Conditioning Research

I want to talk about alcohol.  This post was prompted by a number of things: Rearranging the Deck-chairs Tom Furman had a good post recently which hit a nerve with me.  He spoke about how too often we major on the minors.  We ignore the really important stuff and fiddle with minutiae.  We might have everything right, all the right things in place.....but then we sabotage it with something else we are doing. You might be eating well and training well.....but are you also smoking?  Are you watching your diet, counting calories and macros....but drinking a bottle of wine a night?  Are you training hard, eating well but not getting more than 5 hours sleep a night? You get the picture. By avoiding the real problem, you can pretend to be courageous. You perhaps act as if you are uninformed, but you are mimicking a child who closes his eyes and believes he is invisible. You really aren’t fooling anyone. Not even yourself. - See more at: http://ww...

In 2012  I pointed to the research of Samuele Marcora on how facial expression impacts on fatigue in his psychobiological model of fatigue .   His study here showed how the onset of frowning indicated the point at which things were starting to feel hard, but in discussions by email we chatted about the possibility that things could work the other way - smiling might make everything feel easier and ward off fatigue. I was reminded of this when I saw this video from Eric Cobb It is a simple trick but I think it is worth trying.