Take a holiday from exercise
By Sheryl-Lee Kerr
AT this very moment, I am working hard on getting hammock marks
imprinted onto my buttocks. Later I might see if I can roll over without
turning into a human bon-bon.
You may have gathered I'm on holidays. Alternatively, a few of you
may have instantly deduced I'm at Madam Lash's House of Pain and Hammocks.
All I can say is - what you do in your private life is no business of mine.
Actually I've been plopped out, feet up in Western Australia these
past four weeks and, let me tell you, it's been hard yakka. Yep, some days
you get the remote control, some days the remote gets you.
But I do not write this to rub in my state of vacational bliss. No,
wait ... yes I do.
That aside, just before I embarked on my western odyssey, I discovered in my desk the most delicious piece of Reuters news that I had saved from over a year ago. It still makes for truly joyous reading today:
“Just thinking about exercise can increase actual muscle strength,”
according to new research presented at the annual meeting of The British
Psychological Society.
The report adds: “It won't replace hours of pumping iron in the gym
or pounding the pavement in a marathon, but imagining how the physical
action would feel has its benefits.
“The brain activity when you imagine doing something vividly, with
all the feeling you would get if you did it, is very, very similar to what
occurs when you actually do it,” says sports psychologist Dave Smith.
In layman's terms, this means that couch potatoes had it right all
along. I always suspected this. I recall watching the tennis once and
suddenly feeling sweaty and hot. That would have been me hitting the wall.
Could have also been something to do with it being a sizzling 39C day. (Good
thing I paced myself - I might have pulled a hammy.)
The question is: does thinking about running a marathon build up
more impressive muscles than, say, thinking about synchronised swimming? And
does this research follow through to sex? (Think about it.)
Of course, try telling all this to an elite athlete. They might get some cock-eyed notion that getting up at dawn and working their guts out for hours isn't the same as imagining working their guts out.
Well, you'd expect a bit of sour grapes from people who have their
circulation severed on a daily basis by lime-green lycra.
As for us mere mortals who tend to think of 7am as wake-up time not
lunchtime I think we could arrange our very own elite competition, here: The Thinking Olympics.
Torch bearers could light candles and then sit back and think really
really hard. After this cruelly strenuous workout we'd call it a day and all flop
on the couch and watch TV. All in favour? (Dibs on the remote.)
© The Advertiser &
Sheryl-Lee Kerr, 18 APR 2000