Keynote Speakers
Prof Andrew EDWARDS
Professor of Department of Health and Physical Education
The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Biography
Professor Andrew Edwards is Professor in the Department of Health and PE at The Education University of Hong Kong. Before joining EdUHK, he held senior academic roles in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, most recently at Canterbury Christ Church University, where he served as Professor of Sport and Exercise Science, Head of School, and Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise. His research focuses on exercise physiology and psychophysiology, especially pacing, fatigue, time perception, and the use of technologies such as virtual reality, wearables, music, and immersive environments to enhance exercise experience and performance.
Keynote Title
“Why Exercise Sometimes Feels Long: Time Perception, Fatigue, and the Future of Exercise Experience”
Time is a fundamental dimension of human experience, but subjective time does not correspond consistently with chronological duration. A demanding or monotonous task can feel disproportionately long, whereas an absorbing activity may pass almost unnoticed. Exercise provides a particularly revealing context in which to determine why these temporal distortions arise and how they influence behaviour.
Physical exertion appears to slow the perceived passage of time as physiological strain, discomfort and interoceptive signals become increasingly prominent. The magnitude of this effect varies between individuals, and emerging evidence suggests that fitter people may experience the same objectively controlled exercise bout as passing more quickly than less-fit people. Subjective time may also shape not only how exercise feels in the moment, but how the experience is evaluated and remembered. Enjoyment, immersion, personally meaningful goals and active engagement can accelerate the perceived passage of time, particularly when challenge is well matched to capability. Excessive difficulty, monotony or sustained attention to discomfort may produce the opposite effect. How time appears to have passed may therefore contribute to whether an activity is judged worthwhile and whether an individual is willing to repeat it.
The possibility that subjective time influences exercise tolerance and subsequent participation has particular relevance for public health. Those who stand to benefit most from becoming more physically active may also experience exercise as especially effortful and temporally burdensome. Improving adherence may therefore depend not only on prescribing an appropriate physiological dose, but also on designing the time spent exercising as a more tolerable, engaging and meaningful experience.
The keynote will bring these perspectives together and consider subjective time as a broader framework for understanding sustained engagement. Novelty may capture attention temporarily, but experiences are unlikely to remain compelling unless they continue to offer meaning, variety, active involvement and appropriate challenge. This perspective has applications beyond exercise and physical education, including the design of learning experiences more generally.
