aFireInside Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 Im currently in spring break, so i started jogging and working out with pull-up bars/ monkey bars. It made me feel happy i was depressed this year but i feel better. I made allot of changes like i dropped classes that i didnt like and started working out as i mentioned. My main question is how important is exercise to the brain. Should we always find time to exercise. (despite having a busy schedule) Sometimes i wonder if great people exercised. (intellectuals & innovators) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lians Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 Have a look at this thread for a general overview: Physical Exercise and Its Benefits Section 6 in particular provides lots of resources on the health benefits of exercising when it comes to our central nervous system. What I've found particularly great about exercising is how much it allows me to connect with my unconscious mind and all the rich instincts that we developed throughout our evolution as a species. There's just no way to think your way through an exercise or a sport. For example, increasing your reaction time is all about training and trusting your unconscious to do the work for you. You definitely have to use your conscious mind for high-level decision making, but the unconscious does all the heavy lifting under the hood. Exercising also teaches you to pay attention to what's going on with your body, which is very useful given our fast-paced, high-stimuli culture. Getting more comfortable with failure and learning to defer gratification are common side-effects of body work. Building your body is a gradual process driven by making mistakes and there's just no way around that no matter what Hollywood film directors think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepin Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 I would advice lifting weights and to work on the mind muscle connection. The ability to relax is critical to thought, and being able to identify when your body is not relaxed and then being able to relax the muscles into a extreme state is incredibly helpful. For instance, most people when they get stressed will tense up their shoulders, and even after the stressor is gone, the shoulders are still in the tense position. With having more awareness of your body, you are able to identify this much more quickly and are more able to completely relax the muscle. Really, exercise in general would do the trick, but I think weight lifting is best. I would say you develop a far stronger connection to your body and what it is telling you than if you were to just run. Also, an issue with running is that you can adapt pretty quickly to a program, which makes it more difficult to create growth. When starting, your goal should be to stick to exercising for a month. This is because after about 20 days, exercise becomes addictive, which makes motivation to go to gym far easier. If you go for a bodybuilding or a strength program, seeing the results will also keep you coming back. Initially I didn't care about how bodybuilding would change my looks, rather I just wanted to be more healthy, but as I got results I became much more motivated to keep going. http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/train-your-brain-with-exercise http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/stress-management/effect-of-stress-on-the-brain.htm http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/09/study-stress-shrinks-the-brain-and-lowers-our-ability-to-cope-with-adversity/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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