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Ed Gibbins

Why Cognitive Training is the Next Big Development in Sports

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In recent decades, the application and development of science in sports has boomed. Elite teams and athletes have sports scientists working with them to push limits further than ever before.

Perhaps one of the most interesting recent examples of this is the concept of marginal gains, an idea championed by Sir Dave Brailsford, former Performance Director of British Cycling and GM of Team Ineos. Marginal gains is the concept that it is possible to increase performance by 1% in many specific areas and these tiny improvements add up to create significant overall improvement. This philosophy aided in the incredible development of Team GB’s cycling team, changing them from a laughing stock to a thriving team that won 16 Gold medals across Beijing 2008 and London 2012.

Sir Dave Brailsford (left), the pioneer of the Marginal Gains Philosophy

Brailsford made changes across a wide array of areas previously thought unimportant in order to create these marginal gains. This included the team bus layout, introduction of antibacterial hand gel to reduce infection and illness and adaptations to the warm-up. These marginal gains accumulated and the significant improvement was indicated by the medal haul.

However, one seemingly neglected area of sports science so far has been cognitive training, despite how important mental toughness is perceived to be in sports. We are forever bombarded by quotes expanding on the idea of ‘mind over matter’ but little is done to actually train the mind. We need to train the mind to be more resilient to the mental fatigue that we will inevitably face in competition to improve decision making, reduce our perception of effort and enhance positive thinking and motivation.

Some athletes have already started on a journey of cognitive training. Tom Brady has used brain training to sharpen his mind, relax his brain post-game and to improve his sleep. He also uses it to build resilience to protect against future concussions.

Cognitive tasks like a Go/NoGo task can help athletes like Brady, who are tested under extreme pressure,to make smart split-second decisions. This has been shown in a study with fencers that showed that they had better reaction times in discriminative tests but not in simple reaction tests (Di Russo et al., 2006). This demonstrates that they have the ability to make good decisions consistently under pressure. 

Response inhibition tasks like the Stroop task can help to train our mental endurance and tolerance to mental fatigue. Mental Fatigue has been shown to significantly reduce endurance performance through an increase in RPE (Marcora et al., 2009). By performing cognitive training we can increase our tolerance to mental fatigue, reducing its negative effect. In fact, using Brain Endurance Training over a 12-week programme was shown to yield 3x the improvement in athletic performance in a time-to-exhaustion trial (Staiano et al., 2015).

Cognitive training creates huge improvements in performance. Its lack of adoption so far is somewhat nice to know as it shows that there are still boundaries to break in sport and I’m sure with adoption we will see records being broken even further. It also allows the introduction of new metrics. An objective mental stress test, yielding a mental stress score, will be able to assist with athlete monitoring above and beyond current subjective measures. Perception gap, a new metric that is part of the Rewire system, is a measure of the difference between Self-Rated RPE and objective work output with data from heart rate monitors and power meters. By tracking this you can measure your mental performance over time. The goal is to reduce the perception gap when under mentally fatiguing situations so that your mind is not a limiter to achieving your true athletic potential.

If we thought marginal gains were squeezing the last bit out of human performance, we were wrong. 10 years of science has already shown that cognitive training has the potential to yield huge improvements in athletic performance. 

Buckle up and get ready for the next wave of athletes to break records and achieve new heights in athletic performance powered by new brain training solutions hitting the market over the coming years.

Studies Covered in Article for Further Reading

“Neural correlates of fast stimulus discrimination and response selection in top-level fencers”
by Francesco Di Russo, Francesco Taddei, Teresa Apnile and Donatella Spinelli
Neuroscience Letters, 2006

“Mental Fatigue impairs physical performance in humans”
by Samuele M Marcora, Walter Staiano and Victoria Manning
Journal of Applied Physiology, 2009

“A Randomized Controlled Trial of Brain Endurance Training (BET) to Reduce Fatigue During Endurance Exercise” 
by Walter Staiano, Michele Merlini and Samuele M Marcora
Conference: ACSM Annual Meeting, 2015

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How the Rewire Brain Training System Works

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The mental side of athletic training and competition is a critical component to all levels of performance from the amateur to the professional and yet very little time is dedicated to cognitive-based training. The current brain training solutions for athletes are ineffectual and do not translate to true athletic performance gains because they are performed out of context from real-world training and do not replicate the mental and emotional challenges normally faced during competition.

The Rewire product is the first mental endurance training solution for athletes that can be used during real-world training. The brain training protocol used by Rewire is based upon the findings of 10 years of scientific research around mental fatigue in endurance sports. Studies have shown that over time brain fatigue training can reduce an athlete’s level of perceived exertion (RPE) thereby increasing their athletic potential and mental toughness over time. By focusing on brain training that fatigues the mind during workouts,  athletes can reproduce real-world scenarios that they will face in competition without risking injury or over training.

