What Ford Explorers and Your Training Have in Common.

A few years back, I made my first big girl purchase: a shiny new white 2016 Ford Explorer. I absolutely loved this SUV and had been dying to buy one for a couple of years.

But after buying it, I started to notice white explorers everywhere! I’d go to the mall and see three other white explorers in the parking lot. I’d go through the drive-thru at Chick-Fil-A and be right behind another one! It was like the road was suddenly flooded with them!

Now, did my purchase of an Explorer do anything to affect Ford’s sales that year? Of course not.

These Explorers were around me the whole time. My brain just discarded the information because it wasn’t relevant to me. But once I bought one, the presence of other Explorers became relevant, because I needed to be able to identify my own car from the sea of similar vehicles.

The cool thing is, that there is a part of our brain called our Reticular Activating System (or RAS) that serves as our filter. It keeps us from getting overwhelmed by a flood of details and sensory experiences in our world. It filters out all of the things that are irrelevant to us, and keeps the things that we do find relevant, like how many other white Explorers are in a row of a parking lot.

Now I’m guessing you are wondering what this has to do with your training?

Just like what kind of car we drive, our brain filters out details from our workout that it finds irrelevant. It doesn’t want to expend energy taking in details that we don’t need for survival

For example, if we are doing a bike workout and just trying to get a certain distance in, our brain will filter out almost every other detail, like weather patterns, the type of surface we are riding on, our cadence, power output, etc. The only exception is if we actively make note of those details.

Usually, this is fine. Unless we find ourselves in a performance plateau.

The best way to get over any plateau in training (or anything) is to use the RAS to our advantage. Basically, if we track the details of our workouts, we inherently become more aware of the conditions in which we have better performance.

For example, we can track what we eat and when on the days of a workout to figure out which conditions help our body to perform better. By dialing in our RAS to those details and to how we felt during and after our workouts, we can optimize our nutrition and improve our performance.

This can be used for any aspect of performance.

Essentially, what you track will inherently improve, because you will be able to notice patterns and adjust accordingly.

Try it out!

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