Outside USA - September 2019

OUTSIDE MAGAZINE 45

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Mind Games

A HANDFUL OF APPS DESIGNED

TO BOOST MENTAL ENDURANCE ARE

HITTING THE MARKET. CAN THEY

DELIVER ENOUGH OF AN EDGE TO

JUSTIFY THE AGONY?

BY ALEX HUTCHINSON

THE HARDEST marathon workouts I’ve ever

done involved sitting in an office chair, tap-

ping buttons in response to letters and shapes

that flashed across my computer screen. For

12 weeks before the Ottawa Marathon back in

2013, I spent as much as 90 minutes at a stretch

alone in my room, testing out a protocol for

brain-endurance training. By race day, I no

longer cared whether BET worked. I just knew

that I never wanted to experience that kind of

mental fatigue again.

The theory behind that cognitive torment

seemed reasonable enough at the time: just as

repeated physical exertion forced my muscles

to adapt, routine bouts of mental taxation

would push my brain to get better at resisting

weariness when exhaustion loomed, help-

ing me run a faster marathon. But initial in-

carnations of BET were somewhere between

impractical and intolerable, and the approach

didn’t get much traction in the sports world.

“If I do physical training 15 hours a week,

I can’t add another five hours of cognitive

work,” says Walter Staiano, a sports neuro-

physiologist at the University of Valencia in

Spain and one of the technique’s pioneers.

“Because then I will die.” He’s exaggerating,

but only just.

Six years later, BET is back in app form,

with revised protocols that allow the train-

ing to be better integrated into an athlete’s

routine. (The workouts require as little as 20

minutes per day to complete.) First there’s

Soma NPT, developed by Staiano and a com-

pany in Switzerland called Sswitch. A $20

monthly subscription puts 45 cognitive-

training tasks on your iOS phone or tablet

and provides sophisticated analytics to guide

your progress. Adoption has been swift:

teams in the NBA, the German Football Fed-

eration, and the Canadian Football League,

as well as professional golfers, Formula One

drivers, and even Red Bull extreme athletes,

are all giving it a shot.

Meanwhile, Samuele Marcora, the Italian

researcher who initially proposed the idea of

BET and, together with Staiano, developed

the first protocols, is working with the Brit-

ish Ministry of Defence to develop an app

that can be used during physical exercise, re-

sponding to audio cues in your earbuds. And

a startup called Rewire Fitness is working on

an approach that incorporates response but-

tons into an indoor bike trainer.

All the hype is admittedly a bit of a red

flag. Everyone is selling neuroplasticity these

days, Staiano observes with a mix of sarcasm

and frustration. “You’re going to go exer-

cise in the park? It’s neuro! You’re changing

your brain!” For years, brain-game compa-

nies such as Cogmed and Lumosity that have

made millions claiming to enhance cognitive

function have been repeatedly undercut by

research finding that they provide no signifi-

cant benefit. Yet early results on the potential

physical gains of brain work have been almost

comically encouraging. In one study, Staiano

and Marcora found that subjects improved

their cycling times by 126 percent after 12

weeks of combined physical and cognitive

training. (The control group, which did only

physical training, improved 42 percent.) A

research group at the University of Birming-

ham in En gland indicated similar results in a

preliminary conference presentation.

While initial research in BET was oriented

toward endurance sports, the keenest inter-

est of late is in sports involving more com-

plex, tactical thinking, where a split-second

lapse in judgment by a fatigued athlete can

mean defeat. This spring, at the American

College of Sports Medicine’s annual meeting,

Staiano presented results from a study in-

volving a third-division soccer team in Italy

whose players showed improvement in agil-

ity and decision-making after four weeks of

BET. Similarly, Jami Tikkanen, a fitness coach

whose athletes include two-time CrossFit

world champion Annie Thorisdottir, began

using the Soma NPT app hoping to improve

clients’ problem-solving during periods of

stress and fatigue and to help them maintain

focus and emotional control. “The athletes

already have a high physical training load,

and BET is an opportunity to improve these

qualities without increasing the demands on

the body,” he says.

Unlike my misadventures with Marcora

and Staiano’s original BET regimen, newer

protocols emphasize integrating physical and

cognitive effort. According to Staiano, the

best time for brain training is immediately

after a sweaty workout, when you’re already

experiencing some degree of mental fatigue.

In contrast, he says, “If you wake up in the

morning, you’re super fresh, you have a nice

cup of coffee, and then you do 20 minutes of

this, you’re not going to see any benefit.” For

even more seamless integration, you can do

a couple of minutes during recovery periods

within an intense interval or circuit workout.

That’s the approach Staiano introduced to

badminton players when he worked with an

elite sports institute in Denmark. One of the

athletes went on to win a bronze medal at the

Olympic Games.

Even if you’re willing to set aside skepti-

cism about whether brain-endurance train-

ing really works, there’s still one lingering

question: Is it worth the effort? That may de-

pend on your current level of mental tough-

ness. Even among elite athletes searching

for the slightest edge, BET could prove to be

a hard sell. Staiano figures he can get a fairly

accurate sense of who stands to benefit the

most simply by watching how athletes han-

dle the app’s initial set of tasks. “I can tell you

that there are guys who, after one minute,

you can see their eyes crossing,” he says. Oth-

ers go an hour without batting an eye, which

suggests that they’re already pretty good at

withstanding strain. Cruel experience tells

me that I’m in the first camp. So I down-

loaded the app.

Stick to the Plan

Sswitch’s Soma NPT app for iOS utilizes

dozens of cognitive tasks to target focus,

reaction time, vision, and other perfor-

mance-oriented traits. Here’s how endur-

ance athletes can benefit.

Baseline: To give you something to

chart your progress against, and to

periodically assess mental readiness,

start with the classic Psychomotor

Vigilance Task, which is considered the

gold standard for measuring neuro-

physiological fatigue. Simply tap the

screen whenever a circle appears.

Post-workout: Hit the mental gym for

20 to 30 minutes after physical training

sessions. In the Switched Stop Audio

drill, you tap the left or right button,

depending on whether a left- or right-

facing arrow appears on the screen,

and refrain from tapping if you hear a

beep just after the arrow appears.

During intervals: Ramp up the

demands of your interval or circuit

session by brain-training during recov-

ery periods. To get a sufficient cogni-

tive stimulus in short 90-second bouts,

you need a more complex challenge.

Task switching involves tapping the left

button if you see a white number be-

tween zero and five (or an odd number

in red) and tapping the right button

for a white number between six and

ten (or an even number in red). Do it as

fast as you can—the app is monitoring

your every twitch.