There is a place where time seems to move slower, and this could explain many things.

Time is what it is. The hours pass the same for everyone. However time perception It depends a lot on what we do. If we’re having a great time at a party, this can happen very quickly. On the other hand, watching a movie we don’t like, or talking to someone who bores us, time will pass extremely slowly. Now, an international team of scientists has discovered another curious place where time seems to move more slowly: gym.

In fact, it’s not a matter of place, but of activity. It seems that when we exercise, even if we enjoy it, time passes more slowly. They came to this conclusion after conducting several tests on time perception. 33 cyclists while doing exercises on a bicycle.

It is obvious that the study has several restrictions. First of all, 33 means few people consider the results convincing. On the other hand, it would also be interesting to test the perception of time in people who are not so familiar with physical exercise. In any case, these preliminary results are very interesting because they may provide another reason why many people give up exercise and provide clues for developing exercise plans that are easier to maintain.

Time perception in the brain

It has long been studied that brain areas They are related to the perception of time. Most prominent when there is task independence are the inferior frontal gyrus, left supramarginal gyrus, and left putamen. There are also structures involved in temporality that relate to the demands of the task being performed. These are mainly the right inferior parietal lobe, bilateral SMA and some areas of the prefrontal cortex.

So it is clear that there are areas of our brain that, for one reason or another, alter our perception of time. But what are these reasons? Generally speaking, they are very subjective. A lecture on a topic may be very interesting to someone and time will fly by, but another person who hates the topic will be extremely bored and feel as if the hands of a clock are not moving.

So, are there tasks that change everyone’s perception of time? According to this recent study, they do exist, and exercise may be one of them.

The clock goes slower at the gym

To conduct this study, the authors recruited 33 cyclists who had to perform several tests on an exercise bike. In the first one they were shown a screen Virtual 4 kilometer race and they were asked to complete it as quickly as possible. Then, in the second test, they ran the same course, but in three different conditions: either alone, with a virtual partner who was not competing with them, or with a virtual partner who was racing against them.

In all cases they were asked to say when they thought they had passed 30 seconds. They should have done it before, during and after the test.

Interestingly, almost everyone experienced slower time perception during training, regardless of whether they were competing or not. They rated the 30 seconds before and after the exercise much better. We might think they were too busy pedaling to time it, but the mistake always made it seem like it was going slower.

What’s the point of knowing all this?

It’s well known how much it sometimes costs us to stick to an exercise regimen. Knowing that a change in time perception may be one of the reasons is good news for taking action.

In fact, in 2020, one of the scientists who studied this topic at the brain level, Dr. Masamichi Hayashiexplained Hypertext that knowledge of these mechanisms may help in the future to develop some methods of controlling our subjective perception of time. For example, now, seeing the results of this study, we can find some trick to speed up the time we spend on an exercise bike or lifting weights.

This day may come, but still more research is needed. Meanwhile, we have no choice but to humble ourselves and think that we are not lazy and that it is not true that exercise is not for us. It’s just a matter of the relativity of time. It’s all Einstein’s fault.