Myth of the Special Mental Barrier with the 4 Minute Mile

[Martin F. Atkins]

This is a follow up from a book club discussion of Think Like a Freak by Levitt. (I attached the graph.)

Nothing Special about the 4 minute Mile:

I attached an article with some of the points that I was attempting to make about Levitt's claim that mental barriers prevented runners from breaking the 4-minute mile barrier, which is false. The one mile time has decreased over the years because of factors, including advances in a) training techniques, b) recovery and injury prevention, c) running form, d) nutrition, e) equipment, f) running surfaces and g) so forth.  The argument for a mental barrier could be made for any one mile world record time. There is nothing special about 4 minutes except the folklore surrounding it. For the hypothesis that a special mental barrier prevented runners from breaking one mile under 4 minutes--compared to other world records--to be accurate, we would notice a prolong period around the 4 minute mile on a historical graph of one-mile world record times.  Examine the attached graph yourself; there is nothing special about 4 minutes.

http://beyondgrowth.net/positive-thinking/the-4-minute-mile-and-the-myths-of-positive-thinking/

Myth of sports performance being 95% mental and 5% physical:

Researchers have explored this concept.  The general finding is that if you are a runner, baseball player, student, or whatever with 100 hours to spend in preparation of a game (or performance), the best use of your time is not mentally preparing for the game but practicing (or simulating) with corrective feedback what you will have to do in the game. Visualizing success, setting high goals and so forth may help; however, the baseball player who spent 95 hours practicing batting and 5 hours preparing mentally will almost always outperform the player who spent 95 hours preparing mentally and only pick up the bat for 5 hours. Also note that a person's brain and muscles will naturally change while practicing or simulating game situations without special or deliberate mental effort on part of the person.

Performance Advances:

With the hot dog eating contest, advances in the hot dog eating techniques (breaking the hot dog, dipping the bun) and NOT overcoming mental barriers probably accounted for the performance spike.

[Fan of Reason]

I think those are good points. I do think that while it is certainly true that spending 95% of one's time in mental preparation and 5% in behaviors of the sport would yield virtually no significant improvement, I have never heard of athletes taking that approach. It seems to me that this 95% bit is more of a cliche emphasizing the importance of mental preparedness in reaching one's goal. Bannister and Kabayashi both have been quoted alluding to the importance of mental attitude in achieving their goals but they are well aware that it was their behavioral efforts that got them there. Issues like performance anxiety, anger at a bad call, lack of hyperfocus, self doubt in spite of training, or shame over a mistake can wreck performance no matter how physically prepared a person is for their craft. So, yes, swing that bat like crazy while also paying attention to mental tecchniques because they are very important for a lot of athletes.

Thanks for those graphs. Those are good points about how the media can give birth to a myth to sell papers and that the four minute mile was not thought to actually be impossible but just the next big barrier to break. I had thought it was believed to be impossible back then until reading that.

[Fan of Reason]

And yes, that set of data makes it clear that the mental barrier assertion could be applied to any point before or after the four minute mile was broken. I agree.

I have a very strong mental barrier at the very notion that I could ever break a four minute mile. Therefore, I am never going to train myself towards such a goal I view as impossible. I wonder how many athletes mentally counted themselves out of this goal over the years simply because they thought they could not do it when maybe they actually could have achieved it. We of course will never know about those outcomes. After all, who is going to train for something if they think they cannot do it? No one will push themselves that far unless they have the mentality/belief that they are capable. So belief comes into play no matter how much the author in that article tries to separate it from performance. The author confuses belief and faith, IMO. However, he makes some really good points too.

[Martin Atkins]

When I wrestled in college and high school, we meet and sometimes wrestled with Olympic and NCAA Championships. Naturally, wrestlers asked them how to become an olympic or national champion. I recall none of them ever promoting mental training and everyone of them emphasized "mat time" (drilling and competing) and wrestling with quality wrestlers and coaches--as well as innate gifts.

I bet there is some self-talk that these athletes do and are encouraged to do; however, that wasn't something that was emphasized or mentioned.

And the performance improvements achieved through practice with quality corrective feedback in and of itself may improve confidence as much as--if not more than--positive thinking techniques. If golfer drove a golfball at least 230 yards for 98% of the swings in practice, that would translate to her likely hitting that far on game day compared someone who consistently only hits it, say, 200 yards even if 200 yarder is more confident.  And the 230 yarder also will be pretty confident based on her past performances in practice.

MEMPHIS FREETHOUGHT ALLIANCE: Advancing reason, science, and secular government through education

On Aug 11, 2014 9:39 PM, "Fan of Reason" <fanofr...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think those are good points. I do think that while it is certainly true that spending 95% of one's time in mental preparation and 5% in behaviors of the sport would yield virtually no significant improvement, I have never heard of athletes taking that approach. It seems to me that this 95% bit is more of a cliche emphasizing the importance of mental preparedness in reaching one's goal. Bannister and Kabayashi both have been quoted alluding to the importance of mental attitude in achieving their goals but they are well aware that it was their behavioral efforts that got them there. Issues like performance anxiety, anger at a bad call, lack of hyperfocus, self doubt in spite of training, or shame over a mistake can wreck performance no matter how physically prepared a person is for their craft. So, yes, swing that bat like crazy while also paying attention to mental tecchniques because they are very important for a lot of athletes.

Thanks for those graphs. Those are good points about how the media can give birth to a myth to sell papers and that the four minute mile was not thought to actually be impossible but just the next big barrier to break. I had thought it was believed to be impossible back then until reading that.

