A positive mindset can be everything. Come into a task with your head in the right place and it can work wonders. Sure, it might sound a little wishy-washy, but it’s demonstrably true, at least in a sporting context.
Since the late 1980s, research has repeatedly shown that positive self-talk can help improve sporting performances. A few well-chosen words – said to one’s self either internally or out loud – can give athletes a leg up across a range of sports; in everything from middle-distance running, to swimming, to darts, and of course in cycling.
And as it turns out, there’s a way to make this positive self-talk even more effective than it already is: by accompanying it with a simple, everyday head movement.
The research
A few years back, a group of researchers in Spain set out to discover whether head-nodding would serve to amplify the benefits of positive self-talk on cycling sprint performance. They hypothesised that head-nodding during self-talk would offer greater benefits than no head movement, and indeed better results than while head-shaking. Put another way, the researchers surmised that the head movement we associate with positivity and validation would serve to amplify the positive benefits of positive self-talk.
To test this hypothesis, the researchers recruited a cohort of 22 cyclists, all of them male, with ages ranging from 23 to 53 years old. Each of the participants was required to take part in three online sessions with a researcher – one for each of the three different head-movement conditions. (These sessions were conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning in-person sessions weren’t really a possibility.)
In each session, the participants started with a questionnaire where they were asked to write down three thoughts about their ability to perform well on an upcoming sprint test. Examples included: “Today I feel strong” and “I’m going to do it well because I like to improve myself.”
The participants were asked to write out new statements in each session, rather than using the same statements from session to session. “We thought this was better than using the same self-talk every day/session,” the study’s lead researcher Rafael Mateos told Escape, “since the reasons that seem valid to you today, may not be valid in seven days.”
With their affirmations written down, the participants were then assigned to a head movement condition: head-nodding, head-shaking, or no head movement. They were then asked to repeat the three statements they’d written, in the same order they were written down, either out loud or in their head, running through the three-statement sequence a total of three times. While they did that, they used the head movement they’d been assigned to for that session.
The participants had their video call muted for this part of the session, to allow them a little more privacy when completing their self-talk. As we’ll come back to in a moment, this did create something of a headache for the researchers.
With their self-talk and head movement procedure complete, the participants then started to ride on their smart rollers. They did a 6.5 minute warm-up at a gentle pace, with a harder 20-second effort roughly halfway through the warm-up. And then they did the Wingate Test.
First devised back in the 1970s the Wingate Test seeks to assess a rider’s maximal anaerobic power by getting them to ride a 30-second effort as hard as they can while seated. To quote from this latest research paper, during high-intensity efforts like this “the body’s demand for energy exceeds the available oxygen supply, leading to anaerobic metabolism.” The Wingate Test is the most widely used assessment of anaerobic capacity in cycling.
For each of the three sessions, the riders did the Wingate Test three times, taking four minutes of rest between each. From those efforts, the researchers were able to extract each rider’s peak power and their average power for the 30-second effort.
The results, published recently in The Sport Psychologist journal, were striking. As the researchers predicted, head movements had a significant impact on the riders’ power. By coupling head-nodding with positive self-talk, riders showed significantly higher average power scores than with the combination of self-talk and no head movement (468 watts vs 439 watts), and slightly higher than with the combination of self-talk and head-shaking (468 vs 448 watts).
Peak power was also significantly higher in the head-nodding tests: 572 W vs 539 W with no head movement and 541 W when head-shaking. You’ll note that, in the case of both average and peak power, the difference between the no-head-movement and head-shaking conditions is much smaller than the improvement that head-nodding seems to deliver.
Why it works
In their research paper about this study, the authors talk about the concept of “embodied cognition” – the idea that “the mind must be understood in the context of its relationship to a body that interacts with the world”. They go on to say that “the activation of either the physical or mental component will inherently influence the other.”
The theory goes that bodily movements can have an impact on “thoughts, feelings, judgements and subsequent behaviours” with previous research showing that bodily movements like head-nodding and head-shaking can influence people’s sense of how valid specific thoughts are.
To take a specific example: participants who nodded their head while hearing a persuasive proposal “showed higher perceived validity of their thoughts in response to that proposal than those shaking their heads.”
It’s previously been shown to work in the sporting realm before, too. In 2019, for example, research showed that head-nodding helped to amplify the effects of both positive and negative self-talk on athletes’ physical performance in vertical jump, squat, and deadlift tests.
