How to Train Your Brain to Race to Your Potential | World Tour Neuroscientist David Spindler, PhD

Most triathlon training focuses on physiology and skills. Dr. David Spindler argues that the brain is the missing piece, and that you can (and should) train your brain to better process pressure, adapt under stress, and execute under fatigue. This episode will teach you how to do this.

Dr. David Spindler is a neuroscientist and cognitive performance specialists who has worked with athletes at the very highest level (including with Sir Mark Cavendish, Sam Laidlow, Chelsea Sodaro, Katie Courtney, and Tom Evans) and across sports from cycling, triathlon and trail running through soccer and Formula 1. 

HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY TOPICS: 

• The brain's central role in athletic performance: coordination, decision-making, focus, emotional regulation, fatigue perception, and recovery.
• Allostatic load: why amateur triathletes carry far more cognitive stress than professionals, and how to account for it in training.
• How the brain controls pacing, and why perceived effort rises and the efficiency of firing muscles drops when the brain decides an effort isn't sustainable.
• Self-efficacy vs. confidence: why they are different, and how to address a lack of self-efficacy as a triathlete.
• Self-regulation: why understanding how your brain and body behave under stress matters, and how poor self-regulation undermines both triathlon training and the athlete-coach relationship.
• Joy and happiness as recovery tools: why they are the most effective mediators of cortisol, and how to find joy and happiness in training and life (it’s not the same as dopamine hits)

DETAILED EPISODE SHOWNOTES: 

• We have detailed shownotes for all of our episodes. The shownotes are basically the podcast episode in written form, that you can read in 5-10 minutes. They are not transcriptions, but they are also not just surface-level overviews. They provide detailed insights and timestamps for each episode, and are great especially for later review, after you've already listened to an episode.
• The shownotes for today's episode can be found at https://scientifictriathlon.com/tts699/

LINKS AND RESOURCES: 

• Psychobiology of fatigue during endurance exercise - book chapter containing much of the seminal work of Prof. Samuele Marcora. For more related research and science, see Prof. Marcora’s ResearchGate page here, and listen to my podcast interview with him here.
• Mark Cavendish: Never Enough - Netflix documentary in which Dr Spindler makes an appearance
• Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance - book by Alex Hutchinson
• How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle - book by Matt Fitzgerald