Mental aspect is important for the overall learning and training of psychomotor skills such as running. To enhance the performance of a runner, it is crucial to identify and measure the relevant mental factors that influence their learning and training processes. This paper explores and describes mental factors that running experts consider essential and suggests common approaches to assess them. We also review some psychological theories and frameworks that can guide research in this field.
As long- and middle-distance running are endurance sports, runners experience diverse sensations during training and competition; for example, muscle pain, injury-related pain, heavy breathing and cramping discomfort. Moreover, during a race they must make quick challenging pacing decisions based not only on their current performance but also that of others [1]. In the same extension, it is unquestionable that mental or psychological factors exert an influence on the actions of sportspeople both the training and competition phases, then, it is crucial to gradually reach the optimal mental or psychological state for athletes so they can exhibit and maintain a top performance.
In this workshop paper, we present factors altering runner’s performance that must be considered for the mental training of athletes in this sport discipline based on running experts’ opinions. We also mention common methods to measure them.
Psychological factors have a significant impact on runners' performance. Therefore, we collected the most important ones that runners should focus on, according to running experts. To achieve this, we conducted interviews with running coaches. 2.1.
We interviewed eleven running coaches from seven different countries. They had an average of 14 years of coaching experience. The interviews lasted about an hour each and were recorded with the interviewees' permission for further analysis.
The interviews sought to capture the coaches' opinions on the complexity of the running learning/training process and its associated factors.
Two researchers analyzed the interviews following these steps. First, we identified and coded concepts and ideas from the coaches' statements. Next, we ranked the coded concepts and ideas by their frequency and importance to the coaches. This analysis enabled us to derive key insights into the mental aspects and their factors in running training.
From the analysis of the running coach interviews, we identified the following factors of the mental aspect: mental stress, and depression, which are usually negative; and motivation, concentration, selfefficacy, self-regulation, mental load-mental fatigue-mental recovery, and mental toughness, which are neutral and can be turned into positive factors that enhance the runner's mental improvement. Preventing these negative factors is not only important for the athletes' performance, but also for their mental wellbeing. In the next subsections, we define the identified mental factors and how they are usually measured in research on this topic. 3.1.
It can be defined as a psychological state normally initiating an increased perceived anxiety related to the performance of a task [2, 3]. Besides, it is important to emphasize that due to the intrinsic duality between stress-anxiety, many theories and studies on stress mostly focus on the anxiety element [4, 5, 6]. Fear of failure, inadequate preparation and physical state, social evaluation, and unforeseen events are the most common sources of mental stress [5]. Curiously, and although anxiety associated with stress is seen as a negative attribute, it can also lead to better athletic performance depending on the athlete's personal capabilities to cope with stressful conditions [2] since it triggers the adaptation to these demands [7]. Anxiety consists mainly of two elements: a cognitive component referring to the mental response, and a somatic component enclosing the physical response [2].
Stress can be measured by physiological and psychological methods. Physiological methods involve markers such as blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, galvanic skin response, and muscular and brain-wave activity. Psychological methods include questionnaires, scales, interviews and tests such as the perceived stress scale, the psychological stress measure, and the emotional stress reaction questionnaire [7]. 3.2.
The depression is a mental health problem where biological, psychological and social reasons play a decisive role in its triggering, it is characterized by fatigue, apathy, sleep and appetite disturbance; factors such as overtraining, perfectionism, loss of competition, conflicts with trainers, recent injuries, career termination and costs of the exercise are common depression sources in elite athletes [10, 11]. Injuries as a cause of depression [12], differentiation of gender [13] and differentiation of disciplines [14] are some useful qualities to evaluate depression in sports. Besides, the diathesis-stress model offers an alternative to explain the development of depression [15].
Depression is traditionally measured through scales that have psychological validation, however, only 5 are the most used, among which the Beck depression inventory and the Hamilton rating scale for depression stand out [16].
To the best of our knowledge, there are no completely reliable physiological markers that assess or predict depression, however, some researchers proposed the use of wearable devices to find correlation between physiological and behavioral response, for instance, the LiveNet [17], and the PSYCHE platforms [18].
