At the risk of sounding to newage-y, I experience the benefits of exercising as energy balancing.
Solving problems, learning and building new things all day can be very mentally exhausting. Cardio, sports, lifting; helps re-balance the physical with the mental. I am sure there are more scientific words and biological descriptions that I lack the vocabulary for. If I get too mentally focused on a project/job/problem and go days without matching it with vigorous physical activity, I end up not sleeping as well, am less tolerant, more scattered and brain fog tends to start rolling in. If I counter it with the physical exercise or physical energy expenditure the mental clarity comes back, I sleep better, and don't have hair-triggered verbal impulse control issues. Otherwise, if I let it go for too long, lethargy sets in - which I attribute to the body/physical and mind/mental trying to rebalance itself. I dont think it cares that it makes me feel like crap overall, more that it's neutral in just wanting a balance however that comes about.
I often refer to exercise as me taking care of my mental health - as opposed to being physically fit. That could be seen as "exercise [being] the best cognitive exercise". Looking at it that way, exercise creates a mental-out imbalance, which causes the stored energy in the mind to be stimulated and need more output creating the mental sharpness. Obviously I have nothing to back up the claims other than decades of experiencing this to be true for me time and time again; though I do believe there are better biological explanations than energy.
> I often refer to exercise as me taking care of my mental health - as opposed to being physically fit.
Same. I don't care about my physical health all that much but my friends/family think i am some sort of health fanatic. It is the only thing that has gotten me through tough times, its my escape.
Same here. I do cold showers, sauna, eat fiber every day, almost religiously take supplements, and exercise most days. People think I'm a health fanatic type but really I just feel awful normally, and when I do all of this I feel okay. It's just to keep myself mentally okay. I have a theory that's why depression and anxiety are so common in humanity-- in general they force people to keep improving(until they don't).
I suspect the “all that much” is doing a lot of work here. I think I get it. Like, as long as my body is not malfunctioning or heading for a long-term catastrophe, I’m not motivated to improve it.
Malfunctions can be difficult to detect, if you're not paying close attention to your body. Our bodies have evolved to maintain homeostasis within a tight range, and can compensate for quite a lot of hidden pathology. Until you reach a threshold and decompensate, at which everything goes to hell and at that point it's too late to really fix.
I'm similar and ironically I think having exercise as a coping mechanism, if you like, is actually a way better motivator than for health reasons, and makes it easier to stick with. I think if people could get into a routine of exercising for mental relaxation, and see the benefits that way, it would make it more attractive.
When I was most stressed and semi-burned out during my career I found that martial arts was the best way to decompress.
I especially preferred the kinds that heavily relied on sparring with partners during the class. It's _really_ hard to ruminate on everything you didn't get done today when the person opposite you will punch/kick you if your concentration falters =)
It's similarly hard to start overthinking when you're too tired to think, HIIT-style circuit training in a group worked pretty well.
Nowadays I'm a bit less stressed and can manage it better - just a walk in the nature and newageyly "being in the moment" is enough, no need for the extremes of youth =)
Same stuff here. I practice tai chi and as you may know practicioners usually work in group. Keeping in sync with the others is 100% part of the practice and is impossible to do if one is not really concentrated on its surroudings. There's no way you might think about something else while doing it :-) (and I don't even talk about the sheer amount of proprioception you have to use to do the movements correctly)
There are 2 ways of practicing martial arts for health.
One way is to practice alone, at home, by doing some solo forms (a.k.a. kata) taken from the large existing number of Okinawan or Chinese origin, with or without weapons, and/or by hitting dummies or punching bags.
This way has the advantage of minimal cost, down to zero, depending on whether you buy some training equipment and weapons or not, and you can practice without following a schedule, whenever you have time or you are in the mood.
Practicing solo is easy if you have some prior experience of doing proper training sessions in some martial art. Even without experience, if the purpose is only practicing for health and not becoming skilled in real fighting, some instructional videos can be good enough for learning how to train.
The second way is to practice with a sparring partner. Sometimes this might be possible to do with a friend, if you happen to have an appropriate space, but this is quite unlikely, so you normally have to go regularly to some martial arts training hall or club.
In this case the choice of the martial art may be determined less by some intrinsic qualities, but more by what martial art training place happens to exist close enough to your home, to avoid wasting time with transportation.
Moreover, especially when practicing for health purposes, it may be less important which is the origin of the martial art, but much more important is how competent is the instructor that happens to teach at the club that you find near you.
Unfortunately, for a beginner it is difficult to distinguish competent instructors from incompetent instructors, but after some experience the differences will become evident.
Which martial art is more appropriate depends also on the age. For someone older, a training that puts less emphasis on striking/kicking, but more on throwing and breaking falls, e.g. aikido/judo/jujutsu, is more appropriate. Also training with weapons can be appropriate for older people, as in that case the weapons are not used against humans, unless they wear protective gear.
When practicing any kind of sport, it is necessary to do it in such a way as to avoid accidents.
While it is possible to train in a careless way and suffer consequences, the straining of the wrists and of other articulations in aikido is actually very useful for avoiding the loss of articular mobility that happens to most old people, unless they do regularly other kinds of mobility exercises.
For someone who types a lot, regular mobility exercises for wrists and fingers are very important for avoiding the injuries caused by typing and by using a mouse, which are much more frequent than the aikido injuries.
