How much does your mind really affect your physical performance?

You’ve likely heard someone say “running is 80 per cent mental,” or some version of that attributing a different percentage to the mental strength needed to complete a run or race. But is that true? How much does your mind really influence your body when you’re pushing yourself to the finish line? Recently, researchers decided to investigate this question, and their results may surprise you.

The study

The study, published in the European Journal of Sports Science, included 25 cyclists (17 male, 8 female) from the Swiss under-17 national cycling team. The researchers measured the VO2 max for each athlete (considered the gold standard for measuring aerobic fitness) and had them fill out a series of questionnaires to measure five psychological factors: mental techniques, self-compassion, mental toughness, achievement motivation and action and state orientation.

Mental techniques: using self-talk, imagery, goal-setting and other techniques to prepare yourself mentally before a physical challenge.

Self-compassion: does the athlete handle mistakes without criticizing themselves too harshly?

Mental toughness: how well does the athlete persevere in adverse conditions, or when things go wrong?

Achievement motivation: does the athlete have a strong need for success or a strong drive to excel?

Action and state orientation: does the athlete quickly re-focus after a mistake, or do they dwell on it?

After completing these tests, the athletes performed a time-trial up a mountain (a relatively short 1,320-meter climb that rose 1,800 feet), and their results were compared to the results of the physical and psychological tests.

Mind vs. body

The researchers found that VO2 max was the most significant predictor of how fast the athletes completed the time trial, by a significant margin. Higher achievement motivation was the second-best predictor, but its influence was about 25 per cent as strong as VO2 max. Ultimately, this study showed that the performance of these teen cyclists was 77 per cent physical, and 23 per cent mental.

23 per cent is still a fairly significant amount, but it’s a far cry from the 80 per cent so many runners like to suggest. Of course, this is only one study, and there are several factors that weren’t included, like how leg strength might influence performance in an uphill cycling race. The time trial was also quite short, and it’s entirely possible that as a race gets longer, your mental game has a greater effect on your physical performance.

What does this mean for runners?

When you step back and look at it, the results of this study aren’t all that surprising. After all, if running really was 80 per cent mental, you could foreseeably enter a marathon without really training and still do fairly well, which most runners know is not the case.

There’s no doubt that your mental game can impact your physical performance, and even the most well-trained runner can sabotage themselves on race day if they haven’t done the mental training to handle pressure or deal with adversity. That being said, being physically prepared to tackle any distance will ultimately decide how well you perform, and knowing that you’ve put in the work and trained properly will likely help quell some of the negative thoughts that might creep into your mind on race day.

So is running really 80 per cent physical and 20 per cent mental? It’s impossible to assign exact percentages to it. Every race is different and every runner is different, and your own percentages may vary depending on the circumstances. One thing is certain, though: in order to perform well in an endurance event, you need to have a combination of good physical and mental preparation to get you to the finish line. You can’t think your way to a new PB without training, but you likely can’t get yourself there without some mental strength, either.