You know that feeling when you set your alarm at night super early, fully intending to get up, put on your trainers and go for that run. You set out your gym clothes the night before so you have no excuse, but then your alarm goes off and, nope. Not going. No chance in hell. Instead you turn off your alarm and go back to sleep for an extra 30 minutes, then spend the rest of the day feeling pretty guilty.
It’s time to stop feeling guilty, though guys. Because according to science (our favourite kind of proof) imagining that you’re working out is obviously not as good as actually doing it, but it’s better than lying there and going back to sleep.
Jim Davis, a professor of cognitive psychology at Canada’s Carleton University, explained this theory on* *Nautilus. Apparently it’s called proprioception, which is a sense of knowing where your body parts are located and what each one can do with movement. So having a sense that your body is running a 5k run, and mentally imagining your legs moving could be like having a workout. A very small workout, mind. Actually moving your body and imagined movements involve the same brain activity but when you imagine your working out part of your brain that stops a message from reading your muscles.20 minutes is the optimal amount of time if you feel like giving mental exercise practice a go.
According to paper published in the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, when you imagine exercising, your breath and heart rate actually increase. So mental practice of exercise could actually be an effective procrastination tool. Handy or what. Davis goes on to say that by ‘using our imagination, we can improve ourselves for real.’
I mean, if you say so...
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.