Competitive Advantage

Competition brings out the best in us -- even when we're not conscious of it.

The brain, it appears, can kick one's body into high gear when competition calls for it. Gina Kolata explored this phenomena further in today's New York Times:

Jo Corbett, a senior lecturer in applied exercise physiology at the University of Portsmouth in England, wondered how much competition can affect an athlete’s speed. To find out, he asked cyclists to ride as hard and as fast as they could on a stationary bicycle for the equivalent of 2,000 meters. As he rode, each rider was shown an on-screen figure representing the cyclist riding the course.

Then Dr. Corbett and his colleagues told each athlete that he would be racing against another rider hidden behind a screen. The researchers projected two figures on the screen, one the outline of the rider and the other the outline of the competitor.

In fact, the competitor on the screen was a computer-generated image of the athlete himself in his own best attempt to ride those 2,000 meters.

...[T]he cyclists beat their best times, finishing with a burst of speed that carried them to virtual victory by a significant length.

Dr. Corbett said the extra effort, above and beyond what the athletes had previously demonstrated, seems to come from the anaerobic energy system, one that is limited by the amount of fuel stored in muscle. The brain appears to conserve the body’s limited fuel to a certain degree, not allowing athletes to work too hard.

But in a race, he said, the brain seems to allow athletes to tap more deeply into energy stores than would ordinarily be permitted. “Competition is able to motivate you to dip further,” Dr. Corbett said.

Interesting. This may help explain how CrossFit workouts are intensified by competition. I'm not saying we should confuse training with competition, but I've certainly found that I tend to push myself harder in class at CrossFit Palo Alto than when I'm exercising by myself.

What about you? Notice any differences in your performance when working out solo versus in a crowd?

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Chill Out

At the scorching-hot South Central Regionals this year, the temperature remained well over 100 degrees for all three days of competition. Even the blacktop on which athletes competed looked like it was going to melt. Ice was a precious commodity. And yet the firebreathers did what they always do: Kick ass and take names.

But is it possible that an ice pack around the neck could've helped to further boost athletic performance?

The answer appears to be yes -- but only up to a point.

According to the New York Times, researchers have found that "cooling the neck before exercise in hot, humid conditions can improve athletic performance." In a recent study, volunteers were recruited to run in a heated room until exhaustion; those who wore cooling collars didn't perceive the heat as much, allowing them to push themselves to run farther before they ran out of gas.

In this experiment, even though the runners’ bodies grew warmer when they wore the collars, their minds weren’t registering that fact, and they reported feeling no hotter than without the collars. Cooling the neck, the authors concluded, had allowed the runners to continue exercising as their core temperatures rose, improving their time to exhaustion “by dampening the perceived levels of thermal strain.”

...[I]t is likely that the collars cooled the blood in the neck’s carotid artery, which then flowed to the brain to produce a “subsequent lowering of cerebral temperature” and convince the brain that the body was cooler than it really was.

As the lead researcher points out, if "you are fit, competitive and ferociously intent on outdoing your training partners," using a cooling collar may help you "improve performance and capacity" in high-heat environments.

But before you rush out to buy a cooling collar before your next summer workout, consider this: You might fool your brain into thinking it's not as hot as it is, but once your body hits a certain temperature, you could very well suffer from heatstroke -- or worse. Being able to perceive your body temperature is a good thing -- it signals your brain to "shut down the muscles before disaster occurs."

In study after study, when the core body temperature of someone who is exercising nears a critical point, usually above 104 degrees, that person’s ability to continue abruptly ends. You feel absolutely exhausted and stop, before heatstroke sets in.

Fooling your brain to gain a competitive edge could backfire disastrously, so use your noggin before you decide to give this hot-weather performance aid a shot.

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Good Vibrations?

According to the New York Times, you can temporarily boost your athletic performance by standing on a gigantic vibrator. "Although they don’t really know why vibrations should work, researchers report that they actually seem to slightly improve performance in the few minutes after a person gets off the machine."

There is, however, a caveat: The effect is very, very temporary.

People seem to be slightly faster sprinters immediately after standing on a platform. They also seem to be able to jump a bit higher. Vibrations also seem to help people warm up before more strenuous exercise.

“The effect wears off very quickly,” Dr. Brown said. “We are not talking about using this to play a 90-minute soccer match. One sprint and the effect would be gone. You’d play for one minute and still have 89 minutes to go.”

Also? They look like this:

And this:

Unfair Competitive Advantage

For the first time ever, the NBA's banned a pair of shoes because they impart an "unfair competitive advantage" by boosting a player's vertical leap.

This is stupid, unless it turns out to be some sort of twisted publicity stunt for the shoe manufacturer, Athletic Propulsion Labs -- in which case this is brilliant.

After all, there's no unfair advantage if everyone has access to 'em, and I'm pretty sure every single player in the NBA can afford a pair of $300 Concept 1 shoes.

More importantly: When are manufacturers going to start making shoes that help me clean and jerk more weight?

Push Past The Pain

What keeps an elite athlete going at a level of intensity that appears impossible for us mere mortals to maintain?

Instead of trying to distract themselves from the pain of extreme effort, they embrace it:

“Our hypothesis is that elite athletes are able to motivate themselves continuously and are able to run the gantlet between pushing too hard — and failing to finish — and underperforming,” Dr. [Jeroen] Swart said.

To find this motivation, the athletes must resist the feeling that they are too tired and have to slow down, he added. Instead, they have to concentrate on increasing the intensity of their effort. That, Dr. Swart said, takes “mental strength,” but “allows them to perform close to their maximal ability.”

(Source: New York Times)