As a personal anecdote, I have practiced for some time aikido without any kind of injuries, but later, when failing to do regular exercises, I have developed some tendon problems in my right middle finger from the scrolling wheel of the mouse (which I have healed by switching from using a mouse to the use of a stylus on a Wacom tablet in mouse mode; now I wonder why I have used mice/trackballs/touchpads/trackpoints for so many years, because a stylus is much more comfortable).
Not OP, but I’ve taken up training Muay Thai and it’s a lot of fun. It can look pretty intimidating from the outside, but everyone I’ve met at the gyms here in Brooklyn have been super welcoming and kind.
I also have had a long standing, 5x per week yoga practice which is a great way to strengthen and open the body. I’d look for a yoga school that mentions ashtanga if you’re looking for something more intensive, it’s a challenging practice.
Pretty much everyone I’ve ever met who actually knew how to fight well was very friendly and kind. Traveling and showing up at random MMA or BJJ schools is almost always a fantastic experience.
Subjecting the ego to much needed reality checks makes for some nice folks.
Seconded. I worked with a professional MMA team while they appeared on The Ultimate Fighter and met a lot of fighters who came to their gym to train, even spent some time living in a communal house with some of them. All but one of them would be in the running for the “nicest person I ever met” award.
I have been kind of deep down these rabbit holes of how it works physically. It comes down to some kind of simple principles. Exercise gives your brain more blood. Lifting puts static pressure and conditions vessels and such. Many pro-brain-health hormones get released. The physical actions force a degree of indirect distraction that lets your sub-conscious work as well. These things all combine to promote brain health and problem solving. The brain uses a ton of energy so the blood flow just keeps it well fed.
E: it also makes sure junk from metabolic processes are cleaned up etc.
And when you exercise, certainly in HIIT, parts of your brain go to a lower usage, but at the same time there is a ton of blood going through the tissues, so the cells probably get to recharge with all the extra blood and nutrient/energy transport going on.
Plus when you're done with exercise, the entire metabolic engine keeps going for 30-60 minutes (or even more depending on how hard you go), which also gives the opportunity for brain cells to recharge.
There was a rather compelling pathway proposed years ago: skeletal muscle activation leads to the secretion of a protein in the blood called Irisin. This protein then crosses the blood-brain barrier and upregulates brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
Yet there are always examples of extraordinary minds of people who either despise physical exercise it are even wheelchair-bound. Steven Hawkins comes to mind. Maybe those are just exceptions.
I see no reason to think that people don't have different cognitive baselines. It's not difficult to imagine two people having such different cognitive baselines that even if exercise improves the cognitive ability of one, it will still be lower than the cognitive ability of the other without exercise.
I never did turn into a super genius after a run. But I can focus for a few hours and if it was an easy run or even a hard strength training session, it is a productive few hours :)
I don't really know where it came from - but there was this idea that if you are smart you neglect sports - if you are sporty you neglect smarts.
There was jocks vs nerds as a general dichotomy.
Last years we find it more and more to be a false dichotomy.
Just think that you can find "brasilian ju jitsu nerds" or software developers that work out quite a lot.
Not to mention pro-gamers who are not only practicing playing their game - but get physical workout in their training regimen to really go to the top.
Being physically fit IS caring about mental health there is nothing newage-y about it.
There is no mind-body separation, mind is body whether someone likes it or not. If you exercise your muscles to move in a specific way you exercise your mind as well. That is known phenomenon in strength sports - one can build up muscle mass as much as they want but they also have to adapt neural pathways for strength - which is mind.
I notice that if I perform a large amount of physical activity during the day, like playing soccer, I'm tired (obviously). However, the lack of energy applies to both physical and mental tasks.
I’ve gone through years of working out daily to years of basically only walking and not exercising much.
The honest truth is if I’m truly coding a lot, working out is a strict downgrade in my long term output holding for all other variables.
Working out is good for you, but it’s a big detriment to mental energy. Perhaps working out late in the day solves this, but then again I’m most productive as a coder late at night. Days where I work out in the afternoon wreck my night time productivity.
>> Working out is good for you, but it’s a big detriment to mental energy. Perhaps working out late in the day solves this, but then again I’m most productive as a coder late at night.
My experience matches this when I tried to workout first thing in the morning. Then I tried lunchtime spin class before moving to working out and playing recreational sports after work/in the evening. I was far less productive when trying to spend the physical energy during the morning/afternoon than I was when releasing it at night. The biggest mental benefit (in terms of production) for me is rarely in the moments after working out and happen more in the next day(s). If I skip it for weeks it would take a few days of consistent, and preferably, high intensity physical activity to get both back to where I am most productive.
Lack of skeletal muscle is extremely dangerous for long-term health. Muscle is a key component of the endocrine system, acting as a sink for blood glucose and preventing insulin resistance (type 2 diabetes). Lack of muscle needed to stabilize your movements also greatly increases the risk of debilitating falls and other skeletal injuries. It's important to build up a good amount of muscle when you're young because hormonal changes make it increasingly harder as you age (unless you take anabolic drugs, which carry their own health risks).
I'm struggling to take these comments seriously. Do you guys have any scientific or even anecdotal basis for believing that gaining muscle is detrimental to programming ability, or are you all just talking out of your asses?
If there is no basis for it, please stop spreading this stuff. I am trying to build my programming career and build muscle at the same time, and I don't need people being prejudicial towards me because they read some misinformed comment on HN telling them bulking is detrimental to coding.
If you are happy building muscle then build muscle. It isn't like you need to be smart at programming jobs, I brought up competition winners since at that level you have to be in top shape mentally, but workplaces are full of obese programmers etc nobody cares.