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[Fan of Reason]

Elite athletes, when questioned about mental prep will tend to readily own the importance of mindset and emotional management during performance. It is certainly not 95% but certainly more than 5%, IMO. We largely agree here, but I think the difference is that you have the opinion that mental prep is far more minimal than I think it is. That's all.

Here is one of many examples of my point.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4747755

[Fan of Reason]

Here is a research abstract specifically about Olympic Wrestlers:

http://journals.humankinetics.com/tsp-back-issues/tspvolume6issue4december/1988usolympicwrestlingexcellenceimentalpreparationprecompetitivecognitionandaffect

Again, I think we LARGELY agree but I just think the mental piece plays a much more significant role than you do.

[Martin Atkins]

I think that we agree but disagree on the percent. I bet if you measured how many hours an Olympic swimmer, for example, spends on swimming and drilling versus mentally preparing (visualizing the desired outcome; meditating; evicting the obnoxious roommate in her head; setting goals; going with the "flow"), you will probably discover that the element that actually enhances her performance and she spends time on is the actual physical practice (which changes your brain anyway) and not solely the mental preparation. And many elite athletes (I bet) spend 95%+ of their time practicing and competing and a much smaller percent (5% or less) on mental preparation because they've probably learned that practice makes perfect.

The author of that Huffington article had some interesting anecdotes about the importance of practicing mental preparation techniques but I wonder 1) how many Olympic medalists spend a lot of time doing that kind of mental preparation and 2) what percent of their time is spent practicing versus mentally preparing. And I wonder how many elite athletes think it is 90% mental and 10% physical and not the complete opposite. And what would happen to their performance if 90% of their time was spent on mentally preparing?

Plus, researchers can and have studied how practice versus mental preparation impacts performance. Practice is where it is at. If you ever have surgery, go with the surgeon who has successfully completed a number of that surgery you need and not with a surgeon who spent most of his time visualizing, mediating, etc about that surgery.  The performance of these two surgeons will likely be different.

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[Martin F. Atkins]

A couple points:

1). No Mental Barrier for 4 Minute Mile: It's a Myth: From the original post, the graph I posted illustrates that runners toppled the 4-minute mile world record as fast as and some cases faster than previous one-mile world records. I don't buy Levitt's et al argument that there was a special mental barrier with the 4 minute mile.  I think that was more folklore than fact.  After the "experts" claimed that a sub-4-minute mile was impossible, I bet some elite runners and coaches were energized to prove the nerds wrong and did so. 

2). Mental Practice vs Physical Practice: I am not arguing that mental practice is completely useless (well, some kinds may be).  I am arguing, however, that the power of mental practice is largely exaggerated in the popular media with false statements, such a "Performance is 90% mental and 10 percent physical".  Studies with sports and performance tasks have pitted groups with 1) no practice, 2) 100% physical practice, 3) 25% mental and 75% physical, and 4) various other combinations.  Invariably, the 100% physical practice groups come out on top.  However, mental practice does have some impact on performance over no practice.  So if you can't physically practice, you should mentally practice so while not ideal, you may get some gains.  However, the best use of your time is actually doing and practicing the skill.  Even if 100% of your time is spent practicing and little or no time is left for mental preparation, your performance will likely be better, especially with motor learning that is most sports.  Obviously, with mental tasks (reciting a poem, spelling B's, etc), mental practice is real practice because the mental tasks are what you will be performing. 

Here is a link to the general consensus from the Human Kinetics (the same organization that published article that Fan of Reason posted).  By the way, Human Kinetics is a very reputable sports research organization. I rely on many of their published books and papers to guide me with my running and resistance training programs and have done so for years.  

 

http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/in-motor-learning-is-mental-practice-as-effective-as-physical-practice

  

the results for the combination groups showed that learning was enhanced with higher proportions of the training trials spent in physical, compared to mental, practice

[Fan of Reason]

The research regarding "comparing" mental and physical practice (your angle) is different than the research supporting using mental/emotional techniques before and during practice and performance (my angle). That's where we are arriving at our differences here and understandably so. I agree that no athlete should support mental prep to REPLACE practice. But the research is very clear that mental/emotional control is critical to performance from the research angle I am processing it as mentioned. Your angle validates that mental prep is not a valid REPLACEMENT for practice and I agree. It is critical in conjunction WITH and BEFORE practice. There. Hopefully that clears up things.

[Martin F. Atkins]

Yes, that summary of empirical data in that Human Kinetics research article has implications for performance enhancement strategies. So if you have game a tomorrow and only have 3 hours to practice until play time and have the choice between 1) mental practice and 2) physical practice, choosing mental practice will not improve your sports performance--according to the evidence--as much as physical practice. Therefore, you should choose physical practice. How much physical practice within that 3 hours? Should you split time between mental and physical practice? The data provides a guide for that, too. Three hours (or 100%) physical practice with no mental practice is what the empirical data predicts will maximize your performance.  Now if you can't, however, physically practice and have the choice between 1) mental practice and 2) no practicing, you should do 3 hours of mental practice that isn't as good at 100% physical practice but mental practice is better than no practice for enhancing performance.  

This link is simple summary of the kind of research results that others have found:

http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/in-motor-learning-is-mental-practice-as-effective-as-physical-practice

[Fan of Reason]

Yes, that illustrates your angle very well and makes sense.

Here is a quote from an Olympic gold medalist illustrating the angle from which I am viewing the mental piece:

"The physical aspect of the sport can only take you so far. The mental aspect has to kick in, especially when you’re talking about the best of the best. In the Olympic Games, everyone is talented. Everyone trains hard. Everyone does the work. What separates the gold medalists from the silver medalists is simply the mental game.”

-Shannon Miller