Playing sports with your friends or colleagues may seem distracting, but your partner can boost your performance, and I'll tell you why.
Have you ever noticed that your training becomes much more effective when you do it with one of your friends, a colleague or your personal coach? The presence of another is well recognised in social psychology as a factor that boosts our performance and pushes us to make the most of our training. In 2010, Emma Cohen - a cognitive anthropologist from Oxford University proved that the pain tolerance of rowers in her study increased in the presence of others. Grab your trainers, call a friend and go for it!
Focus, this is the intellectual part of the article. The phenomenon we are talking about is mainly explained by social facilitation, which can be defined as "an improvement in performance in the presence of others". Psychologists define two types of social facilitation: the co-action effect and the audience effect. Norman Triplett's 1898 study is considered the first attempt to understand this type of behaviour. While researching the speed of cyclists, he noticed that athletes tended to increase their performance by challenging each other. Triplett decided to prove his theory in an experiment with 40 children who had to spin a fishing reel as fast as possible. He found that the children who did this in pairs spun the reel faster than those who were alone. Triplett's study is a good illustration of the co-action effect: action performance becomes much more efficient in the presence of others performing the same task. However, this phenomenon can also be observed in animals. In 1967, Platt, Yaksh and Darby proved that animals eat their food faster in the presence of other members of their species.
The audience effect is another type of social facilitation. It is the presence of a passive or public spectator. Dashiell, in 1935, found that the presence of an audience could facilitate the multiplication of numbers: the person could do many more easy multiplications in front of the audience. However, if a task was hard, the opposite effect could be observed: uncertainty and inhibition. But what causes these behaviours?
1) The group effect - when we see movements made by others, we can increase our performance by imitating their actions.
2) The presence of others as a source of rivalry or competition makes us improve our performance.
3) The tension created by the presence of another person or spectator who 'judges' and whose opinion is important to us.
How can we improve our performance using this theory?
In sport, competition can be the main goal. Running, cycling or weight training are always a good way to improve your health and feel good. But when we start talking about results, we should be aware that by doing sport alone, we tend to decrease our efforts. And for amateurs this can be a real challenge, as they are not always aware of their physical capabilities.
The person with whom you are doing an activity can therefore become your best supporter as well as your rival, but you will be really proud of your results.
Have you thought of friends who could become your training partners? Call them, create a team and get active!
Never forget to say a word of encouragement to your partners. A study published in BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine shows that verbal encouragement increases performance and motivation to exercise. As a form of social facilitation, shared encouragement can help you to be more effective during your training. The best benefit of this approach: you will feel less tired after doing a more intensive activity than usual. This will make you want to continue to strive to meet new challenges.
The magic potion of effective training is very simple, so make a note of the recipe for next time: train your friend or colleague with you to boost your performance and efficiency. Create your team in our application to keep the group emulation and face your challenges together!