Getting very muscular will earn you all sorts of judgements, that’s humanity. It certainly will reduce attraction from women most stages of life as it’s a stronger indicator of insecurity and low self confidence more than it’s an indicator of physical fitness / competence. If you add in this sort of touchy and sensitive reactionary attitude it will only worsen that.
Most important thing in life is to do things out of genuine interest and do them with confidence. Know the prejudices and know they exist for good reason so you can laugh at them, rather than running around trying to ref the world.
We’re just going over anecdotes and learned experience about the reality of physical exertion taxing total mental energy. You got very sensitive about it for some reason and are demanding data but no one said anything about data just lived experience (more valuable than data anytime it comes from someone experienced - I trust a single person who ate at every taco stand in LAs review way, way more than the average of every review on Yelp).
No one will feel sorry about “prejudice” against fit people, it’s like complaining about prejudice against rich people. If you don’t get why those exist and are valid then the world will rag on you (rightly) for being naive, it’s first-world-problemism at its finest.
> It certainly will reduce attraction from women most stages of life as it’s a stronger indicator of insecurity and low self confidence more than it’s an indicator of physical fitness / competence.
You have already lost me. This is totally made up and most likely the opposite of the truth, and I would like to see some evidence for this claim.
> If you add in this sort of touchy and sensitive reactionary attitude it will only worsen that.
So you're saying I should just be okay with you making hateful stuff up and posting it, and that if I ask you for evidence I am being "sensitive" and "reactionary"?
Sorry I am not okay with you insinuating that `$fit = dumb` without evidence. You haven't provided any, which leads me to believe that your beliefs stem from your own insecurities more than anything.
I don't actually think this is as much of a false dichotomy as you believe.
In my experience that separation between physical ability and smarts has always existed on some level. Yes of course there are engineers who work out, and soccer players who code, but I've generally seen that the best engineers do not work out much, and the best soccer players do not code much.
Some of that may in fact just come down to time and how much they're spending it on their craft. At the end of the day though, the very brightest and most talented software devs I know are simply out of shape.
I agree that best coders don't do 2x a day workouts and best soccer players don't play chess 4h a day.
But there is an idea where you do 3 workouts per week, do things each day to be productive in your trade and augment it with exercise to be even more productive.
And if I would just exercise I would remember that exercise would solve the problem... but I don't have the mental foresight to do so, so I let it go for another day, and another...
I agree with this. I hate exercise so I go into the office a few days a week and I cycle to get there and back which is roughly 10 miles in total. Without that commute I'd be too tempted to do nothing by way of exercise.
Yes, this helps a lot! For me, it also helps to have a training plan, or simply calendar events that remind me what exercise I should do at a given day. Usually this allows me to trick my mind and avoids the decision whether or not I should exercise and I will "stupidly" do what the calendar says. This made it much easier to develop a habit.
The entire book is filled with training plans I hadn't even considered before - this particular one has worked really well for me in a way other plans have not.
I think you just have to make yourself do it for a prolonged period of time, all the while making sure that you do not overexert yourself. Make it pleasant on every occasion, and lower the intensity once it starts feeling like a struggle. There are theories on how long it takes to establish a new habit. The numbers may vary, but I'd say if you can keep at it for around three months, it should be possible, for anyone really, to establish regular exercise as a habit that you both enjoy and look forward to, rather than something that you dread or put off.
Having a schedule really helps. For years I’ve just promised myself that I’d work on my physical practices at least 4x per week — if I’ve gotten to Wednesday and I haven’t done anything, that means Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday I need to do something. And because you need rest days, you end up just planning to spread things out. Stick to it for a few months and all of a sudden it’s been years and you can’t imagine not doing it.
Just make sure it’s a thing you really enjoy, and think of it more as practicing getting really good at something rather than a chore.
Just set multiple reminders on your phone throughout the day to get up and do a little bit of exercise. A five minute walk, two minutes of jumping jacks, and three push-ups are better than nothing.
Get a cheap magnetic exercise bike (Sunny has a good one) and start with 10 (or even 5) minutes a day at the same time (or event, waking up, finishing work, something like that) every day.
10 minutes is nothing, especially if you read or watch TV while doing it.
It'll get easy eventually, and the habit will be established. Then you up it to 15, and keep doing that until you hit at least 30 mins every day.
Then you have a nice habitual time period that you can add, swap, or integrate other exercises into.
You probably answered why people don't maintain a healthy routine for decades.
A gerbil-wheel exercise in extreme environments, perhaps (due to pollution, crime, extreme hot/cold weather, etc), but after an extended period, is that really how natural detergents in the body are made?
It's not about sticking with gerbil-wheel exercises, it's about developing the habit of scheduling exercise into one's day. Once one establishes the habit of scheduling exercise it makes sense this lowers the barrier to enriching exercise.
Although for me it's been the other way around: find an enriching exercise first and then schedule around performing it. For me, my only limit to participating in my exercise of choice is body recovery. If I had no recovery time I'd be in the gym for hours daily. As it is now I'm limited to 1.5-2.5 hrs every other day.
Golf can be a fun activity, but it doesn't really build much functional muscle strength or cardiovascular fitness. Most golf pros who stay on the tour for a while find it necessary to additional training to keep their bodies working well.
Recreational golfing is much more relaxing. I can chase personal goals while enjoying every minute of it.
We're all aware of Tiger blowing out a knee, but some stories coming out of the LPGA with pros living with excruciating pain from a relatively early age is just absurd:
Michelle Wie's interview this year with the statement of not being able to pickup her own child at times did not make sense.
