How your brain can trick your body into getting fitter and stronger 

It has long been known that the placebo effect contributes to the benefit we can get from medication.

It also means that even a fake treatment can have a powerful effect, if we think it will be helpful.

Now a growing body of research suggests there may be a similar effect when it comes to how much we get from exercise.

In the most recent example, a study by scientists at the University of Agder in Norway showed that simply telling people they were getting a “special” type of training led to greater physical improvements.

In the study, which involved 40 men and women in their 20s, one group was told to each receive a specially tailored exercise regimen; the rest were told they were put on the same training plan as each other.

The results, published in April in the journal Scientific Reports, showed that those who believed they were following a tailored exercise regimen experienced greater gains in muscle size and were able to do more squats (file image)

In reality, all 40 volunteers followed almost the same regimen — with a mix of 20-meter sprints, leg-press exercises and squats — throughout the 10-week experiment.

Still, the results, published in April in the journal Scientific Reports, showed that those who believed they were following a tailored exercise regimen experienced greater gains in muscle size and were able to do more squats.

The researchers said it was possible that volunteers trained more intensely because they expected the training plan to have the desired effect.

Or they may have felt compelled to work hard to show that the regimen produced good results because it was personally tailored (or so they thought).

But it could also be that the placebo effect prevented them from training harder, but that a tailored exercise plan reduced their anxiety, which reduced muscle tension and made movements more efficient and fluid.

Kolbjørn Andreas Lindberg, a sports scientist who led the study, said: ‘If you think that the training program you follow is optimized for you, it will have an effect. It is exactly the same as the placebo effect in medicine.’

Similar benefits have been found in people who use caffeine — or believe they use it — to try and enhance their workouts.

Caffeine has been shown in some studies to produce marginal gains in physical performance by helping muscles produce more force.

Muscles need calcium to contract and caffeine stimulates the release of calcium into muscle tissue, allowing it to contract more often and with greater force.

But the same effects can be achieved by pretending to someone that they’ve consumed caffeine, according to a 2019 study published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance.

Researchers at Canterbury Christ Church University asked 11 athletes to run 1km as fast as they could three times.

For the first two runs, they were given a drink that they were told contained caffeine – in fact, the second contained no caffeine.

For the third run, they had no booze at all. Indeed, all 11 participants ran faster after a caffeine drink than after no drink at all. But they ran almost as fast in the second run, when they thought their drink contained caffeine.

Dr. Philip Hurst, who was involved in the study and is an associate professor of sports and exercise psychiatry, says: ‘If someone thinks that they’re getting caffeine and that it’s going to help them, maybe they should try a little harder.

‘Studies show that the placebo effect in sports can improve performance between 1 and 3 percent. That may not seem like much, but it could be the difference between winning a medal at the Olympics and not making it to the final.’

Non-athletes among us can also benefit from it. A study from Harvard University in the US found that simply changing the way we think about exercise can improve our fitness. They looked at 84 hotel maids doing physically demanding work all day long. Yet most women did not consider themselves fit.

Researchers showed half of the group how they actually met recommended exercise levels just by doing their job, but tricked the other half into thinking they were largely inactive.

A month later, tests showed that the women who were told they were exercising experienced an average 10 percent drop in blood pressure — while the rest showed no change.

The researchers, writing in 2007 in the journal Psychological Science, concluded that this was because if you think you’re exercising, your body may react as if it were.

While hiring a personal trainer to set your goals can improve your results, a less expensive way to take advantage of the power of the mind is to exercise with others you think are fitter than you.

A 2012 study at Kansas State University in the US found that volunteers who did this increased their exercise time and intensity by up to 200 percent compared to when they exercised alone.

Similarly, a 2010 study from Santa Clara University in California showed that people who exercised with physically very fit friends tried harder to be as active as they were — but those who exercised with less fit friends became lazier and reduced their efforts, reported the Journal of Social Sciences.

‘The placebo effect is truly a social phenomenon,’ says Dr Hurst. “You’re more likely to respond to it when you’re around other people.”