Exercise Induced Fatigue is Predominantly A Protective Emotion

In today’s “afraid to burn out and get injured” society, it’s important for a coach to trust one’s work when developing a great athlete. Helping a player push through the “I’m tired” phase and continue to train is a must at the highest levels. It’s the only way to build physical and mental fitness levels.

But with the way things are in today’s society, we have to be careful working someone really hard for fear of complaints and lawsuits regarding negligence. That’s why I was thrilled to learn about Timothy Noakes research saying “exercise induced fatigue is predominantly a protective emotion” in the book The Comfort Crisis. There’s nothing better for a coach trying to gain the trust of kids and families to have real scientific research behind their methods to help build trust in their developmental process. The words about Timothy’s research really stood out to me. Check it out:

“Sometime in the mid 1990s, a new idea eventually occurred to Timothy Noakes, MD, PhD, director of the Exercise Science and Sports Medicine Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. He thought that because we activate muscle by way of our brain, our brain must also be responsible for determining how long, hard, and fast we push ourselves. He called the idea the “central governor theory,” and began conducting research. Over three decades he’s shown that exercise-induced fatigue is predominantly a protective emotion. It’s a psychological state that has little to do with a person’s physical limits”

“The brain uses the “unpleasant [but illusory] sensations of fatigue” to pump the body’s brakes WELL BEFORE a person comes close to real physical exhaustion, Noakes discovered.”

A blog post by the Muscle Oxygen Monitor summarized the theory the extremely well:

“The central governor model theory hypothesizes that the brain regulates exercise capability to ensure the body only exerts a safe quantity of effort. Therefore, the brain will override the physical ability to run by shutting down the body in order to prevent serious, or even permanent, damage”

And when you combine this with what Matthieu Boisgontier said, who is a senior author and postdoctoral researcher from the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of British Columbia, it all makes sense:

“Conserving energy has been essential for humans’ survival, as it allowed us to be more efficient in searching for food and shelter, competing for sexual partners, and avoiding predators,” explained Boisgontier.

To summarize these findings: we are not wired to push through the initial phase of fatigue! Our brains have been wired to scream at us to stop because we need to conserve energy for more important things! Unfortunately, when it comes to sports, our brain is wrong. When we’re trying to build our physical and fitness levels, we have to push through the initial phase of fatigue. We don’t need to conserve energy to search for food and avoid predators later on. We can burn through all our energy while trying to build our fitness levels because we’ll be on the couch the rest of the day!

That’s why I tell kids that the real work starts when they’re tired. It’s at that precise moment in time where they build their fitness levels. “Your body will adapt over time,” I tell them. “The brain is saying stop, but it’s wrong. You need to ignore it for the most part, and tell yourself you’ll be fine. It will be painful, but you’ll be fine.”

And that’s a hard thing to believe when you’re mentally wired to stop. To make the situation even harder, there is definitely a point where you can go too far, but that point is located significantly farther than your initial phase of fatigue.

And I get that there have been other tennis or strength & conditioning coaches that have gone too far, but that’s the minority. Most people don’t go far enough. They’re too afraid of that level of exhaustion. Many coaches are too afraid of having kids quit because they don’t like being pushed. They’re too afraid of parents being mad at them if their child happens to get injured.

I’m not afraid of that. I’m more afraid of failing kids by going too easy on them, ensuring they’ll never achieve their goals.

We need to remove the fear of exhaustion and teach kids that for the most part “exercise induced fatigue is predominantly a protective emotion.” They can push through. THE SCIENCE SUPPORTS IT.