There are a few more golfers in the LPGA with back injuries in their 20's, knowing they only have one back (J. Korda this week for example).
I saw a Seve Ballesteros documentary about his severe back pains on VHS and have fortunately avoided pushing past the breaking point for a few extra yards.
As a technology native, golf has always felt amazing with both hands. Even my glutes grew up my back without trying as well... Provided you know your own body :)
Effortless energy is a breath of fresh air. Not many sports have that.
I apologize but I think I'm missing what you're saying.
I'll just elaborate and say the key to what I said is making it habitual by adding into something you'd be doing anyway. The exercise bike is great because you can watch TV, read, or even play some types of games or other sedentary activities you may be doing anyway.
Habits are everything. If you make it something you can to make yourself do, it'll always be hard. Make it a daily or weekly activity. Start slow, and just make it routine. Then, after you're used to it you can increase the intensity.
I am in better shape than I've been in a few years. My exercise is more enjoyable now, and doesn't feel like a chore to do it. This year I signed up for a half dozen mountain bike races, so they were a motivator to go out and ride.
Every week my friends and I meet up and run 3.5 miles. After the run, we all hangout and have a beer at a nearby bar. The meetup spot is 6 miles away and I ride my bike hard there, and at a leisurely pace on the way back. It's nice having this activity to look forward to every week.
I haven't signed up for any races since the summer, but I have it in the back of my mind that I will start again in the spring, so that helps me make time for bike rides (which I enjoy).
My friends don't like to run in the dark, so I will probably join a volleyball league this winter for some weekly socialization and activity.
So, I think waaaay eaiser to find stuff you will like doing or at least an activity with people you like being around. Check Facebook for group rides/runs in your area.
Consider skipping the beer and dropping all alcohol entirely (but definitely still be social), you'd be surprised at how much it is holding you back fitness wise and how little you actually need it, beyond the thought that it is nice.
One way out of this is to not join a gym but learn exercises that you can do anywhere (e.g https://blog.paleohacks.com/how-to-work-out-with-no-equipmen... ). And be forgiving towards yourself too - forgot to exercise for a day or a week, fine - some days are just shitty in our life - just do one exercise today (motivation follows actions). You don't have to do the full sets of exercise, if you don't feel like it. Just focus on doing one exercise (action is the fuel required to power your motivation). Enjoy the feeling. And continue again everyday.
I started lifting a few years ago. Everything was good until this summer when I developed knee pain while squatting that was excruciating at its worst. Got that mostly fixed with some specific exercises and focus on coorect form, and then developed low back pain that I have not resolved yet. Most recently tore a muscle in my shoulder, which I am working on rehabbing. So now pretty much all daily activities are accompanied by some amount of pain. I wake up at least twice a night from shoulder or back pain.
If you’re doing heavy barbell squats there is a lot to consider. For example my pelvic proportions required a slightly wider stance that cured me of all back pain. Also always warning up with McGill big 3 helps- look them up if you plan to lift into middle age. I also had to do some supplementary glute work (bridges etc) too to correct an imbalance.
Exercise and age/experience has taught my that the body is a dynamic, connected system. I stopped working out after an injury for a couple years, and when I got back into it I was amazed to see how strength imbalances (and the accompanying pain) migrated through my legs and back. That’s still in progress, but getting better for me. Most important thing is to take it slowly.
Injuries are not normal or expected regardless of when you start. The important point is to use good technique and progress slowly. Hire a qualified personal trainer or coach to show you how to do it right. And don't try to do too much too fast. Your muscles will get stronger faster than your tendons and bones, so just because you can lift a heavier weight or run at a faster pace doesn't mean you should. Take a few months at your current level before trying to move up.
It’s both expected and normal, however, yes, as you point out, going slowly will give your soft tissues time to adapt to the new stresses you’re putting them through.
I am still exercising, the main thing I cannot do at all right now is bench press or other pressing movements due to the shoulder. Squats and deadlifts I am doing at lower weights than what I was up to before the injuries, and I can do focused accessories such as tricep/bicep work, leg work, etc.
I am also an older lifter and probably should have backed down at the earlier indications that a problem was developing. However it honestly was never more than some soreness that went away with warmups, so I wasn't really concerned about it.
On the mental effects, I can say that for me that exercise doesn't change much. I am generally in a better mood after a good workout, but with the recent injuries I have been feeling more frustrated and dejected. But these feeling are pretty much the same ones I have when I succeed or struggle with a programming task or other mental work.
Shoulder girdle stabilization is super important in your lifts, the muscles even help with form on deadlifts. If you look to start a routine to work out your stabilizers on a regular basis it can help prevent future injuries and help you feel even better when lifting.
Also some exercise may, for you, turn out to not be boring. Try different things until you find an exercise (or set of exercises) that works for you. I really enjoy running, especially outdoors, and rowing, which makes it easy for me to stick with them. But for other people those things are either dull or painful and so they stall out if they only try those exercises. I also found team sports (soccer, in particular) and martial arts (BJJ) to be stimulating in a way that they never become boring. A couple I know use dance as their primary exercise (actually how they met too). There are many ways to exercise, finding the right exercise for you is critical to longterm success.
This. Between running, tennis, climbing, hiking, biking, martial arts, swimming, weightlifting, volleyball, mountain biking, soccer, etc. . . I think there is likely a “right” exercise for everyone, in the sense that it gets to flow state and doesn’t feel boring, or like work.
