we see that their core temperature, they're able to push it higher, so in other words, they're, they're digging deeper into their physiological reserves and yet their sense of effort is still the same. So by changing the words in their head, by changing what they're saying to themselves during the, the exercise, they've actually changed the relationship between how hard their body is working and how hard it feels in their minds, and that is the f- th- to me, I saw that result and I was like, "Oh, man, I wish I had a time machine and I could go, go back and take this seriously when I was competing-"

   2. CWChris Williamson1:00:31

      (laughs)

   3. AHAlex Hutchinson1:00:31

      ... seriously in the '90s because this is real. It's real and I should've taken it seriously instead of laughing that poor woman out of the room.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:00:37

      (laughs) Yeah. I totally get that. Um, so were there any other techniques? We've talked about the motivational self-talk is one of them. We're not going to strap nine-volt batteries to our head. Uh, this is not medical advice.

   5. AHAlex Hutchinson1:00:52

      (laughs) Yep.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:00:52

      Please do not ... Please see a physician before you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

   7. AHAlex Hutchinson1:00:55

      Exactly.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:00:55

      Disclaimer, disclaimer. Um, were there any others that, uh, could-... uh, supplement?

   9. AHAlex Hutchinson1:01:01

      Yeah. So, you know, the, I, I, I, I almost hate to, to, to mention, uh, the buzziest of buzzwords, mindfulness training, um, but there, there's some pretty interesting research. There was some interesting research at UC San Diego. I visited, uh, uh, uh, s- uh, uh, some, some researchers there to see their work. They're doing brain scanning on, basically they look at elite performance so they've, uh, uh, because they're in San Diego, they get a bunch of, uh, Marines and Navy SEALS into their lab, and also they bring in elite athletes like adventure racers. And so, these people have, uh, tremendous resilience. So-

   10. CWChris Williamson1:01:34

       So they are pretty hard people.

   11. AHAlex Hutchinson1:01:36

       Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They've been through (laughs) a lot. And so, uh, i- i- it's, it's pretty fascinating. One of their protocols is they, they put you in a brain scanner which is like a, you know, a big sort of claustrophobic tube, and you're, you're, you're, while you're in the brain scanner, you're doing these cognitive tasks on a computer. So they're, uh, testing your, your, your responses, and you're breathing through a mask, and every once in a while, the flow of oxygen through the mask is restricted. So it's like you're suddenly like you're breathing through a straw.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:02:01

       Yeah.

   13. AHAlex Hutchinson1:02:02

       This is not a pleasant scenario when you're locked in this g- giant magnet. Uh, and so for most people, when that happens, uh, you know, at best, they get stressed out and their performance on the cognitive test suddenly goes down. At worst, they panic and they have to be pulled out of the scanner. For the, for the elite performers, so for the Navy SEALS, for the elite adventure racers, the opposite pattern, this happens. Not only do they not panic, but their performance on the cognitive test actually gets better when they're being stressed out by this, by breathing through a straw. So, they respond to stress not by getting worse but by getting better, by rising to the occasion. So-

   14. CWChris Williamson1:02:36

       Wow.

   15. AHAlex Hutchinson1:02:36

       Obviously, that's a, that's a really desirable thing. It's like, "Oh, here we've-" (laughs)

   16. CWChris Williamson1:02:40

       Yeah. "I want that. I want, I want to become N- uh, Nassim Taleb's definition of antifragile, please."

