--- title: Talking To Yourself Makes Cycling and Exercise More Bearable description: Working out in the heat is easier when you use motivational skills training, according to a new exercise study. canonical: https://time.com/4606637/exercise-motivational-skills-training/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-12-19T20:41:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:54:49.652Z article:section: Health og:title: This Mental Trick Makes Your Workouts Easier og:description: It involves talking to yourself og:url: https://time.com/4606637/exercise-motivational-skills-training/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf4c7ea6d148de78b/6988b377fb4eac4f628903bb/stationary-bike-cycling.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5250 og:image:height: 2953 og:image:alt: stationary bike og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This Mental Trick Makes Your Workouts Easier twitter:description: It involves talking to yourself twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf4c7ea6d148de78b/6988b377fb4eac4f628903bb/stationary-bike-cycling.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Mental Trick Makes Your Workouts Easier > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Your Body on Exercise [Watch (HLS stream): Your Body on Exercise](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/o4EznhPT.m3u8) (1:11)  _Published 2016-08-31. 7 surprising benefits of exercise_  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 19, 2016 8:41 PM UTC  Getty Images  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 19, 2016 8:41 PM UTC So convincing are the [health benefits of exercise](http://time.com/4475628/the-new-science-of-exercise/?iid=sr-link1) that it’s a wonder we don’t all run to work every day. That’s until you consider the downside of exercise, of course: it’s hard, sweaty and uncomfortable. That’s especially true in a hot environment. When you work out in the heat, your body shuttles more blood to the skin in order to help heat escape—meaning less blood flows to the muscles and brain, causing fatigue to set in faster. But now, in a new study, a group of researchers wanted to see if a person could overcome the negative effects of being in a hot space just by thinking about their sweat session differently. “If there are changes going on, can we use psychological tools to improve our tolerance to heat and reduce how uncomfortable it makes us?” wondered Stephen Cheung, professor and a Canada Research Chair at Brock University in Ontario, who is an author of the small new [study](http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/2017/01000/Effects%5Fof%5FMotivational%5FSelf%5FTalk%5Fon%5FEndurance%5Fand.23.aspx) published in the journal _Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise_. Could those same tools also make people better exercisers? Cheung and his colleagues had 18 competitive cyclists do an intense exercise session in the heat. Nine of the cyclists then took two weeks to train as normal. The other nine received sessions in motivational skills training, a kind of self-talk that involves “reframing” negative feelings—like how hot it is—into positive ones. Instead of thinking “My legs are burning” or “I’m sweating like crazy,” they were taught to come up with more positive, empowering phrases like “I’m doing well” or “I can handle this.” At the end of two weeks, everyone came back to do the hot-exercise test again. The first group saw no change in their performance. But the experimental group “improved a huge amount,” Cheung says. They were able to pedal for 25% longer than they were initially, and they could sustain high levels of discomfort for a lot longer than their peers. Their body temperatures were also hotter than those of their peers, suggesting that the brain has a lot of power in determining how far the body is able to push itself. The results aren’t likely to shock athletes, who know that the mind is often the first thing to get tired. “It’s really ultimately the brain that lets you down,” Cheung says. “You can go a lot harder than a lot of times you think you can.” What is surprising is that the words you tell yourself can make such a difference. “Even in the face of strong physiological cues to stop,” Cheung says, “the brain can still override them.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4606637/exercise-motivational-skills-training/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4606637/exercise-motivational-skills-training/"},"headline":"This Mental Trick Makes Your Workouts Easier","datePublished":"2016-12-19T20:41:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:54:49.652Z","description":"It involves talking to yourself","url":"https://time.com/4606637/exercise-motivational-skills-training/","keywords":["Exercise & Fitness"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf4c7ea6d148de78b/6988b377fb4eac4f628903bb/stationary-bike-cycling.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf4c7ea6d148de78b/6988b377fb4eac4f628903bb/stationary-bike-cycling.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"stationary bike","caption":"stationary bike","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/exercisefitness/","name":"Exercise & Fitness"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4606637/exercise-motivational-skills-training/","name":"This Mental Trick Makes Your Workouts Easier"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Your Body on Exercise","description":"7 surprising benefits of exercise","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/o4EznhPT/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2016-08-31T21:58:52.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/o4EznhPT.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4606637/exercise-motivational-skills-training/","duration":"PT1M11S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4606637/exercise-motivational-skills-training/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```