Exercise Secrets: The Importance of Intention

I’m sure you’re aware that exercise provides a wide variety of health benefits, but you may not realize that what you get out of your workout depends in part on your focus and intention while exercising. Many people intentionally distract themselves from their exercise by watching television, reading, or doing some other task to take their minds off of training. Sometimes this isn’t a huge problem, but more often than not, not paying attention results in less effective workouts, slower rates of improvement, and possibly pain or injury.

This is especially true when lifting weights or doing other forms of resistance exercise, as proper technique is critical to getting the most out of your workouts. Obviously, maintaining proper technique is important to ensure safety during training, but that’s just one of the many reasons why it’s important. It also reinforces correct movement patterns, which carry over to improve the way your body feels and functions throughout the day.

Another problem is that your body will naturally try to make any exercise as easy as possible, even if it means using bad form or contracting the wrong muscles. Being focused and intending to perform each exercise correctly helps prevent your body from finding ways to cheat and make the exercises easier. Making your workout easier may not sound like a bad thing, but the less your muscles work, the less your body will be challenged, fewer calories will be burned, and the worse your results will be.

If you don’t intend to perform every exercise to the best of your ability, you’ll just end up going through the motions and not get as much out of your workouts. People often say that they like to distract themselves, because it makes the training go by faster, but is that really what you want? The question to ask yourself is, do you want a workout that feels quick and easy, but is inefficient, or do you want a workout that is truly effective?

Being focused during your workouts certainly makes them more effective, but the specific intention you have can even affect the specific physical improvements you get from your workout. For example, if two people with the same strength level follow the same heavy resistance training program (same weights, sets, reps, etc.), but one person is told to try to lift the weights as fast as possible They will have different results.

In the scenario above, both people are lifting weights at slow speeds, because the heavy weight makes the movement slow. However, after weeks of training, the person lifting with the intent to move the weight as quickly as possible will be able to lift lighter weights faster than the other person who was following the same training program without the intent to lift. as fast as possible. possible. Remember, the actual lifting speeds were the same and the only thing that was different was the intent to lift quickly.

I know this may be hard to believe, but this type of test was done in a laboratory and published in a respected peer-reviewed journal. Not only that, these results have been replicated in other studies with different subjects, and in all cases, the only thing that was different was that some people were told to lift weights as fast as possible, even though they weren’t actually lifting. faster. . I realize lifting weights quickly may not be a priority for you, but these studies do a great job of showing that your intention during exercise really does make a difference.

So far I’ve only discussed intention in regards to resistance training, but your intention can affect cardiovascular exercises as well. One of the main problems with getting distracted during cardio is that it increases the chance that you’ll take it easy during your workout. If you’re on equipment that dictates the pace, such as a motorized treadmill that follows a preset routine, this may not really matter. On the other hand, if you’re setting the pace, like biking, rowing, walking, etc., staying distracted usually results in exercising at a slower, easier pace.

If you’re doing cardio just to burn a few extra calories, staying distracted probably won’t affect things too much, but the easier pace means you won’t burn as many calories and you’ll have to exercise longer to burn the same number of calories as someone who’s concentrated, so it is also less efficient. However, the reality is that most people also engage in cardiovascular exercise to improve their fitness level and if you are distracted and your exercises are too easy, your benefits will be significantly less than someone exercising with the intention of challenge your body to stimulate improvement.

Even if you do cardio on a pace machine, getting distracted from your workout can have negative consequences. As with resistance training, your body naturally tries to make movements as easy and efficient as possible, and when a muscle begins to fatigue, your body makes small changes to give tired muscles a rest. In terms of your training, this means that once the muscles are fatigued, their form will change, often resulting in poor technique and/or posture.

Occasional minor changes in form aren’t too bad, but the more often they happen, the more likely it is that you’ll develop bad habits, such as learning inappropriate movement patterns, that will carry over into your daily activities and cause muscle or joint problems. The way. This is especially true when you don’t pay attention to how your body moves while fatigued, because technique deteriorates more at the end of a workout and from a motor learning standpoint, your body remembers your last movements more than the previous ones.

This is one of the reasons why you should perform the exercises to the best of your technical ability and stop before your form deteriorates significantly. Many of the benefits of exercise have to do with making your body work and ultimately feel better, and most of the time these benefits are related to the quality of your movements during your workouts. If your movements are sloppy or inconsistent, you won’t be able to correct poor movement patterns or correct muscle imbalances and may make them worse or even cause new problems to develop.

It’s common for people not to focus or think about their intention while exercising, but I hope this information illustrates just how important focus and intention really are. From making your workouts more effective, to improving your posture and technique, to altering or enhancing the specific benefits you get from your workout, there are many ways your intention can affect your results. If you’re someone who likes to get distracted while working out, check out what happens when you get rid of distractions and use the power of intention to get the most out of your workout.