BBC Reel｜一个跑得更快的巧妙方法

An ingenious way to run faster

Dr. Emily: I asked these Olympic athletes, some of the world's best runners: 'What are you looking at when you're racing to the finish line?' I thought they would be, sort of, master consumers of their visual world, really paying attention to the people that they were competing against, looking ahead, looking behind.

But I was wrong. What they do is that they stay focused on the finish line. And I wondered, can we teach the rest of us, who are not Olympic athletes, to do what these experts do and can that help us improve the quality of our own exercise?

Host: Dr. Emily Balcetis designed a study in which two groups had to walk quickly to a finish line wearing ankle weights. The first was the baseline group. They were told to walk as they normally would. The second was the intervention group, who were trained to keep their eyes solely focused on the finish line.

Dr. Emily: We said: 'Try not to look around. Imagine there's a spotlight shining just on that finish line, as if you have blinders on and all you can see is where you're trying to go.'

Host: Before the task, both groups were asked to estimate the distance to the finish line. The intervention group saw the finish line to be 30 percent closer than the baseline group. And after the task, the intervention group also got there faster.

Dr. Emily: Their pace increased by 23 percent, in fact. And importantly, they said it didn't hurt as much. When we used a medical scale where people can report how much exertion did it take out of your body, it hurt 17 percent less. Now, we didn't change anything about the course, so we didn't do anything different to what the actual exercise was, but it changed their mindset.

Host: Dr Emily Balcetis' study suggests that visual focus and mental focus are connected. It means that people's perception of exercise can be changed to make it look and feel easier.

Dr. Emily: What it does, by narrowly focusing their visual attention, people now thought: 'Oh this this exercise won't be as hard. I think I have what it takes to make it to that finish line really quickly. I believe in myself.' So, that change in visual focus was having a change in their mental focus and their self-appraisals of their ability to do this exercise. What's also cool is that this tactic can work regardless of whether people were coming in already in shape.

Host: You may have already used the tactic of narrow visual focus without even noticing it.

Dr. Emily: Maybe you practice ballet, maybe you practice yoga. And a lot of the suggestions there for holding balance, being able to maintain positions that aren't natural is by visually focusing on a target. If you don't and you're in ballet, you're going to get dizzy as you're spinning around. If you're doing it in yoga and you don't focus on a target, you're going to fall over.

Host: But holding visual focus for long periods can be hard.

Dr. Emily: This isn't a strategy that's going to work for the full extent of, let's say, like a five-kilometre run, because it also can be tiring. And if you do it from the very beginning and try to keep that up for the next hour that you're hoping that you can exercise, you're really going to burn yourself out.

In fact, what we found is that there's an optimal point to use this narrowed focus of attention. It's when you're feeling like you're fatigued, when you're at that choice point, are you going to throw in the towel or are you going to keep going? And when you're trying to find that last push to literally cross the finish line.

Some of the best performers, those that run the fastest, run the furthest, they flexibly switch between a wide visual focus and a narrow visual focus. And you see them narrowing in when they need a little extra boost of energy. A narrowed focus of attention is a tool.

Host: But for this tool to work, you need to want to exercise.

Dr. Emily: For people who have no goal, whose motivation is at the floor, this tactic didn't work. It's a tactic that can help you achieve what it is that maybe you're just starting out or you're just starting to become interested in, or for something that you've been working really hard at for a long time, but you need an extra little nudge to push you to the next level.

Host: When it comes to fitness, your mind can be as important as your muscles.


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