THE SCIENCE

Screenshots of one of the Rewire brain training protocols called a Stroop Test

The brain training protocol used in the Rewire system is based on a series of simple neuropsychological tests displayed on a smartphone during indoor training. The tests activate the part of the brain responsible for the suppression of actions that are inappropriate to the goal-driven task at hand. In other words, the Rewire system creates situations very similar to competition where will power, self-control and focus are required in order to complete the workout successfully. This brain training protocol otherwise known as inhibitory control testing has been shown in studies, including Brownsberger et al., 2013, to influence an athlete’s perceived level of exertion (RPE) and, as a result, their endurance performance. So if you can add more mental load to every workout and adapt over time what the science has shown is that you can reduce your level of perceived exertion thereby improving both your physical performance and your mental toughness over time. For example:

Staiano et al., 2015 showed that brain training is highly effective in improving endurance performance when combined with traditional physical training. Those in the brain training group had three times the improvement in time to exhaustion (TTE) than the control group (+126% compared to +42%) over a 12 week training period. In this study, participants in the brain training group had a lower RPE than the control group. This indicates that that the increase in endurance performance was due to having a reduced perception of effort as a result of brain training.


The science has also shown that what you believe about your abilities and your level of self confidence goes a long way towards achieving your athletic potential and goals.   Self-talk is a psychological technique for improving self-belief, reducing the perception of effort during training and racing and keeping on task during challenging situations. Self-talk phrases, otherwise known as mantras, consist of simple phrases that your repeat in your mind whenever you need to stay on task.  For example, during a particularly difficult interval session you might repeat “calm and focused” or “strong and steady”. A study by Blachfield et al., 2013 showed that using self-talk significantly reduces an athletes RPE and increases their Time to Exhaustion (TTE). The improvement in endurance is likely due to the decrease in RPE.


‘I like to create mantras for different parts of the race because it brings my attention and focus back if it starts to wander.’

Laura Kline, Rewire Athlete and Former World Duathlon Champion
Screenshots of the Rewire mantra customize screen (left) and the screen that appears during training intervals with random mantras (right)

HOW IT WORKS

The Rewire app connects, via Bluetooth, with your power meter, heart rate monitor and the Rewire brain training straps designed for each sport so that you can add brain training easily to your traditional endurance workouts. For example, if you are a cyclist: simply pair your biometric devices with the Rewire app, mount your smartphone to your stem and attach the brain training straps to your handlebars to start your indoor training workout. For runners, it’s even easier: simply put your smartphone in front of you on your treadmill, attach the brain training straps to your hands and start your workout.

Diagram of the Rewire training system used for cycling

At specific intervals during each workout, the brain training tests will appear on your smartphone screen and you will be challenged to complete each question while also keeping up your target physical performance goals. The Rewire system will also automatically identify the most difficult parts of the workout and display your pre-programmed self-talk mantras just prior to each difficult effort so that you can utilize the benefits of self-talk. 

PERFORMANCE METRICS

Screenshots of workout metrics during training (left) and the workout metrics summary after your workout is complete (right)

In order to measure your performance the Rewire system records all of the traditional physiological metrics such as average heart rate, average and normalized power, intensity factor (IF), training stress score (TSS), cadence, interval time and total workout time.   Additionally, the system also tracks your mental performance including response time, accuracy, RPE, session RPE and a proprietary metric called your perception gap. Your Perception Gap is the difference between your self-rated RPE (how hard you felt like you worked) compared with your expected RPE based on how hard you actually worked under the conditions of mental fatigue, using data from the power meter and heart rate monitor. By measuring the difference between your perception vs. your actual physical performance the Rewire system establishes a methodology whereby you can measure your mental performance over time. The goal is to reduce the gap in your perception when training or competing under mentally fatiguing situations so that your mind is not a limiter to achieving your true athletic potential.

Screenshots of the Rewire performance metrics screens including summary of all workouts (left) and mental endurance chart explanation (right)

From within the Rewire app you can view the details of every workout as well as your performance by day, week, month or year and view your cumulative mental performance ranking and your best mental performance workouts.   

THE WORKOUTS

Screenshots of the Rewire workout categories (left) and a workout details screen with mental and physical performance goals (right)

We have created a library of workouts for all training intensities and durations. We also know that, as athletes, we are always time crunched between our training schedule and managing work, family and other priorities. That’s why we’ve created workout options that can be done during your regular training that require no additional time or if prefer you can do supplementary workouts called ‘double-ups’ taking only 15-20 minutes on either side of your planned workout.

WHAT COACHES AND ATHLETES ARE SAYING


‘It’s not letting your mind wander and your legs slow down as it keeps you focused the entire time.’

Laura Kline, Former World Duathlon Champion and Rewire beta athlete.


‘As triathletes, we often focus on just swimming, biking and running and don’t think about the mental aspect of things. Having this app has really helped me focus on that and sharpen my mind while I’m doing my training.’

Rebeccah Wassner, Three-Time Winner of the New York City Triathlon and Rewire beta athlete.


‘Most of us are looking for distractions while riding indoors, whereas Rewire provides something that commands absolute focus.’

Joe Holmes, Former Elite Road Racer for 20 years and Cycling Coach and Rewire beta athlete.

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