Thinking about your running movement can make you less efficient
WHAT do you think about when you’re running? The answer could affect your efficiency.
A study by Linda Schücker & Lucy Parrington compared runners’ efficiency when focusing on three different stimuli: first, they were asked to think about their running form (toe-off, cadence etc), then they had to think about their breathing, and finally they were asked to focus on an external stimulus, which in this case was a video projected in front of them as they ran on a treadmill.
The authors measured each athlete’s oxygen uptake as they ran a consistent sub-maximal pace in these three conditions, reasoning that a higher oxygen uptake indicates greater effort, which in turn indicates less efficient technique.
They found that for both the internal focus conditions (breathing and technique) oxygen uptake was higher than for the external condition (the video). They also found a lot more vertical oscillation (bouncing up and down) when focusing on running technique. Runners breathed a lot more slowly when focusing on breathing, which also turned out to be inefficient..
“explicitly attending to one’s body mechanics leads to less effective movement outcomes, and less efficient movement patterns.” — Lohse (2012)
It’s argued that breathing is an automatic function of the body, and the body is excellent at subliminally regulating itself for maximum efficiency, so by thinking about breathing during a run, we interrupt the automatic process, leading to lower efficiency.
Personally, I can relate to all these findings. Whenever I start thinking about technique, I become a bit paranoid; I start to wonder if I am bouncing around too much or over-striding. And when I think about breathing, I often try to slow it down to three-step intervals to even out my inhalations between left and right footfalls. As a result, running inevitably feels more difficult.
According to this study, that’s because my conscious scrutiny is making it so.
Instead, focusing on something external such as your surroundings, or the beat of your music should help to keep the mind occupied, while leaving your body to sweat the fine details, automatically.
Lohse, K. R. (2012). The influence of attention on learning and perfor- mance: pre-movement time and accuracy in an isometric force produc- tion task. Human Movement Science, 31(1), 12–25.
