2023-05-01 14:35:08
Sports, you must sometimes feel like it. It’s so nice when that tough workout has maximum effect. Research shows that the placebo effect can help with this.
If you believe that a training has been specially composed for you, it will have more results. “It works in exactly the same way as the placebo effect we know from medicines,” explains researcher Kolbjørn Andreas Lindberg of the Norwegian University of Agder out. “If you believe that the training schedule you follow is optimized for you, then that in itself has an effect, regardless of the content of the training.”
Special phenomenon
The placebo effect is a special phenomenon. It simply means that a drug or treatment is more effective against a disease if you believe it will help. You will notice this in a small way if you take a paracetamol against a headache. You often feel the effect even before the pill starts to work. “The placebo effect has been studied for over 70 years, but looking at it in the context of exercise is new,” says Lindberg.
Placebo drugs are an important part of clinical research and their effect has been demonstrated many times over. In so-called double-blind studies, one group of patients receives an active drug and the other a placebo. Neither the researchers nor the patients know who gets what. This allows scientists to objectively evaluate the effectiveness of a drug.
Personal sports program
Lindberg wanted to demonstrate this effect in people who exercise. Together with colleagues, he gave 40 participants different training programs. Half were told that the training had been specially adapted for them, based on physical tests they had previously taken. Nothing was said to the other group.
The participants did workouts that varied slightly based on weight and number of repetitions, but on average the exercises were broadly the same for everyone. The entire training period lasted eight to ten weeks. The participants were then tested again in the laboratory.
A logical surprise
The results were remarkable. “It turned out that those who thought they had followed an individually adapted training schedule achieved better results on average than the control group. Even though the two groups followed roughly the same training program,” explains Lindberg.
The differences between the two groups were mainly in the general muscle thickness, but also in a specific squat exercise, which the intervention group apparently performed better. “It may sound surprising that the placebo effect also applies to exercise, but when you think about it, it makes sense,” the researcher continues. “There were signs that the participants who thought they were following a personalized program trained a little more and at a slightly higher intensity. Many of these small factors can influence the result.” The scientist also thinks that the testing itself had an impact on the result. The intervention group may have felt that they should perform better, since the program was aimed at producing a good result.
Trendy sports
“The placebo effect is often overlooked in research into exercise outcomes. It can also be difficult to conduct a blind study if you want to compare exercising twice a week with exercising four times a week. This can be a problem when new workouts come on the market that promise very good results. “There is plenty of reason to be skeptical about new fancy training forms that are hyped on social media. Especially since no studies on it have taken the placebo effect into account,” concludes Lindberg. So it may very well be that such a training only works so well because everyone believes in it.
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