Welcome to the Get Fit Guys, quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

Now, when it comes to achieving peak physical performance or pushing yourself to the extreme

limits of endurance exhaustion, what do you think is the most important

part of your physiology? Your muscles? Your heart? Your lungs? Well, the surprising answer is

none of the above. The ultimate arbiter of fatigue is actually situated right between your ears.

That's right. It's your brain. And in this two-part series,

you're going to discover how to trick your brain into giving your body a better workout,

how to override fatigue and get tired less quickly, and how to get into the zone.

The concept of the brain being the central cause of fatigue is actually a theory I first encountered when I interviewed a guy named Dr. Tim Noakes in my podcast over at Ben Greenfield Fitness.com. The title of that episode is how you can use the central governor to tap into your muscle's hidden potential. Now, in that episode, Dr. Noakes explains how being tired can all be in your mind,

and you can actually trick your body into exercising for a longer period of time,

going harder, or lifting heavier if you distract it with techniques like counting repetitions,

making it to a small intermediate goal like the next telephone pole,

listening to music, engaging in self-talk, or even using mental visualization exercises

before your big workout or race.

Now, what Dr. Noakes calls the central governor model of fatigue is based off the fact

that if your brain or your heart runs out of oxygen or

experiences sustained periods of what's called hypoxia or low oxygen, then you could die or

undergo permanent damage to these organs. So your brain, also known as your central governor,

is wired to limit how hard, how heavy, or how long you can go by reducing your

recruitment of muscle fibers. And this reduced recruitment of muscle fibers causes you to feel

fatigued. So your brain simply says stop and your body obeys. Now, it's possible that fatigue

...