If you're familiar with my podcast, I'm sure you've heard other episodes with the acclaimed researcher and environmental physiologist, Dr. Stephen Cheung.  Dr. Cheung is not only a well of knowledge on the topic of environmental physiology, but he is an avid cyclist himself.  He is a professor at Brock University in the Department of Kinesiology.  He also is an author of the textbook Advanced Environmental Physiology and the books: Cutting-Edge Cycling, and Cycling Science.  You may have heard him on the show in Episode 93 talking about how to heat train or Episode 114 on how to train for altitude.  He was on sabbatical from Brock University earlier this year in my hometown of Kelowna, BC and I was fortunate enough to pick his brain on all kinds of topics.  In his spare time, he is the Sports Science & Training editor for www.pezcyclingnews.com. I'm excited about this episode because it involves something we have all experienced- wanting to slow down while exercising.  There are several schools of thought and fascinating research about perception of effort, whether limits live in our mind or in our body, and how to even trick ourselves to go harder for longer.  If you enjoy this episode, I highly recommend you check out my episode with Alex Hutchinson and his book Endure or my episode with researcher Dr. Walter Staiano. All of these episodes I've mentioned are in the show notes. It was fun to sit down with Dr. Cheung on this topic because the theory of what causes us to slow down is controversial and Dr. Cheung offers a pretty balanced view.  He has also done a lot of research in his own lab by seeing how heat affects the body and also how motivational self-talk affects how soon someone slows down.  

Topics Discussed in the Podcast 

• Temperature study // Theories of fatigue
• Central Governor (Tim Noakes)  vs Psychogiological Theory of Motivation via Samuel Marcora
• how to train your brain to push yourself harder
• motivation, relativity and benchmarking of pain
• how to know if you're mentally fatigued or just not motivated
• role of motivational self-talk & examples of good self-talk
• getting out of the rut of quitting
• how to know when you should quit because of danger to your health
• motivation in a lab vs a race setting
• does the deception of data work to get someone to go harder?
• does music help you go harder?

Listen Now

 

Resources

• Interconnections between thermal perception and exercise capacity in the heat
• Heat Podcast with Dr. Cheung
• Altitude Podcast with Dr. Cheung
• Advanced Environmental Physiology
• Cutting-Edge Cycling
• Cycling Science

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co.