Hey everybody and welcome to today's episode of the Run to the Top

Actually Kick daily podcast. My name is Haley, one of the coaches here at Runners Connect,

and I'm looking forward to talking to you guys today.

I hope you're all safe and well. I hope that you're running is going well and that you are finding ways to keep busy during the lockdown here.

And if you are busy, because you're still working,

then I hope you're finding ways to relax.

What I want to talk to you about today is another fairly topical subject right now and that is how do stress and anxiety

affect training. Now during the current pandemic many of us are experiencing significant stress,

whether that be stress about staying healthy, our income, or just the craziness and

uncertainty of the whole situation.

It's fair to say that most, if not all of us, are significantly more stressed than normal right now.

It's no coincidence that in the athletes I train I'm seeing many more reports are feeling tired or not performing well in workouts.

Whilst it might not seem obvious, it's actually pretty well studied that mental stress affects performance in

physical tasks. It's something that a lot of research groups have looked at and

what they've found is whilst we may think they are separate, both types of stress,

mental and physical, going to the same stress buckets.

When scientists have gotten subjects to perform mentally stressful or challenging tasks

ahead of a physical task, their performance in the physical tasks has been shown to decline.

This has been shown with a whole range of physical tasks including endurance events,

ball sports, team sports, sprinting a whole range.

One example is in a 2009 study where volunteers spent 90 minutes playing either a simple computer game or one that demanded sustained attention and fast reactions.

And then a third group watched a documentary.

...