Noakes on Fatigue - it is all in the brain....

A few weeks ago I pointed to the ideas of Samuele Marcora and his psycholbiological model of fatigue.  I also recently had an articule published in a UK hillwalking magazine which looked at his ideas.

I just noticed an review paper - the whole pdf is available - by the prominent Exercise Scientist Tim Noakes around these ideas:

Fatigue is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates the Exercise Behavior to Ensure the Protection of Whole Body Homeostasis

The ideas are somewhat different from those of Marcora, who sees motivation as much more important, but the key is still the brain, not the muscles or cardiovascular system:

The model predicts that attempts to understand fatigue and to explain superior human athletic performance purely on the basis of the body's known physiological and metabolic responses to exercise must fail since subconscious and conscious mental decisions made by winners and losers, in both training and competition, are the ultimate determinants of both fatigue and athletic performance.

Worth reading.