Your brain on training.
Don't Trust Your Feelings
(At least not at first.)
Not because your feelings are wrong. Because they are not telling you the whole story.
People often leave a yoga class saying, "Wow, I really needed that." Yet I rarely hear that from someone leaving the gym, especially in the beginning. It got me curious about why this is the case. It turns out there is some science behind the connection between exercise and feelings.
Initially, strength training does not always feel good. In fact, it can feel bad. It can feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar and even a rough on the ego (the weights feel heavier than expected; the movements feel awkward). And the reward is muscle soreness? You may find yourself wondering: what exactly is the payoff here?
To be fair, the environments are completely different.
A yoga or Pilates studio is designed to calm you with soft lighting and gentle music. A gym is often the opposite with its bright lights, industrial decor and the clanging sound of barbells hitting the floor.
One feels restorative before you even begin.The other feels like work.
And this matters because we are wired to repeat things that make us feel good. Yoga and Pilates deliver that feeling quickly. They can give you an immediate sense of calm, relief or accomplishment. Strength training asks you to wait. It asks you to do something difficult before it gives you anything back. But, if you stick with it, something shifts.
Over time the conversation in your head changes. It moves from "I can't do this" to "That wasn't as bad as I thought." You notice that you are using a dumbbell that once seemed impossible. You finish a set that would have stopped you a few months ago.
Eventually, you get to the point of thinking, "I actually want more. I want to lift heavier." That is where things get interesting.
Strength training works differently from activities that give you an immediate emotional reward. During a hard set, your brain is sending signals that encourage you to stop (via the chemical dynorphin). Anyone who has pushed through the final few reps knows that feeling. Afterwards, something changes. Completing something challenging creates a sense of reward and reinforces the idea that effort leads to progress. Over time, your brain starts associating strength training with capability, achievement and growth.
But this is a very different feeling than walking out of a yoga class feeling calm. It is a very different kind of reward.Yoga and Pilates are excellent for mobility, body awareness and calming your nervous system. But strength training has a different payoff. It doesn’t give you that immediate wave of calm or release. The reward is slower and deeper. As you train, you feel stronger, more resilient and more regulated for a longer period of time (ie. not just in the gym).
This might explain why so many people give up too soon. They judge strength training by how it feels in the beginning. The irony is that the thing you struggle to love at the start can become the thing you crave the most. The good feeling just arrives on a different timeline.
So enjoy the candlelit yoga studio. But don't let the ease of the first reward convince you that the slower reward isn't worth waiting for.
The Rematch 💪
In a pervious article, I talked about the banded Romanian deadlift, one of my favourite movements for building your posterior chain with nothing more than a resistance band. Try it again this week and notice what feels different.
Is the movement smoother? Does the band feel less awkward? Do you feel more confident in the position? That gap between then and now is the whole point of this newsletter. You didn't necessarily feel yourself getting stronger. It happened anyway.
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