I read an article last year in Triathlete magazine about Breakthrough workouts. I can’t find the article posted online anywhere, but here’s the gist of it: Your brain causes you to think that your muscles are fatigued long before they actually are. A breakthrough workout is designed to break through that barrier in order to teach your brain that you can go faster and farther than it thinks you can. I even planned a breakthrough workout as described in the article. That workout was a great workout, but didn’t provide any dramatic change in my skill level.

I just received an email newsletter this week from Active.com with a similar article entitled Train your brain.

This article says basically the same thing…

Cutting-edge research in exercise physiology demonstrated that fatigue is seldom, if ever, caused exclusively by events that occur within the muscles. Fatigue is actually caused by the brain, which reduces its electrical stimulation of the muscles and produces feelings of discomfort to prevent any real damage from happening to the muscles or other organs.

I just don’t buy this theory. I tried hard to use mental toughness to keep up my speed during the running leg of my races this season. It just didn’t work. If anyone has a secret to tapping into this, please share it with me!