Mental load or cognitive load (CL) is the amount of available mental/cognitive resources that are invested in solving the demands imposed by a task; if these resources are depleted, mental fatigue can occur [19]. This definition is influenced by the cognitive load theory which proposes the existence of limited cognitive-processing capacities and cognitive resources and its implications in the performance of single or multiple tasks [20, 21]. On the other hand, in ergonomics and human factors, the term mental workload (MWL) has a similar meaning given it refers to the limitations of the human mental architecture and its cognitive capacities [22]. Under the MWL perspective, it is feasible to identify its relationship with the person/user/operator performance because they have a cause and effect relationship; two main causes of mental underperformance and their connected errors and incidents correspond to too low (underload) and too much (overload) stimulation [23]. In the sports domain, the CL load depends both on the properties of the task at hand and the interactions with its environment and also on individual factors such as mental effort or cognitive capacity to dynamically adjust to the demands of the task [24]. In team sports, the constant and dynamic interaction between members of the same team and those of their opponents requires making use of mental resources to adjust to circumstances of that moment, however, in individual sports athletes “indirectly” interact with other competitors; athletes regulated their pacing strategies as a consequence of the presence of competitors, since this pacing could be perceived as a learning capacity [25]. For runners, an increase in CL leads to a bad control of the pacing strategy and decrease in the voluntary running speed [26, 27]. Feedback and information recall also play central roles since athletes listen to, comprehend and respond to sources of feedback (i.e. coaches’ instructions) and they also must recall tactics and experiences to apply them [24].
NASA Task Load Index, Subjective Workload Assessment Technique, Workload Profile are examples of assessment relying on rating or scoring MWL subjectively [28]. Common physiological methods to measure MWL physiologically use electrocardiac activity, respiration, blood pressure, and skin, ocular and brain measures [29].
Mental fatigue or cognitive fatigue is a type of fatigue which is induced by long periods of demanding mental activities generating a decrease in the athlete’s performance [30]. Mental fatigue reduces the athletes’ physical and cognitive performance through the alteration of all motivational factors pushing athletes to reach their goals; concretely, the mental fatigue can both increase the perception of effort to realize an activity, and decrease the perception of the benefit/reward that can be gained [31]. Additionally, it worsens athletes’ performance via the depletion/failure of the limited cognitive resources due to the influence of tactical tasks and training regimes [32]. Some particular negative effects on working memory, judgment and attention [33], and technical skills of athletes [34] are also connected with this fatigue. It also reduces physical and decision-making performance [35].
The evaluation of mental fatigue can be done by subjective assessment and physiological methods. EEG [36], ocular [37], cardiac activity [38] are among the physiological methods commonly used for its measurement. As for the subjective methods, we can mention Mental Fatigue Scale [39], visual analog fatigue scale [40], and the fatigue severity scale [41].
Mental recovery or cognitive recovery is a restorative process which is used to return to the original mental baseline that existed prior to training or competition, and is achieved by the use of psychological strategies such as cognitive self-regulation, resource activation, and psychological relaxation techniques [42, 43]. Mental recovery strategies can be categorized into psychologically-oriented strategies and “other” strategies (e.g. restorative environment and music) [43].
To the best of our knowledge, there is no proper indicator that has been defined exclusively to measure the degree of cognitive recovery after cognitive fatigue, however, EEG sensors have also been used to measure indirectly the degree of recovery after cognitively fatiguing tasks, suggesting that alpha and theta brain waves may be used as indicators of mental recovery after cognitive fatigue [44].
Concentration is an attentional process that involves the ability to optimally focus on a given task while ignoring distractions [45]. This attentional process accounts for selectivity of information processing, intensity of focus, consciousness and/or the allocation of a limited resource capacity to cope with ongoing cognitive demands. On the other hand, attention is defined as people’s ability to focus on information originating either from the external world or from internal sources [46, 47]. In turn, attention encompasses (at least) three components or dimensions: concentration or effortful awareness, selective perception and divided attention. Hence, the concepts of concentration and attention are strongly correlated and mutually reinforcing.
