Building Willpower

By Peter Liu
[Health & Your Life]
Can your willpower be used up like a tank of gas?  Peter Liu refuels to explain.
The effort to exercise consistently has always been separated between two different fronts:  those who get up off the couch raring to go with their exercise gear sitting near the door and those who get up off the couch reluctantly and slowly gather their exercise gear together, gleeful to waste a few extra minutes rooting around for their favourite shoes or that water bottle they always take with them.  Whichever group you happen to fall into, exercising has always come down to that one important factor:  willpower.  It is the driving force behind many of our important daily decisions, like the burning question of whether or not to follow through with our workout routines after a long day at work.  According to a recent study, this is one place our willpower plays a major role in deciding whether to follow through or fall through.  But willpower can be trained, strengthened and used to your advantage, even if there isn’t enough of it to go around.

Effort Draining Study

Published in the journal Psychology and Health is a study claiming that the amount of willpower people have is a limited resource and that it’s possible for it to be drained while working on a stressful or mentally challenging task.  A hard day at work explains the fatigue and lack of energy, but the lack of willpower could explain the reluctance to continue with your scheduled workout routine.  Willpower used up on cognitive and emotional jobs focusing on say, a report deadline fast coming up, looking after a classroom full of kids or even resisting your favourite fatty foods during the day can empty your reserves of willpower.  By the time you decide to do some exercising, you might find it much simpler just to say no and skip it, even if your job has you sitting all day long.

To test whether people have reserves of willpower or not, the study’s lead author Kathleen Martin Ginis, professor of kinesiology at McMaster University, conducted a test on 61 volunteers aged 18 to 30.  She split the subjects into two groups and asked them to workout on exercise bikes for 15-minute sessions in addition to planning 8-week exercise routines.  Afterwards, one group was given Stroop Tests in which subjects are shown flashcards with the names of different colours on them, but printed in a different colour than the card says (the word red could be printed in blue ink, as an example).  Subjects were asked to identify the colour the word was printed in, but not what the word read.  Half the study volunteers were given these tests after the first 15-minute exercise session and then asked to do another session on the exercise bikes.  The other group simply did the bike sessions.  The control group’s exercising capacity didn’t decrease, but the group taking the Stroop Tests saw lower levels of exercising intensity and skipped more exercise sessions over their 8-week schedules.

An Exercise In Staying The Course

It’s understandable that working out seems like a chore after a long day of focusing your mental energies elsewhere, but plenty of people manage to pencil in some exercise even if they work long hours every day.  All it depends on is finding ways to refill that empty tank of gas.  Professor Martin Ginis suggested listening to music you like to improve your mood or creating a concrete workout schedule you can’t deviate from.  But here are some additional things you can do to help your willpower to exercise recharge.
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