Some new results from Samuele Marcora's "brain endurance training" protocol, funded by the British Ministry of Defence, have been declassified. Bradley Stulberg has Nutrition - Weight Loss Outside describing the findings. This is the same brain training technique that, but with a twist. When I tried it, the mental tasks were sitting at the computer before or after my runs:
In real life, it may work better to combine mental tasks with physical activity. In fact, Marcora has already launched a study in which subjects do the cognitive tests while pedaling an exercise bike, like the setup I had used in his lab at the University of Kent. To Marcora, mental and physical effort are always intertwined—which means that every run is also an opportunity to train your brain.
The new study involved 12 weeks of training, three times a week on a stationary bike, with half of the group doing a cognitive computer task while pedaling. And the results were... pretty striking! The physical-training-only group improved by 42 percent in a time-to-exhaustion test, while the mental training group improved by 126 percent. Studies like this are always subject to placebo effects, since it's more or less impossible to properly blind the subjects, but this is a very big difference. As Stulberg writes:
[T]he soldiers doing the mentally challenging activity—the "Brain Endurance Training" group—were actually “training themselves to tolerate a harder perceived effort, so when the cognitive task was removed, the effort felt easier,” says Im a Runner: Cynthia Erivo, an expert on fatigue who oversaw the study. “Something unique was happening inside the heads of the BET group.”
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- On the plus side, Marcora argues that the gains from brain endurance training may be "additive" -- that is, they operate through a completely different mechanism from typical physiological means of performance enhancement, so they should add benefits on top of whatever other training you're doing. That's not always the case for ergogenic aids: when studies try to combine performance boosters, the math often turns out to be 2+2 = 2; two aids that each give you an extra 2% still only give you 2% when combined.
- On the minus side, it remains to be seen whether the approach would work in well-trained or elite athletes. After all, mental strength is pretty much a prerequisite for high-end endurance performance. Can such athletes squeeze out further gains with dedicated brain training? There's only one way to find out: Marcora is currently planning studies with elite athletes.
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