SportsPsychologist.com Blog by Dr Victor Thompson

Discomfort is common when you do anything that involves effort. This is just as true for us non-painters as we paint a ceiling and get shoulder ache, as it is to cycle up an Alp at our maximum limit. The discomfort, burn, ache we experience from a given task, varies greatly among different people. The experience of pain and rating of pain intensity is very personal. How we interpret the experience is central in the unpleasantness and intolerance of it. Sports psychologists believe that the athletes who can push themselves and endure more intensity do so because they view the experience in helpful ways. For instance, they view it in one or more of the following ways: 1. It is discomfort, not pain 2. It is tolerable, not something to stop 3. It is there for a good reason (helping me get fitter, beat opponents…), not a bad reason 4. Or, as much as they are feeling this discomfort, other people are experiencing the same or more and that is fine Knowing this, we can start to notice how we v...

This isn't anything academic, but simply some straight-forward thoughts I've typed-up after I was interviewed on this topic on Sky News. Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen has been asked to leave the tour after questions over whether he failed to tell the drug testing authorities where he would be during his preparation for the Tour. It has emerged that despite telling the press for over a week that he was training in Mexico, his wife’s homeland, he was actually in Italy. Suspicion has increased as to whether he purposely deceived the testers so he could take cycle of drugs or other blood doping (e.g. EPO) during this period, and only looks worse now there is evidence that he lied. Two other riders have tested positive this week for banned drugs and pre-Tour favourite Alexandre Vinokourov displayed traces of someone else’s blood – all three have been kicked out of the Tour. Worse still for British hopes, two entire teams have left the Tour along with their disgraced riders...