ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2009) — Have you ever sat down to work on a crossword puzzle only to find that afterwards you haven’t the energy to exercise? Or have you come home from a rough day at the office with no energy to go for a run?

“Cognitive tasks, as well as emotional tasks such as regulating your emotions, can deplete your self-regulatory capacity to exercise,” says Kathleen Martin Ginis, associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University, and lead author of the study.

Martin Ginis and her colleague Steven Bray used a Stroop test to deplete the self-regulatory capacity of volunteers in the study. (A Stroop test consists of words associated with colours but printed in a different colour. For example, “red” is printed in blue ink.) Subjects were asked to say the colour on the screen, trying to resist the temptation to blurt out the printed word instead of the colour itself.

“After we used this cognitive task to deplete participants’ self-regulatory capacity, they didn’t exercise as hard as participants who had not performed the task. The more people “dogged it” after the cognitive task, the more likely they were to skip their exercise sessions over the next 8 weeks. “You only have so much willpower.”

Still, she doesn’t see that as an excuse to let people loaf on the sofa.

“There are strategies to help people rejuvenate after their self-regulation is depleted,” she says. “Listening to music can help; and we also found that if you make specific plans to exercise—in other words, making a commitment to go for a walk at 7 p.m. every evening—then that had a high rate of success.”

She says that by constantly challenging yourself to resist a piece of chocolate cake, or to force yourself to study an extra half-hour each night, then you can actually increase your self-regulatory capacity.

“Willpower is like a muscle: it needs to be challenged to build itself,” she says.

The study was made possible through funding by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

WEDNESDAY BIKE: 6:30 pm Highbury @4th for some character building hills
THURSDAY RUN: 6:30 pm Kit’s Community Centre for some more character building hills…
SATURDAY BIKE: 9 am from Bean Around the World on Cornwall for uncoached long easy ride
SUNDAY SWIM: 9 am at Sasamat Lake for the last open water swim of 09 for LETC
SUNDAY RUN: after the swim or 9 am from Jericho East for those not swimming at Sasamat

Hey all- Kit’s Beach for an open water swim at 9 am- long run after for those willing!

Meet on ocean side of Watermark / lifeguard station.

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Its been two years since LETC stormed to a win at H₂H in the open mixed category and had three other teams entered.

Soooo, on Sunday November 7th its time to line up again at this great team building race!

Check out the H₂H link here;

If you’d like to run with the LETC peeps, contact Choppy as he has stupidly kindly volunteered to take this on for 2009.

BTW Stephanie would like a GPS for stage one this time…

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