June 26, 2015

Multitasking Can Improve Exercise Performance

Researchers were surprised to find that cyclists rode faster while taking on easy mental tasks.

—Karen Hopkin, Eliene Augenbraun

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If you’re like me, you know that multitasking does not always save time. You slow down or make mistakes that require fixing. But maybe I’m just doing the wrong things.

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A new study shows that people on a stationary bike pedaled faster when they simultaneously tackled some sort of mental test.

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Even the researchers were surprised by that result. They had originally set out to demonstrate what other studies have shown—that when people try to do two things at once, they do both more poorly. Their counterintuitive finding is in the journal PLoS ONE. [Lori J. P. Altmann et al, Unexpected Dual Task Benefits on Cycling in Parkinson Disease and Healthy Adults: A Neuro-Behavioral Model]

In the experiment, subjects were asked to complete various cognitive jobs that ranged in difficulty—everything from saying “go” when they saw a blue star on a projection screen to remembering a long list of numbers and then repeating them back in reverse order. They tackled these tasks once while sitting in a quiet room and again while on the bike.

Turns out, cyclists rode 25 percent faster when they were distracted by some mental gymnastics—but only when the tasks were relatively easy. When confronted with tough brainteasers, their cycling speeds were about the same as when they had nothing in particular to think about. And in case you’re wondering, the participants’ cycling neither helped nor hindered their brain function.

The findings could point toward new programs in which we get better workouts simply by using our heads.

Thanks for the minute! For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkin.

—Karen Hopkin

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