The Neuroscience of “Embracing The Suck”

By Aaron Boike, Co-Owner, Performance Running Gym, B.S. Kinesiology, UESCA Running + Ultrarunning Coach, Certified Sports Nutrition Specialist, Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach, ACE Certified Personal Trainer.

 

It’s mile 62 of The Black Hills 100. I’m staring down the second of two long sections of soul sucking mud. My pacer, David, and I have already been grinding in these conditions for nearly three hours and my patience is wearing thin. Every step, heavy with wet sticky mud, drains more energy than the last, and with every passing minute I feel my goals slipping away despite tremendous effort. As we approach the 600 ft climb up from the town of Nemo, I can feel my spirit fading – and then my pacer said the perfect thing at the perfect moment – “We’re really earning our dopamine out here.” Those words struck a cord and helped me “embrace the suck.” 

I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to neuroscience and understanding how the brain adapts, becomes more resilient, and has the ability to reframe thought patterns and how our body physically responds to stressful stimuli. My Pacer, David’s, words took what felt like a meaningless painful grind through incredibly adverse conditions, and spun that grind into a legitimate opportunity to grow as a human. The challenging experience of grinding through soul sucking mud became an opportunity to retrain my neurology to respond more positively to stress, to train my patience, and to ultimately become more resilient in the face of adversity. 

We gravitate towards living without discomfort and suffering, and often look at needing to work through them with dread. But the “pain cave” isn’t something to be avoided, it’s something to be relished, developed, deepened, and trained. Your brain is not a fixed element when it comes to performance – it’s a trainable tissue – and just like you’d pound downhill reps in preparation for that big mountain ultra, you can do mental training to strengthen your mental muscle leading to improved performance and enjoyment of running.  

“Neurons that fire together, wire together” – Carla Shatz, Neuroscientist

 

The Brain Is Trainable – Enter “Neuroplasticity”

Neuroplasticity is a remarkable feature of human physiology. Both the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), and peripheral nervous system (the part of the nervous system that connects the CNS to the skin, muscles and organs) experience very real adaptations in response to repeated stimuli. This repeated experience physically reshapes neural pathways, taking what may feel uncomfortable now, and making you less sensitive to it in the future. Just like you do reps of a calf raise to increase the strength capacity of your lower legs, deliberate discomfort exposure builds your brain’s capacity to tolerate it – and maybe even to enjoy it in a “type II fun” kind of way.  According to famous sports scientist and Author of “The Lore of Running,” Tim Noakes; our brain regulates effort and pace to protect the body. Untrained, this “Central Governor” in our brain often reins us in before the body is at its true limit. This means that the exertion / challenge we perceive is a brain output – not a true readout of the body’s limits. Practicing discomfort in training on purpose has a very real impact on our perceptions of discomfort. 

 

Reframing Suffering from a Threat to a Growth Signal

A wide body of research has demonstrated that if we train our brain to reframe stress or adversity as a tool rather than an obstacle, we perform better and respond to challenges in a more healthy way. Essentially, when our suffering is given a “purpose, i.e. as a training intervention that can improve our performance, our brain treats it differently. For runners, this extends beyond the trails – it means that you can practice your mental skills outside of a running context, as well. Stressed about that next hard meeting? Dreading waiting in a long boring line at the DMV? Remembering that working through that hard thing literally helps to reshape your neural pathways to be more resilient to stress in the future gives that dreaded task meaning, purpose, and helps to remove feelings of dread and despair. 

 

Training Mental Resilience Like a Skill

Here is where science meets the trail. Developing concrete, repeatable protocols such as functional mantras, controlled discomfort training, post-workout reflection prompts, and workouts designed to push you outside of your comfort zone are excellent ways to begin training your mental muscle. 

