Why Self-Talk Works: The Science Rowers Need to Know

What one rigorous study reveals about self-talk, effort, and the rowing brain

Can self-talk improve performance in endurance sports like rowing? To answer this question, a group of researchers, led by Dr. Anthony Blanchfield of the Institute for the Psychology of Elite Performance at Bangor University, designed a rigorous experimental study using the Psychobiological Model of Endurance Performance (PBM).

What is the Psychobiological Model of Endurance Performance?

Before jumping into the research study, it is important to understand the key components of the PBM. 

For highly motivated athletes, the PBM shows that performance is determined by their perception of effort, or how hard and strenuous the exercise feels. This flips the limiting factor in performance from biological processes like muscles and energy systems to psychological processes like motivation and effort. Exhaustion is then the result of perceived effort reaching its upper limit, where you feel it’s impossible to maintain the necessary power to complete the task. Interestingly, it becomes a psychological threshold, not a physical one. Despite how your legs may feel at the end of a 2k, research shows that your muscles can still maintain the force necessary at the point of exhaustion. 

It’s important to note that the PBM doesn’t disregard the role of biology. In fact, its psychological explanation of performance is grounded in neurobiology. Your perception of effort isn’t just a mental experience that just pops into existence; rather, it emerges from regions of your brain like the anterior cingulate cortex. Combining psychology with biology gives the PBM more explanatory power than other explanations which rely on one or the other.

The PBM also differentiates between perception of effort and pain. The pain you feel when rowing is a physical signal sent from your muscles and interpreted by the brain. The perception of effort, however, is a cost-benefit analysis. You’re weighing the effort required to complete the task compared to the amount of motivation you have to complete the task. If you’re highly motivated, you’ll push yourself until it feels physically impossible to do so, despite the pain. Pain is a consideration in your willingness to continue but not in the amount of effort required for the task. This is why during a race, your legs can be on fire but you keep going because you want to win, but during an optional workout in the offseason, the pain itself is reason enough to stop.

Does Self-Talk Help Improve Performance?

Using the PBM, the researchers set out to see if self-talk could improve performance. They randomly assigned 24 people into two equal groups. Both groups completed two time-to-exhaustion tests on a cycling ergometer. This high-intensity test is comparable to rowing – cycling as hard as you can until you can no longer maintain the required power output, similar to holding a split until you can no longer maintain the pace. The experimental group developed and practiced motivational self-talk in between the two tests. 

The experimental group improved their time to exhaustion on the second test by 18%, whereas the control did not significantly improve their time. Perhaps more importantly was the reduction in perceived effort, as measured by the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) on an 11-point scale. During the second test, the experimental group’s RPE was a full point lower at halfway, and at the control group’s exhaustion point. 

To put this in perspective, the reduction in perceived effort was comparable to established physiological interventions like aerobic training, nutritional strategies, and caffeine. In other words, training your inner voice can be as effective as training your body.

How Does Self-Talk Improve Performance?

The short answer: The exact reasons are still unknown because the researchers did not design the study to identify how motivational self-talk might cause a reduction in the perception of effort,

The longer answer: While we may not know the exact reason, the researchers did use previous research to hypothesize that motivational self-talk increased the participants’ perceived ability to maintain the required output for longer. In other words, the participants’ self-talk improved their self-belief (or self-confidence) that they could push harder for longer.  

Interestingly, the researchers noted that heart rate and blood lactate levels at exhaustion did not significantly differ between the control and experimental groups. This is an important finding that both limits the biological explanation and strengthens the case for self-talk.

What Does The Result Mean?

Can self-talk improve endurance performance? Yes, but understanding why it works is only half the equation. The other half is knowing how to use it. While most rowers spend thousands of hours every season training their body and perfecting their technique, psychological tools like self-talk are often overlooked despite research (like this study) showing they can meaningfully improve performance.

If you’re interested in developing your psychological skills, check out some free resources or feel free to reach out.