If you’re tired of having “no pain, no gain” thrown in your face every time you take five during a workout, new research coming out of Japan may just make your day.

Japanese researchers found that resting in the middle of a workout may just help to burn more fat than slogging straight through a whole workout. The researchers, including Kazushige Goto, PhD, conducted their study at the life sciences department of the University of Tokyo.

Goto’s team studied seven healthy, physically active men who were 25 years old, on average. At the researchers’ lab, the men pedaled stationary bikes for an hour without taking any breaks. On another day, they rode the stationary bike for half an hour, sat in a chair and rested for 20 minutes, and then pedaled for 30 more minutes.

For comparison, the men visited the researchers’ lab one more time just to rest for an hour, without exercising at all.

The researchers monitored the men’s fat metabolism and hormone levels before, during, and after each session. As expected, an hour of pure rest was a dud when it came to fat metabolism, compared with the fat-burning effects of exercise.

But resting during exercise revved up fat metabolism during and after exercise, compared with a solid hour of exercise with no breaks.

The findings were published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

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