Editing 2631: Exercise Progression

{{comic
| number    =  2631
| date      = June 10, 2022
| title     = Exercise Progression
| image     = exercise progression.png
| titletext = They said after I got into a routine, I'd enjoy getting progressively stronger and stop whining so much about how hard exercise was. Well, they were half right!
}}

==Explanation==

The arrows on the graph progress from left to right on the axis for "workout difficulty", showing that as people exercise (both normal people, and [[Randall]]), their bodies become stronger and able handle more difficult workouts.

The "normal progression over time" arrow in the graph shows how, when normal people unaccustomed to exercise first start out, it is perceived as unpleasant, for a variety of reasons: it takes time from the day, causes them to become sweaty and hot, feels particularly difficult, causes sore muscles, and so forth. Over time, as their body becomes accustomed to the exercise and can take on higher exercise loads, increasing muscle strength and endurance, so too does the brain, increasing both the amount of dopamine in the brain, and the number of dopamine receptors, as well as other positive changes. This means the "enjoyment" rewards from exercise begin to dominate, and exercise becomes a pleasant pastime, rather than a tedious, time-consuming and perhaps painful slog. This naturally causes a related reduction in whining.

The "my progression over time" arrow shows that while his body is becoming accustomed to the exercise just like any other, Randal whines linearly with the exercise difficulty. This could be because he is not neurochemically rewarded in the same way. Randall has implied he suffers from [[1106: ADD|ADD]], and this is a common symptom, caused by an excess of dopamine transporters in the brain carrying away the dopamine before it can activate the receptors.

It could also be because there are other downsides to exercising that he cares about more than the enjoyment; for example, if his exercise duration increases linearly with difficulty, and he values his time highly, that could cause a linear increase in whining with difficulty. Or since there is no scale for time on the graph, it could be that Randall has significantly misjudged the timescale of the effect (another common symptom of ADHD), and has only just begun his exercising journey: he may simply not realize that the neurological changes will take longer than the muscular ones, so he is seeing his muscles get stronger but has not yet reached the downturn in whining. Or he might just enjoy whining, and have more strength for lengthy whining sessions as his fitness increases.

Since the strip does not give information about the content of his whining, duration of exercise regimen, etc, the specific cause of the difference in whining behavior cannot be identified from the strip alone, though in the context of other strips, it is likely to be a real effect of neurodiversity.

The title text refers to the common response to such whining by people who '''are''' neurochemically rewarded by exercise, and have reached the bottom right of the graph: that getting stronger through an exercise routine will become its own reward, leading to a reduction in whining. Randal's statement that they were "half right", together with the graph, implies that he does indeed enjoy the rightward progression on the graph as he gets stronger and is able to take on increasingly difficult exercise; but that despite their reassurances, his whining has ramped up linearly with the exercise difficulty no matter how well-accustomed to it his body becomes.

To give an idea of the scale of time on the graph, a common rule of thumb is that while gains in strength can be seen within weeks (the stretch of the graph where both arrows rise), it can take months for a neurotypical mind (and its body) to acclimate to a serious change and begin to reap the rewards{{Actual citation needed}} (the falling area on the graph). Military boot camps are 6-13 weeks.

The strip may also be a pun, where the "normal progression" arrow traces out half of a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution normal curve].

==Transcript==
:[A graph is shown with labelled axis, and arrows at the tip of each axis. There are two thick arrows plotted, both starting mid-range on the Y-axis, one of them goes upwards at a constant angle of about 40°. The other, which lies over the first mentioned where they overlap close to the Y-axis, first rises a bit before it bends downward and then after having increased its downward bend for a bit it changes to a continuously lower down bending rate and seemingly converges towards a constant y-value close to zero before the end of the graph. Both arrows tip ends at the end of the X-axis. Inside each arrow there is a label.]
:Y-axis: How much you whine and complain about doing exercise"
:X-axis: Workout difficulty
:Upwards arrow: My progression over time
:Downwards arrow: Normal progression over time

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Randall Munroe]]