• Mantras should be short (2-4 words in length), functional vs. motivational (not just “you got this”), and are practiced in training and in life. My example from earlier in this article was “Earning My Dopamine.” Another I used to push myself in the final leg of my race at Black Hills 100 was “I am a closer.” Find a mantra that has meaning to you and will help you during hard moments. 
• Controlled Discomfort Blocks are deliberate exposures to real physiological and / or psychological strain. These can teach the brain that certain flavors of “suck” are survivable. Examples of these would be intentional hot weather runs, fasted runs, long runs with a hard finish, or intentionally running all of the hills on your normal route. This is real training – and needs to be treated as such. The nervous system gets taxed just like other vital organs of the body, and these should be programmed sparingly and with real recovery. 
• Post Workout Prompts are a great addition to any training log (or can even be placed on Strava) and allow you a structured way to reflect on how you handled hard things. Prompts like “Where did it get hard, and how did I push through?” “What mantras helped me on this run?” or “What did this workout prove I can do?” can help to make little moments of mental training stick. 

 

Reframing and truly “Embracing the suck” as a training stimulus changes your mental game and makes you a more resilient and positive athlete that operates with grace, strength, and poise. Those hours wading through mud during my race at Black Hills 100 were not a low point, they were an opportunity for tremendous growth and development. This mindset led to a mental reframe that I’ve used countless times since running and in life, in everything from challenging work scenarios to chopping up a downed tree in 100 degree heat for my elderly neighbor. 

Anyone who’s raced a challenging distance can attest to the mental component being as important, if not more important than the physical, so treat it as such and you’ll experience real physiological benefits and psychological relief that will make you a stronger athlete and a better human.

 

 

Bibliography + Sources to take a deeper dive into the info in this article. 

Neuroplasticity / “the brain is trainable”

• Draganski, B., et al. (2004). Changes in grey matter induced by training. Nature, 427(6972), 311–312.
• Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain That Changes Itself. Viking Press. (Accessible entry point if you want a plain-language citation for a general audience.)

Central Governor Model (brain as pacing/effort regulator)

• Noakes, T.D. (2000). Physiological models to understand exercise fatigue and the adaptations that predict or enhance athletic performance. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 10(3), 123–145.
• Noakes, T.D. (2007). The Central Governor Model of Exercise Regulation Applied to the Marathon. Sports Medicine, 37(4-5), 374–377.
• St Clair Gibson, A., & Noakes, T.D. (2004). Evidence for complex system integration and dynamic neural regulation of skeletal muscle recruitment during exercise in humans. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 38(6), 797–806.

Psychobiological model / RPE / self-talk lowering perceived exertion

• Marcora, S.M., Staiano, W., & Manning, V. (2009). Mental fatigue impairs physical performance in humans. Journal of Applied Physiology, 106(3), 857–864.
• Marcora, S.M., & Bosio, A. (2007). Effects of exercise-induced muscle damage on endurance running performance in humans. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports.
• Blanchfield, A.W., Hardy, J., de Morree, H.M., Staiano, W., & Marcora, S.M. (2014). Talking yourself out of exhaustion: the effects of self-talk on endurance performance. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 46(5), 998–1007.
• Hatzigeorgiadis, A., et al. (2018). Beat the Heat: Effects of a Motivational Self-Talk Intervention on Endurance Performance.

Stress reappraisal / threat vs. challenge state

• Jamieson, J.P., Mendes, W.B., Blackstock, E., & Schmader, T. (2010). Turning the knots in your stomach into bows: Reappraising arousal improves performance on the GRE. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(1), 208–212.
• Jamieson, J.P., Nock, M.K., & Mendes, W.B. (2012). Mind over matter: Reappraising arousal improves cardiovascular and cognitive responses to stress. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(3), 417–422.
• Jamieson, J.P., Mendes, W.B., & Nock, M.K. (2013). Improving acute stress responses: The power of reappraisal. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(1), 51–56.

Post-traumatic growth (suffering → growth reframe)

• Tedeschi, R.G., & Calhoun, L.G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18.