Mental Exhaustion May Hinder Your Workout
A study performed at the University of Kent in England and the French Institute of Health and Medical Research, aimed to uncover how mental exhaustion affects physical exercise. After performing either a mentally draining or mentally relaxing task, participants performed a series of leg exercises, hooked up to a set of electrodes designed to measure muscle fatigue. Turns out participants that completed the mentally draining task (a computer test) got tired 13% faster than the participants that completed a mentally relaxing task, and they reported that the exercises felt more taxing than the participants that completed the relaxing mental task. The interesting part is that electrodes hooked up to the muscles of participants reported that both sets of participants worked out their muscles about the same!