Central governor

The central governor is a proposed process in the brain that regulates exercise in regard to a neurally calculated safe exertion by the body.

It was first published as a full theory by Tim Noakes, Alan St Clair Gibson and Vicki Lambert in five linked articles in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2004-2005[1] In contrast to this idea is the one that fatigue is due to peripheral "limitation" or "catastrophe."

The 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winner Archibald Hill proposed in 1924 that the heart was protected from anoxia in strenuous exercise by the existence of a governor.

[3] Tim Noakes, a professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town, in 1997[4] has renewed Hill’s argument on the basis of modern research.

Rather we now suggest that the physical manifestation of any increasing perception of fatigue may simply be an alteration in the subconsciously regulated pace at which the exercise is performed.

These include, among many others, the chronic fatigue syndrome, in which affected individuals experience evident fatigue at rest, and the role of psychological and motivational factors, centrally (brain) acting pharmaceutical agents, hypnosis, shouting or sudden unexpected gunshots, or other forms of distraction including music or premeditated deception on human exercise performance.