Self-talk for runners: How to train your mind and reduce perception of effort
The 4 main steps to lower perceived effort and overcome your unique mental blocks.
Using Self-Talk to Overcome Your Mental Blocks
A lot of the mental performance advice around the internet is painfully generic. You know you need to think more positively, but it’s not clear how to do it in a way that’s reliable when you need it. I’m here to change that.
In this article I’m going to teach you how to develop your self-talk to reduce your overall perception of effort so you can run faster and farther. You’ll gain the mental skills to:
improve your mindset and confidence on race day
convince yourself you can hold a difficult pace
manage the pain and discomfort in a race
My intent is to give you the tools to make your self-talk completely unique to you and the mental challenges you face in running. Let’s get into it.
Why Self-Talk is Critical for Running Performance
Self-talk plays a big role in your perception of effort. If your self-talk is full of doubt and self-criticism, the effort will feel harder. If your self-talk is confident and encouraging, the effort will feel easier.
There’s a really cool research study on this.
Researchers had a group of recreational endurance athletes do two high-intensity cycling tests to exhaustion. Half of them got two weeks of personalized self-talk training. The other half just kept training as usual. The results:
The self-talk group improved their time to exhaustion by 18%.
Their perception of effort was significantly lower halfway through the test.
The control group didn’t improve at all.
This is huge. These weren’t elite athletes. They weren’t doing anything different with their training. The only difference was what they said to themselves during the effort.
It turns out that how hard something feels isn’t just a reflection of your muscles or physical fitness. It’s a reflection of how your brain interprets the experience. And self-talk can literally change that interpretation.
Build Self-Talk to go Faster and Farther
I want you to think of your races through the lens of the psychobiological model of endurance performance. The idea is that when you start to feel tired during a race, you’re not actually running out of energy. You slow down because your brain decides the effort is too much. So if you can change how you perceive effort, you can go faster and farther.
To change your perception of effort, you need self-talk that’s built by you, for the exact moments where your brain usually tells you to back off. That means figuring out what kind of thoughts show up when things get hard, and creating something more useful to replace them.
Not generic motivation, but actual phrases that feel believable and help you stay focused, calm, determined, or whatever you need most.
The goal is to train these cues in practice until they become automatic under pressure. Here's how to do it, step by step.
Step 1: Identify the Moments You Struggle
Think about a few training sessions or races where you struggled, or a future race that you want to mentally prepare for. When exactly do things start to fall apart mentally for you?
Is it:
Right before the start, when nerves kick in?
Mid-race, when you start questioning whether you can hold the pace?
In the final kilometre, when pain takes over?
On a training day when motivation is nowhere to be found?
Pick a moment that stands out.
Now ask yourself: what are the unhelpful things you’re saying to yourself in that moment?
Write down the exact words if you can. Don’t edit it. If it sounds harsh, that’s fine. You need to see what’s actually going on in your mind.
Step 2: Extract the Pattern
When you look at your self-talk during those tough moments, what tone does it take?
Is it:
Self-doubt? (“I can’t hold this.” “This is too fast.”)
Criticism? (“Why are you so soft?” “You always do this.”)
Excuses? (“This isn’t even a goal race.” “I didn’t sleep enough.”)
Catastrophizing? (“If I feel like this now, the rest of the race will be a disaster.”)
These are common. And they’re all signs your brain is trying to protect you by avoiding discomfort. But they don’t help. In fact, they make the effort feel harder.
The goal isn’t to silence them completely though. It’s simply to have something more useful to replace them with.
Step 3: Create Self-Talk That Specifically Challenges Your Pattern
Here’s where most advice goes wrong. Telling yourself “You got this” or “Push through” isn’t bad, but it’s not always enough. The best self-talk feels like it’s helping you through the specific challenge you’re dealing with.
This part needs to come from you.
In the research study I mentioned earlier (Blanchfield et al., 2014), athletes didn’t get handed a list of motivational quotes. They created phrases that were personalized to their own internal patterns. They practiced using them in training, over and over, until those phrases became automatic responses to discomfort and doubt.
So instead of grabbing a generic mantra, ask yourself this:
What do I actually need to hear in those moments where I usually fall apart?
It might be:
Something calming
Something directive
Something that makes you laugh
Something that reminds you what matters
Something that snaps you back into the moment
You might need words that slow you down and ground you, or words that challenge you and light a fire. You know your tendencies better than anyone. Let that guide you.
Try experimenting with different styles. Take the pattern from Step 2 and flip it on its head. If your usual thought is “This is falling apart,” maybe your self-talk becomes, “Settle in, this is the work.” Or maybe it’s something totally unrelated, like “Find your breath” or “Let it flow.” Or maybe it’s a reminder of the work you’ve put in. There’s no one way to do this.
Write down 3–5 phrases that feel like yours. Keep it real. Keep it honest.
Step 4: Practice It in Training
One of the most important takeaways from the research is that self-talk only helped because the athletes practiced using it before their final test. They practiced it in training. So that’s your job now.
Once you’ve written your phrases, don’t save them for race day.
Try them in your long runs, your intervals, your tempo sessions, anytime things start to get uncomfortable. When you notice those old patterns creeping in, that’s your cue. Drop the new phrase in. Practice responding to fatigue with something helpful, instead of defaulting to criticism or doubt.
And if they don’t immediately work, or you forget to use them, that’s okay. The key is repetition. Keep coming back to them. The more familiar they become, the more helpful and automatic they’ll feel when you really need them.
Step 5: Test and Tweak
This is the part that turns good self-talk into great self-talk. What you write down now might not be what you need next month, or even next week.
After a race or a hard session, take a moment to reflect:
Did you actually use your self-talk cues?
Did they help?
Did they feel natural, or forced?
Was there a moment you needed something different?
Then tweak your phrases however necessary. Get rid of the things that don’t land. Keep the ones that do. This isn’t about doing the work once and then having the perfect mantra. It’s about building a reliable mental toolkit that works for the current challenges you’re facing.
Final Thoughts
Self-talk changes how your brain interprets effort, and that changes how you run. The goal isn’t to copy someone else’s phrase or trick yourself into feeling good. It’s to notice the patterns that usually hold you back, and train yourself to respond in a way that helps.
Figure out what you tend to say when things get hard. Build a few phrases that challenge that pattern. Then practice them in training until they feel natural.
That’s how you make self-talk work for you.
Want help overcoming your personal mental blocks?
Reach out here to work together.
