This Just In: Focusing On The Muscle You're Working May Improve Your Results
(Photo: Stephanie Rausser)
You’ve heard that practicing mindfulness while eating—focusing on how each bite of your meal feels and tastes, without any outside distractions—may help you to recognize when you’re full, potentially resulting in weight loss. But now, a new study suggests that the same technique might actually help boost your workout results.
Research published in the Journal of Health Psychology looked into the concept of mindfulness—essentially, controlled attentiveness, or focusing on what is happening in the moment—to see if people who used it during exercise might have more satisfaction overall…thus inspiring them to keep exercising.
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After asking about 400 physically active participants about their workout habits and how absorbed and satisfied they were, researchers from Utrecht University discovered that those who were mindful—say, concentrating on the feeling of each muscle as it contracted, being aware of hunger pangs, taking note of pacing spikes and declines—while exercising tended to show more satisfaction with their workouts.
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According to lead researcher Kalliopi-Eleni Tsafou: “The message is that mindfulness may amplify satisfaction, because one is satisfied when positive experiences with physical activity become prominent. … For those experiences to be noticed, one must become aware of them. We would argue that this can be achieved by being mindful.”
It might make sense, right? I think I’m going to try this with my next workout (there are definitely times I practice the “zone-out-with-my-playlist-until-I’m-done” technique!).
What do you think of the study? How aware are you while exercising?
By Lexi Petronis
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