An Introduction to Psychobiology

Key Concept 1: Physiological responses to exercise are filtered through perception before influencing our choices.

Dealing with our perceptions now becomes a goal of training and performing - equally important to increasing our fitness.

Increasing fitness lowers our perceived effort at higher outputs - this is a well documented and understood process.

A less understood process is how to train our perception.

There are a few mechanisms by which coaches and athletes can influence perception.

Key Concept 2: Training must provide the athlete with evidence that they are capable of excelling at the intended challenge.

If the training is too stressful, you risk breaking the athlete’s organism and their confidence.

James “Iron Cowboy” Lawrence completed 50 Ironman distance triathlons in 50 different states in 50 days. This is an example of overdosing stress, and would not be an optimal training prescription. By the end of the 30 days he was hypothermic among a host of other problems that made finishing the final triathlons a survival act.

On the other hand, if the training is not stressful enough, you risk the athlete not accumulating enough evidence upon which to base an authentic belief.

Examples of underdosing stress abound. Most individuals who have competed have experienced the nagging fear that their training was not as stressful as the imminent competition.

These are some of the psychological considerations of program design.

Sport, Life and Identity

Sport produces binary outcomes. Life is more gray.

The objectivity in sport is part of what makes it interesting. The outcomes are clear and final.

Life does not produce such binary results. You must define success for yourself. And, you must determine whether or not you are achieving your goal, which is subjective.

There are many ways in which sport does not mimic life. It is often asserted and widely accepted that sport is a "microcosm for life." There are plenty of ways in which sport is very different from life.

So why pursue a sport?

First, that is a question every athlete must answer for himself.

My observation is that selecting long term, difficult paths in life requires virtues of individuals. Individuals who stick to audacious goals must exhibit patience, consistency and effort over a long period of time.

So, if you pursue a sport for multiple years – you now have evidence that you are the sort of person with these virtues.

With enough evidence, an identity forms.

You increasingly think of yourself as a person who is patient, consistent and hardworking.

This belief makes you more likely to tackle greater challenges that require these virtues.

The more evidence you have, the more authentic your belief. The more authentic your belief, the more likely other people are to believe the same things about you. So the implications are both individual and social.

These are the psychological mechanisms by which sport reveals an individual’s identity.

I choose the word “reveal” instead of a word with agency, like “shape.”

I believe the narrative of sport helping a person transform is overstated.

After coaching hundreds of athletes, I’ve found that the individuals attracted to sport are likely to value what sport requires.

If the individual does not value what sport requires, he/she is much less likely to be attracted to sport in the first place.

So, why is this important for competitive CrossFitters?

These psychological mechanisms apply more in sports where the extrinsic rewards are scarce. CrossFit is a sport where the opportunities to compete are few, and the rewards are reserved for a few, very elite individuals.

So it is highly advantageous, in many cases imperative to longevity, to connect to the intrinsic rewards of CrossFit.

In my own experience, pursuing baseball, rock climbing, or CrossFit did not turn me into a better person.

These pursuits were an expression of the sort of person I deeply believed I was.

I already identified as a patient, consistent, hardworking person.

Not pursuing them, would have been a betrayal of this identity.

Only once I saw each sport through did I make peace with each of them.

Was that failure? Was it success?

Indeed, to define it in these binary terms would be inadequate.

It was authentic. It was genuine.

And these, I have found, are worthy goals in life.