← the archive 02 — neuroscience & psychology

Mind

Neuroscience and psychology, kept together on purpose — the questions worth asking here sit across both and get worse when you separate them. Why training is genuinely pleasant for some people and genuinely awful for others. What actually predicts whether someone is still doing this in a year. And what happens to your own progress when you spend every day looking at everyone else's.

01

Why do some people love working out while others hate it?

The difference isn't discipline, and mostly it isn't personality either. It's that the two groups are having measurably different physiological experiences — and one of them has been training above a threshold where enjoyment becomes almost impossible for anybody.

read → 9 min
02

What increases adherence in individuals as it relates to exercise?

Motivation is the worst predictor of long-term training we have, and it's the one everyone optimises for. What actually survives contact with a bad month: self-efficacy, automaticity, identity, and how far away the gym is.

read → 9 min
03

The damaging effect of social media on your fitness progress

Not the self-esteem argument — the performance one. Constant upward comparison degrades self-efficacy, distorts your sense of a normal rate of progress, and pushes you into permanent programme-hopping. It costs you actual muscle.

read → 10 min