Recently, in evolutionary terms, our endurance potential has become more visible in athletic performance than during hunting. Indeed, there has been a rapid rise in the volume of ultra-marathon events planned, the number of successful participants, and an increased amount of research into participation profiles and endurance performance. Major gains in our understanding are likely…
Read more
The evolution of human running is the evolution of humans… Evidence from evolutionary biology, physiology, and anthropology, has suggested that endurance running has been key, throughout human history, in the pursuit of prey. Key physiological adaptions have evolved over millions of years to benefit long distance running, from early hominins through to modern homo sapiens. Bramble and Lieberman…
Read more
Human endurance is defined as the individual’s capacity to sustain a given energy expenditure for the longest time possible. Races, such as ultra-marathons, require considerable physical and mental effort, and the need to overcome feelings of exertional discomfort. Some key points to consider: Endurance, as with all human behaviour, has a psychological element and researchers…
Read more
“Psychological Hibernation in Antarctica” provides an exciting insight into coping with stress in one of the most challenging environments on earth. Individuals wintering in the Antarctic experience social and physical challenges, and severe sleep disruption, often resulting in a state of psychological hibernation. Emotional flatness and the avoidance of stimulation requires further study to better…
Read more
According to the concept of ’embodied cognition’, drawing from cognitive science, philosophy and psychology, our cognitive processes arise, not simply from the brain, but rather from entire physical systems (i.e. including the body, and the somatic nervous system) and importantly, from interactions with the environment. ‘Affordances’ in the environment, such as the doorknob, the ladder,…
Read more
Clark and Chalmers (1998), in their classic work on the boundaries of the mind, speculate that the environment plays an active role in human cognition. For ultra-marathoners and others participating in endurance sports, taking place in many challenging environments, this idea may be an important one. As humans, we often split tasks between manipulation within…
Read more
According to Schulkin (2016), based on animal and human studies, the act of running impacts the physiology of the brain, as a result of: neurogenesis – the process that forms new neurons in the brain neural plasticity – the ability of the brain to adapt and change throughout the course of the individuals life memory…
Read more
Early analysis of, as-yet, unpublished research, suggests aerobic training for an ultra-marathon may be linked to psychological changes. On a single case study, of an individual training for a first ultra-marathon, psychological measures of personality, motivation and mental toughness were taken before and after training, fifteen months apart. Analysis of data reflected: Increased feelings of opportunity to…
Read more
In Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Block and Dewitte (2008) discuss sport from an evolutionary perspective. They suggest that participation in sport, underpinned by social learning, has arisen out of signaling attractiveness for the purposes of courtship and that human sports are cultural and therefore learned rather than innate. Using the dual-inheritance theory (for others theories…
Read more
Evolutionary psychologists have at least three views on the evolution of culture: Cultural evolution and biological evolution are analogous and that culture should be studied using Darwinian methods (Blackmore 1999; Cullen 2000; Dawkins 1976) including memetics (suggesting that ideas propagate like a virus). However, it is widely accepted that as an approach, despite its prevalence…
Read more
Recent Comments