“The validity athletes perceived in their own self-talk was influenced by the validity associated with their nodding (vs shaking) head movements, ultimately affecting their physical performance,” the authors of that 2019 paper wrote. “In other words, the self-talk’s valence [i.e. whether it’s positive or negative – ed] influences physical performance to a greater extent when athletes perceive validity in their self-talk.”
The same thing seems to be happening in this latest study on head movements and self-talk before Wingate tests.
Analysis and shortcomings
What the researchers found in this latest research is certainly interesting, and it shows considerable promise for those looking to get the best out of themselves on the bike. But there are a few caveats to consider.
For one, you might be looking at those power numbers mentioned above and thinking they’re quite low. A peak power of 572 watts during a 30-second effort, or an average of 468 watts for 30 seconds, are numbers that even a minimally trained non-competitive rider should be capable of. In other words, the riders in this cohort were far from elite.
“All of them were amateur cyclists, and among them, some competed in amateur races at the time of the study, and others did not even compete,” Mateos told Escape. “Although it is true that they all trained on a weekly basis.”
Why does this matter? While it shows that riders of this calibre might benefit from head-nodding during positive self-talk, such riders have the most potential for improvement across the board. It might be that the benefits start to tail off the stronger the rider gets.
Additionally, the mix of racing and non-racing riders in the sample does confuse things a little. The researchers acknowledge as much in their paper, admitting that it would have been better to use a more homogenous sample (e.g. only competitive riders). They add, however, that they don’t expect many differences between competitive and non-competitive riders because, as per some previous research from 2009: “Embodied validation can operate on anyone.”
As mentioned earlier, the fact the participants had their video muted during the self-talk portion of each session is a notable weakness of the study. While researchers say they could verify most participants taking part properly, by watching their lip movements, they couldn’t confirm that the riders’ self-talk matched precisely with the statements they’d written down. Follow up research is probably required in a live setting where these factors can be better observed.
Takeaways
In the end, there’s definitely something to this research, and the study’s authors have suggested it should be considered by those in the competitive racing scene. “We encourage sport psychologists, coaches, athletes, and other practitioners to consider the impact that athletes’ bodily movements can have on their cognition (and specifically meta-cognition),” they write.
What about those of us at the more amateur end of the spectrum? Is there value in using such techniques to get the best out of ourselves in an upcoming sprint or training test, say? It would seem so, given the test was conducted on amateur riders to begin with.
“I believe that any athlete can benefit from the promising results found here,” said Mateos. “Rather than focusing on head movements, since our study did not demonstrate the benefits of their intentional use, I would recommend that any athlete choose statements or words (and invest time and thought in doing so) that they believe will be helpful before or during the competition, and incorporate them as part of their self-talk.”
Why is Mateos hesitant to recommend head-nodding directly, instead saying athletes should focus mainly on the self-talk component? Because participants in this study weren’t actually told they were taking part in a study to test the benefits of such head movements. To quote from the research paper: “participants were told that this research aimed to study the control athletes can exert over their bodily movements when doing other mental tasks.” The real purpose of the study was hidden from them, so that that knowledge wouldn’t interfere with the outcome in any way.
It might well be that the combination of head-nodding plus self-talk is just as beneficial when someone knows about the benefits they’re trying to access, but that’s not what’s been confirmed in this study, and hence why Mateos is reticent to claim it.
But, as he reiterates, even the self-talk aspect is worth considering if you’re looking to get the most of your riding, so long as it’s done right.
“For this self-talk to have a real impact on performance,” Mateos told Escape, “it is key that athletes trust that the words or statements are true, that they have confidence in them, and that they like them (and we have found that head movements can affect this, but it is not the only way), since this metacognitive component translates into a greater impact on performance.”
In other words: you must believe that the self-talk statements you choose are true, as your perception of their validity helps give them their power.
Another question: while this study focuses specifically on anaerobic efforts, could it be that aerobic (i.e. less-intense, endurance) efforts can also be improved by positive self-talk plus head-nodding?
“This is a great question,” said Mateos. “Future studies should test whether the moderating effect of head movements on the relationship between self-talk and physical performance can also be applied to aerobic measures. We hope so, because from a theoretical point of view we find no reason to think otherwise, but as I say, the evidence is still not enough to state it categorically.”
Whatever that particular finding, this latest study is a timely reminder of the value of a positive approach. Whether it’s the combination of self-talk plus head-nodding, self-talk on its own, or even just keeping a positive mindset as you tackle the various challenges that come your way, staying positive is hardly going to do any harm. And who knows: it might even help you get a little bit extra out of yourself on the bike.
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