Very few of those on the list can be enjoyed by octogenarians.
I have enjoyed decades of golf so far with firm glutes and firm abs as an unitended benefit :)
I'm always tickled when I read these stories. I'm chasing an albatross personally to complete my scorecard (got a hole-in-one the 1st decade of playing).
The key is to start early and build up enough strength and fitness to sustain you for awhile after the inevitable, irreversible decline sets in around age 70.
And if you find a sport (like I did with soccer and BJJ), other exercises become more desirable and easier to stick with because they're complementary or supportive to the actual thing you want to do. Distance running and sprinting improved my endurance for both sports and also my recovery time after a literal sprint in soccer or the BJJ equivalent of a fast moving exchange, giving me an edge against otherwise more skilled opponents but lacking my conditioning.
BJJ sparring is like a chess match that requires complete mental focus for strategy, and the engagement and focus of every muscle in my body.
I feel like that analogy is lacking. Nevertheless, it's unlike any other sport I've played, like ice hockey, for example, which is more like driving in NYC.
Do you think BJJ is one of those hobbies that you can enjoy late in life? I’ve given it a try but always seem to get hurt, which disrupts other parts of my life (work, sleep, etc.) I also know a lot of people who’ve gathered a lot of lasting injuries from it. Any tips on staying healthy?
Find a good gym. There are some gyms where the instructors (and consequently the students) are a bit too hardcore. But at the good gyms (which I'd say are actually the average in the community, not outliers by any stretch), no one wants to injure their training partner. I've got a bad shoulder and a bad back. When someone gets my left arm in certain positions, I tap quickly and no one gets upset. I tell my partners about it, and tell them they can grab it just go extra slow.
So far my only BJJ-caused back or shoulder injuries were from early on when I was either too inflexible (and so it was easy to push it too far), or too stupid to tap (hadn't realized what "too far" was). Take it slow, find good training partners, listen to your body, and take up complementary activities (some strength training, flexibility things like yoga, core training especially for the back).
Yes. I agree about finding a good gym. Also be especially careful when sparring with other beginners who usually rely more on strength than technique. I have been injured twice while sparring with beginners(myself being a beginner as well). A knee fracture and a broken rib. Nowadays I take it easier since I’m in my mid 40s and recovery is slower. But I’m definitely not the oldest guy in the gym.
I also do judo once a week, and that’s lots of fun but a bit scary compared to bjj. I probably won’t continue doing that when I get old, not sparring at least.
I never played soccer with colleagues, at first being too tall and sucking at it and also seeing that as a sports for another "kind" of person. But nowadays I totally feel that its a great mix of play and sport, more fun and team bonding than gym, probably less taxing than cross-fit, etc. And now that I work remotely its even harder to find people to play... (And I'm in Brazil..)
Tracking what you do can go a long way towards making the boring thing not boring.
A long walk on its own versus... a long walk where you've clicked the record button on Stava is for some reason a completely different experience. One is idle, meandering, and boring the other is (somehow psychologically) building something and fun.
Agreed, and I'll add that you don't have to be overly interested in metrics/fitness/quantified self to derive benefit from this.
For instance, I care little about the measurements of any given run or walk, I rarely even look at them when I'm done, but just the recording itself on my Apple Watch subtly motivates me to work harder and go longer. It becomes more of a 'workout' than a passive activity.
Anything <= 20 minutes away, I ride my bicycle. And yeah, I live in a suburb. The grocery store is about a 15 minute ride away, a bit uphill.
Taken from this point of view, cycling is actually multi-tasking: you're getting somewhere and getting your daily exercise. Cars don't actually save you time when it comes to these sorts of trips because they're forcing you to spend extra time explicitly exercising.
>> I experience the benefits of exercising as energy balancing.
I find that a lot of fringe stuff like that can be reframed into other fringe or even more "normal" terminology. Which words or metaphors one uses are simply what clicks for them. If "energy balance" is the word that feels right to you, use it. ;-)
I've heard there's literally some kind of electric charge going on, and your muscles play an important role in this. They might act as storage of sorts, but you need to exercise eventually so they can discharge, otherwise you get to the point where things can't function properly. Heart is supposed have crucial part in generating electrical fields too. Not much info on that topic so take it with a grain of salt.
i have exactly the same feelings/experiences. i started to ride a bike when pandemic begun and it really improved my comfort of living and ovearll "mental" attitude. its really not about fitness but more like a therapy for a brain to reset. its best to ridea in areas where you can be close to the nature as the presence of nature also contributes
If you are running or cycling it is VERY important to stretch extensively afterward. Perfectly "healthy" and trim cyclists and runners can end up with back problems that lead to all sorts of health problems because they have not stretched the legs and core regulalry. Ham strings tighten up like steel cords and can ruin your back...especially if you sit for significant periods of time each day. I have learned this the hard way.
I don't have any references to hand, but drawing from both personal experience and anecdotal stories from places like r/nootropics, the link between cognitive performance and physical exercise is already well established and almost universally accepted. In comparison, brain training games and sudoku puzzles are rarely, if ever, mentioned as beneficial (again, anecdotally). Am I misunderstanding what's being speculated here?
Somewhat related - something that I do find quite curious from my own personal experience is that lifting heavy weights has a far greater impact on my ability to concentrate (and therefore perceived cognitive ability, I guess) than cardio/aerobic exercise does. Like night and day. I've recently started attributing it to creatine supplementation, but I do wonder if there's anything more to it than that.