   17. AHAlex Hutchinson1:02:45

       Yeah. (laughs) Ex- e- e- exactly. So, you know, and they're doing brain scans just to figure out which areas of the brain are responsible, and what they find is that the elite performers, they're constantly monitoring how their body is feeling. So they have a low lettles- low level self-monitoring going on at all times. And then that does, when something w- you know, when the breathing goes wrong, when it all gets stressful, they just keep that same level of monitoring. They're always in touch with how they're feeling. Whereas most of us have kind of have the mo- self-monitoring turned off. When everything's fine, we're not even paying attention to how we're feeling, and then w- all of a sudden when things go bad, we, we over-monitor, we, uh, we ramp up to panic levels. So we overreact to, to the, to the stimulus. So, and you can see which areas of the brain are responsible for that. So, then their question is, okay we know what the, the quote, unquote, "good" brain, pattern of brain activation is, how can we help other people develop that? And, and the most effective tool they found so far is, uh, eight-week training courses in mindfulness. And so they've been testing it out with US Marines being deployed overseas, giving them this eight-week training beforehand to see if it reduces instances, for example, of PTSD, because if you're able to respond calmly to stressful situations, that may reduce the, the, the risk of posttraumatic stress. So, uh, tha- that stuff is still up in the air, and, and research is ongoing, but the, t- um, but it is interesting they've found that you can sort of, uh, generate these elite style brain patterns with mindfulness training. And when you think about what mindfulness training is, it's y- you're trying to have non-judgmental self-awareness. So you're trying to be aware of, hey, is, am I feeling pain? Yes. I'm not denying that I'm feeling pain, I'm aware of it, I'm, I'm acknowledging it, but I'm not overreacting to it. And so that's kind of what they're, they, they find is the hallmark of the elite performers, and I think it has a lot of application, uh, to, uh, whether we're talking about endurance or whether we're talking about, you know, CrossFit or whatev- whatever the context. I think there, i- it's not too big of a leap to say that would, that would be an effective way of enhancing performance. Now, I should say I'm, I'm sitting here again as, as, as, as, as, as you said, I'm sitting here in, with my comfortable chair-

   18. CWChris Williamson1:04:51

       Mm-hmm.

   19. AHAlex Hutchinson1:04:51

       ... saying that's what w- I think would be a good idea based on the research. I haven't done an e- eight-week mindfulness training course, so I, you know, I can't, I can't speak from personal experience. But I think that's an avenue that I would say is, is worth exploring.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:05:03

       I guess that, that sort of stuff would work across so many different domains as well. For traders, Wall Street traders in very, very high pressure situations and stuff like that, you talked about the fact that this endurance is not, not merely relating to physical activities but to all activities.

   21. AHAlex Hutchinson1:05:23

       Yeah. Exa- uh, e- exactly. That brings us sort of full circle back to this idea of endurance as a very generalized struggle to continuous, continue against an emerging desire to stop. And, and a- and again I want to emphasize that I didn't start out this book tr- trying t- trying to make endurance a general concept. Uh, really all I cared about was trying to understand, you know, the sort of mysteries of my running career and why I, why I didn't go faster than I did.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:05:43

       Mm-hmm.

   23. AHAlex Hutchinson1:05:44

       But, but that's where the research led, that, to, to suggest that it, it really is a generalizable concept, and that if you, if you can learn to endure ... And, and, and I think it's interesting that, again, you look at the a- th- the data for instance on pain tolerance that athletes who are enduring a specific kind of pain in training, doesn't matter what kind of pain tolerance test you give them. Whatever pain tolerance test you give them, they're better able to tolerant so it's tolerated. So it's very generalizable. You're able to apply these skills you learn while pushing yourself physically, you're able to tri- apply those in other areas of your life too.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:06:18

       So it really is a, a bit of a superpower when people talk about there being benefits from a physical practice being mental and a mental practice crossing it over into physical. It, it seems like there's some real, some real, um, good evidence for that to be the case.

   25. AHAlex Hutchinson1:06:34

       Yeah. And, you know, I think you'd have, have trouble finding any dedicated exerciser who doesn't believe it's had far-reaching effects on their, on their lives, and I think, uh, I think the, the research, uh, you know, backs that up as far as I can tell.

   26. CWChris Williamson1:06:46

       Amazing. So before we go, I want to very, very quickly nerd out about the Nike breaking to Eliud Kipchoge thing because I, I want to know whether or not you think that the two-hour marathon barrier will be broken and if so when it'll happen.

   27. AHAlex Hutchinson1:07:02

       Yeah. So, you know, my, my record of prognostication is not great.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:07:06

       (laughs)

   29. AHAlex Hutchinson1:07:06

       Um ... e- e- e- but, but back in 20-

   30. CWChris Williamson1:07:08

       Did you predict, did you predict the Berlin Marathon smash?

Episode duration: 1:14:04