You can't run effectively in dreams because your brain paralyzes your muscles during REM sleep (atonia) to stop you from acting out dreams, so your brain receives no physical feedback, creating the sensation of slow, heavy legs; plus, dream-state working memory struggles with the complex coordination needed for running, leading to sluggishness, reports this blog post from Author Kenneth K. Gray.
The rarest type of dream is often considered to be the lucid dream, where you are aware you're dreaming and can sometimes control the dream's narrative, with only a small percentage of people experiencing them regularly, though many have had one spontaneously. Even rarer are dreams with specific, unusual content, like dreaming of doing math, or experiencing rare neurological conditions like Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome, where people lose the ability to visualize dreams.
When we dream that we want to move faster, or that our feet and legs seem stuck and slow, it often means that something is holding us back from achieving our ambitions and desires.
The Science: Why Running Feels Impossible in Dreams
Without muscle feedback, your brain struggles to simulate normal running. Instead, it produces the sluggish, heavy-legged sensation we often feel in dreams.
Normally when we dream, our brain prevents our muscles from moving. In some, these brain signals don't work properly, and a person moves while asleep. This is REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD). People with RBD often have very active dreams in which they're playing sports, running, or being chased or attacked.
According to Dr. Irwin, “When we dream about not being able to run fast, it may literally be that we are suffering from an injury, or it is metaphorical—we are feeling powerless, not up to snuff, disappointed in ourselves.” However, it's important to remember that dreams are not facts!
The 80/20 rule in running is a training principle suggesting you should spend 80% of your training time at an easy, conversational pace (low intensity) and only 20% at a harder, more intense effort (high intensity), like tempo runs or intervals, to build aerobic fitness, improve performance, and prevent burnout. Developed by exercise physiologist Stephen Seiler, it combats the common mistake of running too many days in a moderate "gray zone," which hinders adaptation, and helps runners build a stronger aerobic base to support faster speeds.
To know if a dream is a divine warning, look for repetition, strong emotion (conviction/unease), clear messages (voice of God), ominous imagery (chases, predators, darkness), relevance to your life, and confirmation through scripture or waking life events, prompting prayer and reflection rather than panic. It's a process of discernment, developing a "prophetic filter" with God's guidance, as not all dreams are from Him.
In short, the reasons why you may have limitations in your dreams when it comes to running fast and fighting could be due to a combination of physical limitations during REM sleep, your subconscious thoughts and emotions, and the nature of the dream state itself.
Although some theorists have suggested that pain sensations cannot be part of the dreaming world, research has shown that pain sensations occur in about 1% of the dreams in healthy persons and in about 30% of patients with acute, severe pain.
Subsequent studies also found that dream time seemed to be equivalent to real time. There may be exceptions, however. Researchers have found that bizarre dreams might appear to last longer than they really do, and lucid dreamers sometimes take longer to complete tasks in dreams versus real life.
We'll explore 10 common dreams many people have and dissect their possible meanings.
You should never ignore dreams that signal feeling overwhelmed (falling, drowning, being lost), a lack of control (car troubles), missed chances (missing transport), or recurring negative patterns (back to old schools/homes), as these often point to real-life anxiety, stagnation, or unresolved issues you need to address, with some spiritual interpretations also flagging attacks or spiritual pollution like eating food in dreams. Paying attention to vivid, recurring, or disturbing dreams can offer profound insights into your subconscious and guide you toward necessary changes for personal growth and clarity.
Short-term memory areas are active during REM sleep, but those only hang on to memories for about 30 seconds. “You have to wake up from REM sleep, generally, to recall a dream,” Barrett says. If, instead, you pass into the next stage of sleep without rousing, that dream will never enter long-term memory.
Pray from 3am to 5am the hour of the devine encounters 1. God will give you a revelation about your life 2. Command your day. Command your money.
The biggest unforgivable sin varies by faith, but in Christianity, it's often seen as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, a persistent rejection of God's grace, while in Islam, the gravest unforgivable sin is shirk, or associating partners with God, if not repented. Pride is also considered a foundational, serious sin across many faiths, linked to the downfall of figures like Satan.
Job 33:14-16 New Living Translation (NLT) For God speaks again and again, though people do not recognize it. He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they lie in their beds.
For example, when participants were asked to do a mental task, such as counting to ten, it took the same amount of time in the dream as it did in the real world. In comparison, doing a motor task like knee bends took longer in dream time than in real-time.
Arguing With Family
Family represents foundational relationships, so conflicts in this context may symbolise feelings of being misunderstood, clashes over values, or struggles with boundaries. For example, if you dream about arguing with a parent, it could indicate a desire for independence or a need for validation.
The exact reason you may find it hard to fight in a dream is not clearly understood. Some anecdotal speculation involves the notion of sleep paralysis. Your body cannot move, so when you try to punch in a dream your physical, sleeping body cannot perform the movement.
The 5-4-3-2-1 running workout is a fartlek (speed play) interval session, involving running segments of 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 minute at progressively faster (or goal) paces, with recovery jogs in between, typically 60 seconds, to build speed and endurance for races like the 5K or half marathon. It includes a warm-up and cool-down, with the key being to maintain intensity during the fast parts and use the shorter intervals as a mental boost as fatigue sets in, making the end feel manageable.
We basically have come to the conclusion, no, there is no age when you should stop running. Now, this comes with some caveats in that like somebody like me or maybe like you, who's been running for a long time. You built up that history, you built up that strength. You built up, you know, denser bones.
Generally, from a base endurance (sometimes called zone 2) development perspective, men run between 8 and 10km/h. Good runners can run up to 12km/h in this training zone. Very good runners run up to 15km/h.