I think the idea this person has is pretty novel. That physical excercise is great for the mind, not only because it has some nebulous general benefits but because it computationally is a very hard task for the brain. Harder than anything you could throw at it consciously.
It might be wrong but it's interesting and somewhat novel.
> because it computationally is a very hard task for the brain
No they didn't say harder, they said it uses "more computation", there's a difference.
Your brain has many parallel systems specialized for exercise, because our ancestors have used similar systems to move their bodies for eons. Exercise fires all these systems in parallel, so your brain is getting great "throughput".
On the other hand stuff like Sudoku is using a much smaller fraction of our brain that developed recently, probably for language, and then trying to use the language part to do math, which feels "difficult" precisely because we're trying to do it with just a small, unspecialized part of our brain, instead of a bunch of specialized parallel systems.
So exercise is both "easier", but also more efficiently gets your brain working because of parallelism.
I haven't heard people mention it before but I've often wondered why physical exercise wasn't considered "intelligent" when so much of the brain was dedicated to tasks like moving around and coordination.
Not disagreeing, but let me point out that animals can move their bodies quite well and we consider most of them significantly less intelligent. I don't know what proportion of the brain is used for movement and what proportion is used for cognition.
IANAB, but large animal bodies correlate with large brain size. Huge animals like elephants and whales have much bigger brains than humans, but are not considered cognitively equivalent to humans.
Maybe moving and maintaining a body requires body size proportional "raw" computational power and maybe human brains have mostly just qualitative differences not related to mass when compared to animals (ok, and a bit of extra proportional brain mass too).
If this is the case the connection between excercise and cognitive capacity could seem natural. Excercise requires massive neural resources and thus physical excercises also excercise the brain to a large degree and the whatever qualitative bit that humans have "on top" simply rides the wave to some improvement.
Couldn't this prove the point that we don't equate movement with intelligence, though? Who's to say animals also don't possess this intelligence? Maybe we'd have to go down the chain then, to more inert species like plants and fungi, though they also possess intelligence I can't begin to comprehend.
Dolphins and bears can balance a ball on their nose. Human artists can balance multiple plates on sticks. Is it a difference in computing power, or just because we can't force animals to practice enough?
from personal experience i can say: after i started working out extensively, often for 10+ hours a week, i did notice that i just had a lot less time and energy left for intellectual endeavours (which consisted of mostly reading and programming exercise projects). not only was the time spent in the gym "lost" (intellectually), but afterwards (i mostly trained in the evening) i was just too tired and exhausted for longer periods of intense concentration.
that said, i began spending a lot of time reading about exercising instead, which is surprisingly intellectually stimulating. there are a bunch of high level powerlifters, bodybuilders and weightlifters who do, for example, scientific paper reviews and criticism. i learned a lot about second-guessing findings there. road cycling is probably on of the most data driven sports out there (i kinda quit strength sports during covid and started cycling, which is probably even more time consuming).
there are intellectually aspects to - and surrounding - most sports to a degree, but i doubt intelligence is the decicive factor even in comparably tactical athletic disciplines (team sports).
The conventional wisdom of exercising alternate days, 20 minutes per day, etc. may lead to many people over-training themselves. In my experience, the "exercise-life" balance (similar to work-life balance) has to be had for benefits to accumulate and our ability to continue it.
That said, I lift twice a week for a total of about 4 to 4.5 hours, and that strikes an optimum balance for my age, physiology and everything else. I tried many other forms and failed to find that exercise-life balance.
Additionally a lot of conventional wisdom in exercise science borders on "voodoo", and some are challenging it [1].
I appreciate Rippetoe for getting me into strength training but the article is complete and utter BS and he does peddle quite a bit of it.
The antagonistic effect of endurance training on strength is not really relevant for recreational runners and this has been show time and time again in multiple high-quality studies. You should only really care if you're a competitive lifter; a ton of people who go to the gym have terrible cardio, and I would argue that good cardio fitness is much more relevant to overall health; you should _not_ be getting winded going up a couple flights of stairs.
Furthermore the cardiovascular effects of strength training are insufficient for all-around good health. Cardio stimulates different metabolic pathways that are very much useful in life; having done both activities I can tell you when I was an active marathon runner I just had way more energy in the tank for everything.
The article makes a mention that nutrition is more relevant for heart health than cardiovascular condititioning, something that not only is just plain false, but also ignores that body mass is body mass and having an excessive amount of muscle mass does not correspond with cardiovascular health either.
The critiques about repetitive motion in running are just downright ridiculous. Runners get injured, of course. So do people who deadlift with bad technique. As a species we are frankly much more adapted to running than moving heavy weights, as evidenced by the amount of effort our bodies go through to keep muscle mass off as compared to any other primate. There is a balance between both but Rippetoe just goes on about things like being "harder to kill" which is plain fanboying; I would contend that being an ultramarthon runner or an Ironman triathlete corresponds far better with grit and not getting killed over all the gymgoers that can barely run a mile.
I am curious what type of people are you categorizing in "gymgoers that can barely run a mile". Certainly no the ones who follow Starting Strength program, since with personal experience I can say my mile time is way better it is now with SS, than it was before. Maybe the "gym bros" who are more into hypertrophy? :-)
sure, the person only doing strength training will have better endurance than a person doing nothing at all. i also agree strength training is usually critically neglected compared to cardio (which is slowly changing tho).
it's the toxic "cardio kills your gains" broscience that's harmful, as it leads to people actively avoiding healthy cardio. i've seen strength athletes use the escalator instead of the stairs because they tried to avoid getting their heart rate up outside the squat rack. this is counterproductive to both health and athletic ability.
