Before we get on the bike or start running, we set a time goal and we know it’s doable. If it’s 30 minutes, we know it goes really fast. However, when we start aerobic exercise, we start looking at the clock and there are times when it seems like it’s going backwards. It’s no secret that when we do an aerobic activity, time seems to move at a slower pace.
and a new one Study It cleared our doubts: we are right when we think like this.
internal clock. We have an internal clock that has a major impact on our daily lives. It’s about circadian rhythms, something that determines meal times, sleep and even when we go to the bathroom. If you’re one of those people who goes to the bathroom an hour after waking up, you didn’t decide it: your body did. And getting out of that routine can have adverse effects.
More or less experiments can be done to determine how our biological clock works, but roughly, humans (and any other living creature, but with a less accurate sense of the passage of time) can know how much time has passed without needing to. To look at the clock every time. Now, there are events that distort our normal perception of time and make us think that time goes faster when we like something or when we grow up and we slow down when something is boring.
Relativity. Expressions like “this hour seemed eternal to me” or “time flew by” make a lot of sense when we look at research conducted by a group of psychologists in the Netherlands and the UK. They were the first to claim that “the perception of time slows down during exercise” and it’s something we all know (workouts that sometimes seem too long), but it’s now been measured.
For the experiment, the researchers sampled 33 active adults who were asked to estimate when 30 or 60 seconds had passed. This “counts” on that internal clock. In the resting state, the participants believed that those seconds had passed a little earlier than they actually did, but then they got on a bicycle and rode the same amount of time “slowly.”
Time deviations before, during and after exercise in Table 1.
8% slower. The test consists of three cycle intervals simulating a route of 500 m, 1,500 m and 2,500 m. The perception of time at rest was measured before the exercise and between tests, but also during the tests and the result can be seen in the table above.
During pre- and post-exercise periods, time seemed to pass faster than during exercise, and this was something that was repeated consistently across all three experiments. Although the distance varied, participants felt on average that the time they passed was 8% slower in the 500m and 1,500m trials and 9% slower in the 2,500m trials.
competition. For the analysis, also, different types of tests were performed. With Velotron 3D software, a virtual environment was created in which the subject viewed his avatar and conducted several scenarios. In one of them a single time trial was presented, in another a time trial with a passive opponent avatar, and in the third, a time trial with an active opponent avatar and instructions to win the trial.
Interestingly, no significant differences were measured between the three tests. That is, in a competitive environment, participants still thought time passed more slowly than in a solitary environment. And it can be related to decision making that we consider during our training. That is, if we are in a HIT training or it requires us to take time into account, it may not be the best idea to base our decisions on our biological clock because it will not be accurate, distorting the time and thinking that it will move more slowly. What is really happening is normal.
subtlety. This isn’t the first study to explore this time distortion, but it’s the first to establish that intensity or competitiveness doesn’t matter: Time moves more slowly when we exercise, regardless of the situation. However, the researchers themselves admit that their study has a small sample and furthermore, they leave the door open for a different perception of time for a more experienced person.
They state that “although the current study provides influential insights, further research is needed to unravel the role of external stimuli, exercise intensity, and duration in time perception.” What seems clear is that, in ordinary people who exercise professionally, this slower perception of time may be common. In a professional or someone very used to this practice, perception may differ.
So, if you do a moderate amount of exercise and when you get on the stationary bike you feel like that time is an eternity, the good thing about this study is that nothing bad happens to you: it happens to all of us.
picture | Joseph HokjaAlejandro Alcolia
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