Why To Exercise Today: It Works Even If You Hate It

It takes quite a few paragraphs of reading through an interesting experiment with rats forced to run in treadmills to get to the answer, so here's a short cut: No. If these rats are any indication, exercise is still good for you even if you hate it. Gretchen writes:

...The animals that had exercised on the running wheels, whether they could control their exercise regimens or not, proved to be quite resilient. They bounced back emotionally from the imposed stresses and were willing to explore the lighted regions of their new surroundings on the next day.

They were, by rodent standards, happy and well-adjusted guys.

What this suggests, says Benjamin Greenwood, a professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado who designed and led the study, is that “even forced exercise increases stress resistance.”

Or in the immortal words of the goddess Nike, "Just do it."