Fast Talk, ep. 38: Why fatigue may be all in your mind

It's time to unlock the mysteries of fatigue. Is it just lactic acid pooling in your legs, as your high school coach probably told you? No, that’s not it. The answer is actually a lot more complex than you'd think. In fact, some of the most exciting theories have only recently been proposed. This episode reveals those exciting revelations and explores the foundations of fatigue. First, we’ll discuss the many different physiological causes of fatigue, including muscle damage, glycogen depletion, body temperature, and why no one of these reasons fully explains fatigue, despite what some researchers might tell you. We’ll discuss an exciting new theory that suggests there’s a “central regulator” of fatigue, which integrates all of the different past theories and ultimately allows our mind to decide where are limits are. That is, could fatigue be, in part, a psychological thing. We ask the question, how much fatigue is actually a conscious choice that can be influenced by the length of the race, cues we give ourselves, and mental tricks And finally, we’ll examine why we need to be careful about toying with our fatigue limits. Our guest for today is Dr. Stephen Cheung, an exercise physiologist and professor in the kinesiology department at Brock University in St. Catherine’s, Ontario, whose research interests include the effects of environmental stress on human physiology and performance. We'll also hear from Sepp Kuss, a neo-pro with LottoNL-Jumbo on the WorldTour, who will talk about his limits when racing.