Exercise-life balance will change, as well, throughout your life. We all have different seasons.
Some years ago I was working at a university and could go to the gym and lift heavy over lunch. That was great -- a good decompression, opportunity to talk w/people in other parts of the university, and the strongest I ever got. At another time in life I did CrossFit. It gave me some community when traveling and I could fit it outside the workday. Now due to covid/kid/corporate job I switched for a few years to circuit training/HIIT in the basement. That got me into very good shape in a different way than lifting heavy a few times a week. And now I have to change again -- different family schedule has taken away my early-morning workout slot and my short bike commute and so I'm trying to find the new normal. Maybe I can join a gym again, but with the family morning grind and family evening routine I cannot easily spend more than 40 min a day on fitness, and as winter approaches the outside activities possible change.
It is important to acknowledge the different seasons of life.
Back to the article. Mathematicians know the power of walking; that's why it's a tradition for many week-long conferences to have a Wednesday afternoon hike. The best of course is the one at Oberwolfach but the hike I went on at Luminy is a close second. Many mathematicians run, play Ultimate Frisbee, rock climb, dance, etc. From my own experience exercise is significant in clearing my mind and thus enabling creativity (rather than rumination), and it has a significant effect on my resting heart rate and sleeping heart rate. Sleep in turn is very important to cognition and creativity. As I get older, the more I notice I need to pay attention to these things and can't take them for granted. Building exercise into my routine is crucial. Systems are important.
It's definitely about finding your personal balance of effort versus capacity to recover, although do make sure to read up on conventional wisdom and use that to guide you first. It takes a while to know what you're actually looking for.
To add an anecdote, my balance changes depending on my focus at the time. If I'm on a strength training arc, it's 3 days a week at 1-2hrs a session. If I've shifted focus to functional fitness I can train 3-4 times a week at ~40minutes a session, as it just doesn't take as long to do the work, and doesn't take as long to recover from that work.
Food and sleep are usually the limiting factor, I just can't recover fast enough and that is what over training really is, it's training over your capacity to recover.
there's a lot of bro science regarding overtraining. almost all of the time it's actually undersleeping and undereating, i.e. recovery is the limiting factor. back then i was single, didn't work full time and also had flexible work time, so sleeping 8-10 hours a night and eating huge heaps of food every day was the norm. endurance sports are a little different in some aspects, mostly body weight management.
i'm not the biggest fan of rippetoe. e.g. the article you linked is at least partially bullshit for high(er) level athletes (i only skimmed it though). it's important to keep the audience in mind though; it may be valuable advice for _some_.
The way I've heard it is 'what most people think is overtraining is underrecovering'. My brother is a sports medicine doctor and what he told me is that actual overtraining is pretty much only seen in real athletes after months of sustained excessive training. What most people go through is actually called 'overreaching' and while it's not optimal you can keep going if you recover properly.
as they say: "you get stronger on rest days". this applies to both endurance and strength sports. the trick is to use your rest days productively; it doesn't necessarily require being inactive (for those who really want to go all in).
also, there's the principle of polarized training (for endurance sports): "go easy on the easy days, go hard on the hard days", because if you go to hard on the easy days, you can't go hard enough on the hard days.
a lot of people are under the impression that giving 100% every time, every day is the best way, probably thanks to years of training montages of sly dragging sleds through waist deep snow and karate-kid ... idk, kicking a tree really hard or whatever karate kid does, when actually it just leads to exhaustion and burnout.
Most of the professional athletes I've met get 10-12 hours of sleep. Now that I do lifting I need a solid 9 hours of sleep to recover and I need to stuff my face full of food to make gains.
Not impossible but certainly something that a lot of people can't do consistently if they want to have a job and do other things in life. Getting a half day of rest is almost a luxury for many.
yes, i usually slept without an alarm and there's a very noticable difference of about 2 hours between training and non-training days (i.e. 7 vs. 9 hours). i'm not a professional athlete, i'm a motivated amateur.
non-athletes often think it's nice to eat whatever you want and not gain weight, but it's actually quite unpleasant to having to force feed yourself all the time; not at least because you start wanting to eat certain meals - with a purpose. it took me a ridiculous amount of time and effort to put on some mass.
i used to go to the gym because i was bored. when i didn't feel great, i went to the gym because i knew i'd feel better afterwards. the gym was my safe space and my default activity. now that i have a family conditions have changed considerably; training is usually done late at night, in between obligations or on a few "me time" weekend hours for longer bike rides. works well enough, i can't complain.
Spot on, the article does begin with this sentence: "If you are a competitive distance runner or cyclist who is serious about your sport, this article has not been written for you."
funnily enough, dedicated strength training (i.e. heavy squats) is one of the most effective methods to improve the performance of endurance athletes (especially cyclists).