The assessing of attention and its implicated concentration through subjective methods such as questionnaires is common. Some questionnaires used in physical activities and sports are the test of attentional and interpersonal style [48], and the thought occurrence questionnaire for sport [49]. Objective measurements to monitor the level of attention by means of devices, commonly use functional magnetic resonance imaging [50], EEG sensors [51], ECG sensors [52], or ocular activity [53, 54]. 3.5.
Motivation is a process that influences the initiation, direction, magnitude, perseverance, continuation, and quality of goal-directed behavior. In sports psychology, the achievement goal theory and the self-determination theory are among those that acquire greater relevance [55].
To measure motivation, subjective assessments are typically used; six of the most cited motivation in sport are Sport Motivation Scale, Intrinsic Motivation Inventory, Situational Motivation Scale, Perceptions of Success Questionnaire, Behavioral Regulation in Sport Questionnaire, and Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire [56]. 3.6.
Self-efficacy is a construct coined by Bandura [57, 58] which refers to a person’s belief in his/her ability to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance achievements. By itself, selfefficacy is a theory, the self-efficacy theory. Specifically, the construct self-efficacy can also be interpreted as an evaluation or judgment, through beliefs of perceived abilities, of whether one can perform the necessary actions such as motor abilities and behaviors to successfully achieve a desired goal [59]. Self-efficacy beliefs are about “what one thinks one can do, not what one has” [60]; these beliefs are developed through the cognitive processing of sources of efficacy information, which are enactive mastery experiences or performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, imaged experiences, social or verbal persuasion, and physiological and emotional states. In sport has been demonstrated, the improvement of self-efficacy through psychological performance enhancement techniques in motor tasks [61]. Alternatively, mental training techniques such as imagery and self-talk can also enhance confidence [62].
Since self-efficacy involves judgments and beliefs, the unique methods to measure it are subjective assessments; some examples are the sources of sport confidence questionnaire [63], and the selfefficacy for exercise scale [64]. 3.7.
Self-regulation refers to the individual’s ability with its associated processes to adjust the frequency and intensity of their own behaviors, thoughts, emotions and impulses by management of the stressload and recovery in service of longer-term goals [65, 66]. The self-regulation construct comes from a theory with the same name, the self-regulation theory. The process of self-regulation has four main components: commitment to a standard, monitoring, self-regulatory strength or willpower, and motivation [67, 68].
To our knowledge, the only alternatives to wholly measure self-regulation are via subjective assessments, for instance, the self-regulation questionnaire [69], the self-regulation of learning selfreport scale [70]. 3.8.
Mental toughness can be defined as the mental ability to deal effectively with training and competition demands in an effort to maintain control of the situation [71]. Some studies, it has been found the relevance of mental toughness in educational and work settings, as well as mental health, sleep quality and stress coping [72].
The most preferred conceptual framework for its study finds its basics on the 4C’s model which has four independent components: Control, Commitment, Challenge, and Confidence [73].
There are no objective indicators for mental toughness; its measurement is subjectively done using questionnaires, scales or indexes such as the sport mental toughness questionnaire, the mental toughness scale and the mental toughness index [71, 72].
Among mental factors that running experts target to improve people’s performance can be evaluated objectively or subjectively. Objective methods use devices that capture the athlete's physiological signals, such as EEG and ECG. Subjective methods use tools like questionnaires and scales to generate a score. However, subjective methods are the only ones that are always available when evaluating mental factors for the running case. This is because mental factors are interrelated and influence each other, making it difficult to isolate them by exclusively physiological approaches.
The theories of self-efficacy, self-regulation, achievement goal and self-determination, as well as the 4C's model of mental toughness, are some potential approaches to further investigate the identified mental factors [Figure 1]. Although they can be used as references, it is not excluded the possibility to use others instead of them. As a future work, we would propose to create a framework that combines the most appropriate features of each theory to target the mental training of running.
Self-regulation Theory
Depression
Selfregulation Self-efficacy Theory
Self-efficacy 4C’s Model
Mental toughness
Mental Aspect of
Running
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