ID: hksportsinstitute
Psychological Intervention on Pacing Strategy
By Dr. Si Gangyan
Pacing strategy was defined as a kind of regulation of distribution of power output during exercise under the limits of physiological system which enabling an athlete performs optimally. Noakes, Gibson et al. (2006) proposed a hypothesis that the brain creates and controls pacing strategy. We further hypothesized that a changed cognitive belief on fatigue and the conscious effort (with mental skills) could affect pacing strategy, and then positively influence the sport performance. Cognitive belief mainly includes behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs and control beliefs; meanwhile, the mental skills used for conscious effort were categorized as associative and dissociative skills. Actually, the psychological intervention is a kind of training on cognitive beliefs and mental skill.