For anyone who has struggled through an exhausting workout or high-stakes athletic event, the sensation that time stretches out—every minute crawling by—will be a familiar one. Now, new research published in the journal Brain and Behavior is shedding light on why our brains seem to play tricks on us during physically demanding activities. The study, led by a sports scientist from Canterbury Christ Church University in collaboration with researchers at the University of Groningen and Vrije University of Amsterdam, reveals that intense exercise distorts our sense of time, making external clocks run slow while our own bodies move at full speed (Earth.com).
Understanding how human perception stretches time during effortful moments is not just a curiosity. It has important implications for athletes, coaches, and anyone engaged in strenuous physical activity—especially in a country like Thailand, where physical fitness, elite sports, and active lifestyles play growing roles in national health and culture. The research provides new insights into the neural mechanisms behind this temporal illusion and offers practical recommendations that could influence everything from athletic training to how amateur exercisers monitor their workouts.
The study utilized a straightforward but powerful design: thirty-three recreational cyclists, none with professional experience, completed three four-kilometer sprints on a high-precision ergometer (stationary bicycle). Between sprints, the participants were asked to estimate the duration of a 30-second interval five times—once before, during, and after exercise—offering a real-time window into how the brain’s “stopwatch” functioned under stress. Notably, the cyclists consistently judged the interval about 9% too quickly while exercising, providing concrete evidence that time genuinely felt longer during periods of exertion.
This distortion, the researchers explain, can be attributed to heightened sensory input and internal bodily signals that command attention during difficult activities. As the body works harder, signals such as heart rate increases, the buildup of lactic acid, and muscle fatigue all demand mental focus, a phenomenon known as an “associative mindset”. In these conditions, the brain’s attentional “gate” widens, letting more subjective “pulses” slip in—a process supported by the classic scalar expectancy theory of time perception. In simple terms, the more sensory events the brain records in a given period, the longer that period seems to last.
The research also points to deeper neural underpinnings. According to the striatal beat frequency model, oscillations in the basal ganglia—a part of the brain involved in movement and reward—serve as an internal metronome. Neuroimaging studies have shown that the circuits responsible for timing overlap considerably with those for reward anticipation, highlighting a complex dopamine-rich feedback loop (see also: studies on time perception and neural oscillations: PubMed). When the brain is overloaded with sensory input, especially during strenuous movement, elevated activity in areas such as the supplementary motor cortex, cerebellum, and ventral striatum throw off the normal processing of time.
Interestingly, while coaches often speculate that the distraction of competition shortens the perception of time by pulling attention away from discomfort, these findings challenge that idea. In the experiment, when cyclists tried to outsprint a virtual or real competitor—a scenario thought to be more engaging—time distortion was unchanged. Whether the volunteers rode alone or chased an opponent, the stretched sense of time while exercising held steady. As noted by the research team, “There was no difference between exercise conditions or time points,” underlining that internal bodily signals, not external motivation, rule timing errors under exertion.
For Thailand’s growing community of recreational cyclists, runners, and fitness enthusiasts, these findings offer not just an explanation for mid-workout time warps but also practical tools. Since our internal clock is so easily fooled when we are tired, using objective performance markers—such as distance, lap counters, or programmed timers—can help prevent the all-too-common error of starting a workout too hard and fading before the finish. Endurance coaches in Thailand already emphasize pacing strategies for runners and swimmers, encouraging athletes to anchor their effort to music tracks, external metronomes, or visual pacers. In the global athletic arena, emerging technologies such as Wavelight LED pacing, recently credited with helping break world records in distance running, provide external cues that keep objective time, even when the brain’s sense of time is warped (World Athletics).
The Thai sporting community can also draw lessons from this research for youth training programs and general fitness. As regular exercise gains prominence in Thai society for its contributions to physical and mental well-being, understanding why time feels slower in the gym or on the track can help both novices and veterans plan their workouts more effectively and avoid burnout. For instance, those opting for high-intensity interval training (HIIT) might benefit from pre-set countdowns to eliminate guesswork about rest periods—helpful in preventing overexertion, which is cited by Thai physicians as a common barrier to exercise adherence among city dwellers (Bangkok Post).
Culturally, the perception of time is woven through Thai idioms and attitudes, from the Buddhist principle of mindfulness—emphasizing present-moment awareness—to the practical rhythms of temple life and traditional sports. The experience of “khwam rot-duan”—the elastic, subjective sense of time during stress or excitement—is echoed in both urban and rural settings. For elite Thai athletes training for the SEA Games or Olympic competition, knowing that both pleasure and discomfort warp the clock could drive innovations in pacing and psychological preparation.
Despite these advances, the study leaves open intriguing questions for future science. Does the time stretch become more pronounced with longer periods of high effort? Do elite athletes, with years of experience and heightened bodily awareness, show different patterns, or do they simply learn to ignore the illusion? The research team suggests further studies using neuroimaging wearable devices and brain stimulation could map the real-time interplay between effort, neural pacing, and subjective time. Such technological approaches could find application in Thailand’s well-equipped sports science centers, especially as the nation seeks to boost global competitiveness in sport (Ministry of Tourism and Sports, Thailand).
For Thai readers and athletes looking for actionable advice, the key takeaway is pragmatic: “Trust the stopwatch, not your feelings, when pacing the final lap or last hill climb.” As the study emphasizes, objective data remains the best safeguard against our brain’s built-in distortions—especially in competition, where every second matters.
In conclusion, the illusion that time slows during hard activity is a universal human experience, but its underlying mechanisms are now coming into sharper scientific focus. Whether you’re a recreational cyclist along Bangkok’s greenways, a student training for a school marathon, or simply someone striving to stay fit amid busy city life, understanding this quirk of brain wiring can make your exercise safer, smarter, and more satisfying. For the Thai public, it reinforces the value of combining modern technology with traditional wisdom in pursuit of healthy living.
For further information, see the original study summary at Earth.com and continued coverage of health, neuroscience, and sports science in Thai and international news.