Start enjoying exercise using the peak-end rule

Lately, my workouts have felt like a tedious chore. The spark is gone. I used to get “in the zone” and experience blissful flow every time I did cardio, but no longer do. These days, what I call superfluidity—a state of frictionless flow where vigorous workouts feel effortless—is very elusive. It rarely happens during my treadmill runs; elated transcendence has been replaced by ho-hum routine.

My once-euphoric daily runs have started to feel like a joyless slog, and now I’m more inclined to skip them. And, I suspect I’m not alone: many people struggle to find joy in everyday practices they once felt exhilarating. Luckily, research on the peak-end rule offers fresh clues for reigniting the eagerness to seek exercise rather than avoid it.

Why do some workouts live on in your mind as eudaimonic experiences you want to repeat, while others get relegated to the “never again” bin? Over a century ago, psychologist Edward Thorndike gave us a clue with his Law of Effect: we’re wired to repeat behaviours that end in satisfaction and avoid those that conclude on a sour note.

The peak-end rule builds on this idea, elucidating why a single memorable moment and a pleasurable finish can make you want to do it all over again, no matter how much you struggled in the middle. You can tap into the power of these concepts at the gym:

The Peak-End Rule and Duration Neglect

First described by Barbara Fredrickson and Daniel Kahneman in the early 1990s, the peak-end rule postulates that our memory of an experience isn’t based on a full-length replay. Instead, it zeroes in on two key moments:

• The peak: The most emotionally extraordinary moment.
• The end: The feelings we have near the finish.

This is a powerful concept for anyone trying to stick with an exercise routine. You don’t have to enjoy every single second of a workout. You just need to increase the odds that your memory’s “highlight reel” contains a moment of joy and a pleasant finish.

The peak-end rule is closely tied to a cognitive bias called duration neglect. This bias truncates how long we remember episodic events if their peaks and endings are laced with positivity.

In this context, our brains vividly retain how an experience felt at its high point and its end, while letting go of the minute-by-minute grind in between. For exercise, this means the mid-session monotony fades in the rearview mirror, while the highlights shine bright.

Why It Makes Exercise More Pleasurable

The peak-end rule doesn’t just shape how we remember workouts. It also influences whether we want to repeat them. If the memory of a workout is associated with hedonic (pleasurable) sensations and taps into the Law of Effect, it creates a built-in nudge to do it again.

A recent 2025 randomised controlled trial, published in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, tested the peak-end rule’s influence on exercise adherence. Researchers tracked four factors:

1. Anticipated Affect: How participants expected to feel before their next workout.
2. Remembered Affect: How they recalled their most recent workout.
3. Enjoyment: The pleasure experienced during the session.
4. Follow-up Frequency: How often they returned in the following weeks.

Workouts that included more enjoyable peaks and satisfying endings improved remembered affect. That, in turn, boosted participants’ enthusiasm for the next session and increased the frequency of their workouts during the week. In short, positive memories created a self-reinforcing feedback loop that fortified exercise adherence.

Personal Perspective: My Own Peak-End Experiment

This morning, I decided to test the peak-end rule during a sunrise run. As mentioned, my workouts have been relatively miserable lately; they seem to drag on, and I find myself struggling to “lose myself” in a state of flow.

That said, with a mix of skepticism and optimism, I set out to see if keeping the peak-end rule top of mind could reignite my spark during an hour-long run by manifesting a peak and savoring a happy ending. The good news: It worked.

Before starting, I decided to let the shuffle gods choose my playlist from the thousands of songs stored on my smartphone. Serendipitously, just as the run was beginning to feel monotonous, a song I hadn’t heard in years came on: Kenny Loggins’ 1978 yacht rock classic, “Whenever I Call You Friend,” featuring Stevie Nicks. It’s not a ’70s duet I’d consider a running anthem by any stretch of the imagination, but today it blew my mind.

As Stevie sang, “In every moment, there’s a reason to carry on,” I felt a rush to keep going. The song was giving me chills and felt profound, even if the lyrics were unabashedly on the nose. Then the chorus swelled—”Now I know my life has given me more than memories…”—and goosebumps shot up my arms, sending shivers down my spine. It may sound cheesy or clichéd, but it was a peak experience.

I ended with Stephanie Mills’ “Never Knew Love Like This Before,” easing into a mellow cool-down. By the time I finished what would have seemed like an endless 60-minute trek without the peak-end rule, all the negative memories of the low points had vanished. What lingered was the emotional lift from the peak and the warm glow of an ending my jog filled with eudaimonia.

How to Use It in Your Workouts

Making exercise more memorable and motivating isn’t a Herculean task. The key is to be intentional about what your memory hub’s neural networks encode by doing this:

• Flag Every Peak: Even a brief surge of joy can define the whole session. Notice a peak (no matter how small) and “tag” it the moment it happens. Make sure peaks don’t go unnoticed.
• Don’t Overthink Monotony: Mid-session slogs fade thanks to duration neglect. When you hit a slump, let your mind wander. Daydream, zone out, and trust that feelings of endless drudgery will shrink in your memory.
• Curate Happy Endings: The final minutes matter most. Instead of pushing to “finish strong,” ease up. Reduce intensity, put on feel-good music, and bask in the accomplishment of finishing what you started.

The takeaway is simple: workouts are remembered chiefly for their peak moments and how they end, not the tedious middle. Engineering these elements into your workouts makes it more likely you’ll view exercise as something positive you want to repeat frequently.

The post Start enjoying exercise using the peak-end rule appeared first on The Ghana Report.