This Is The Key To Enjoying Exercise, According To Science

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If the thought of heading to the gym makes you cringe, maybe you just shouldn’t go.

And by that, we don’t mean stay in bed forever. Instead, take your workout outdoors and see what happens.

A new study conducted by Austrian researchers found that the benefits of exercise may increase if we complete said exercise outside rather than in our local gym. Interacting with nature provides a mental boost that machinery does not, motivating us to move for longer periods of time and with a higher intensity.

Experts believe that a workout’s intensity and duration have the greatest influence on how we feel about it. Plenty of preexisting research focuses on high-intensity interval training since it saves people a significant amount of time while still having them work hard. This new research from the University of Innsbruck does the opposite, evaluating whether a much longer workout at a lower intensity is more enjoyable, especially once nature is added to the mix.

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For the study, the researchers recruited 40 healthy men and women. Each of them filled out in-depth questionnaires about their mood and anxiety levels before completing a few lengthy workouts. The first was a three-hour group hike along a mountain trail in Innsbruck that climbed consistently and kept them moving at a quick, but controlled pace. The second was a similarly-designed hike (in both time and elevation), but it was completed on a set of treadmills in a local gym. The third (which was the experiment’s control) involved all participants sitting together in a room for three hours with computers, magazines and couches available for use.

The mountain hike was the clear winner when it came to evaluation time. Participants said it felt less strenuous to them than the hours they spent on a treadmill even though the hike elevated their heart rates more than the indoor workout. It was also (obviously) far more enjoyable than trudging along on a treadmill for such a long time. The treadmill workout still beat sitting around for hours, though, as the participants were happier and more relaxed after that exercise than they were after the control test. (We know that feeling well — it’s hell getting to our workouts, but once they’re over, we feel so much better for having done them.)

So if you’re someone who doesn’t love HIIT or Tabata training, maybe you should focus on exercise duration rather than intensity, and take your workout outdoors while you’re at it. Because let’s be honest: we rarely exercise if we don’t enjoy it. The key here is to find the formula works for you so you can not only move more but also feel good about your decision to do so. It might be more challenging to find the time consistently to fit these kinds of exercise into your weekly routine, but we’ll bet that it’s worth it.