The thing about cycling which is nice is it allows for your brain to decompress and wander into deep thought (assuming a solo ride) while tour body is physically working. Whereas mountain biking is more action and coordinated and quite fun but doesnt get me into a deep state if mind. Powerlifting builds muscle and does provide benefits (structural integrity especially for the end years of my life) but i don't feel rejuvenated more just tired after working out. I find that im not as sharp during the hour or two after from tiredness (for an intense workout). To be fair both cycling and mountain biking im totally cooked for something equivalently intense.
for me it's complicated. sometimes i do get into those deep thoughts on long solo rides, but i found that i couldn't really concentrate on complicated issues enough without neglecting my concentration on the road. i did have a couple of good ideas from time to time, but it wasn't a regular experience and highly dependend on the type of riding. moreover, i run the risk of forgetting about the good ideas if the ride goes on for several more hours and i fall into other deep thought mind traps.
if i do structured training i try to stay concentrated on the task at hand, i.e. pedalling technique, breathing, recovery (heart rate), keeping watts constant, controlling cadence and so on. i do long virtual endurance rides with the ERG on but tend to watch entertaining movies.
i don't seem to get into deep though states much during weightlifting, as the lifts require me to be concentrated and fully focussed and the pauses are too short to get lost on the one hand and require active recovery on the other.
the big difference here is that most people who want to use training time for intellectual improvement just listen to podcasts, but that's not really an option for me as i'm hearing impaired and barely understand anything.
Fair - i think my point is that there is some value getting into those deep thought spaces for benefit cognitive function in addition to the physical exercise. Not scientifically proven but i suspect it has a benefit.
But not before you have reached a rather high level of technique. Before that, it feels like a sustained fight against drowning that fills your entire attention like few other things do. I'd say the threshold to mentally let go is lower in almost every other sport. That state of a background task that keeps the kind from dozing off, it's leaving plenty of attention to the mind wandering? I rarely hear that mentioned by swimmers, the state of mind trope frequently occurring is "counting tiles", which rather sounds like as if even those with perfect technique and routine don't disconnect mind from physical activity all that much.
sorry, i'm not sure what you mean. i can't recommend any books or papers. on the one hand i'm not a scientist myself, on the other hand i have no idea what you're interested in or what is relevant for you.
I had a friend of mine who was a jock played in varsity athletes and was quite strong. He also happened to a be 100% average student in the STEM field. His professors were always shocked when he was the too student in the class - significant amount of disbelief.
Processing of visual information, especially on short time scales. Feedback mechanisms for balance. Adapting to changing environmental conditions (e.g. how much should a stride be adjusted on gravel, in mud, on damp pavement). These are all detailed tasks that are done during physical exercise, just not typically tasks that are done at a conscious level.
Don't most mammals have about the same number of joints? This implies a very small part of our mind is responsible for that.
Even pumpkin toadlets, who famously can't coordinate their landings, the problem isn't the size of their brain, it's their vestibular system.
I'm of the opinion that most animals are probably a lot higher up the sentience scale than is the current social consensus, but I don't think exercise is itself a major cognitive effort. Arbitrary games sure (not just the rules, anything social involves modelling multiple entities like yourself), but not the physical exercise itself.
I don’t think the point is that physical work makes humans intelligent in comparison to animals. I think the point is that physically active humans exercise aspects of their intelligence that modern sedentary humans do not.
While it's true that Boston Dynamics robots can barely walk, they can't write coherent and innovative stories, solve abstract problems, or other related tasks at all yet.
Not sure why this is so surprising, your body is at the very least the thing carrying your brain around. Having it in good condition would obviously maximize your brain's potential
Socrates was talking about this stuff thousands of years ago:
>For be you assured that there is no contest of any sort, nor any transaction, in which you will be the worse off for being well prepared in body; and in fact there is nothing which men do for which the body is not a help. In every demand, therefore, which can be laid upon the body it is much better that it should be in the best condition; since, even where you might imagine the claims upon the body to be slightest—in the act of reasoning—who does not know the terrible stumbles which are made through being out of health?
> It suffices to say that forgetfulness, and despondency, and moroseness, and madness take occasion often of ill-health to visit the intellectual faculties so severely as to expel all knowledge from the brain. But he who is in good bodily plight has large security. He runs no risk of incurring any such catastrophe through ill-health at any rate
creatine supplementation is supported by the literature to have cognitive benefits.
Also, lifting heavy does train your central nervous system too, which might be a pathway to better cognitive ability? (This second part is 100% bro science, though)
Yeah, I guess 'lifting heavy does train your CNS too' isn't too far away from what the author of this post is speculating also. The implication seems to be that physical activity is more 'computationally challenging', rather than 'cognitively challenging' like sudoku is. 'Computationally challenging' to me implies a higher level of CNS activation than 'cognitively challenging' tasks that employ conscious reasoning only.
> I've recently started attributing it to creatine supplementation, but I do wonder if there's anything more to it than that.
My boxing coach used to say concentration trains concentration (failing to concentrate in the ring results in automatic negative feedback).
I suspect that the focus you have when lifting (so much going on there trying to control your body while exerting at maximum effort), is helping your brain learn to better focus. If you are like most people who lift, you probably are paying attention to what is going in and coming out of your body, which also requires focus as well.
In my experience, focus is a skill that is learned, and like all things, is easy for some, and very difficult to master for others.
You may want to play around with not working out to exhaustion. There is a whole set of routines built around just depleting your ATP, triggering mTOR, and not damaging muscle tissue or creating lactic acid build up. The Quick and the Dead book by Pavel Tsatsouline is one such routine, it uses 10 sets of 10 push-ups and 10 sets of 10 kettlebell swings with resting in between (30 minutes total, 3 times a week). I've found it to be quite effective, there are other options out there. The key is that they don't deplete you, and you can go on to do things the rest of your day without soreness or inability to walk down stairs. YMMV.
It is not just that, but it's also because you have to apply a surprising amount of mental concentration in power lifting. Basically, you have to be hyper-aware of your entire form while you are lifting. From my experience that takes as much concentration as working on a hard mental problem.
In the articles hypothesis were correct this might not be a surprise, building a weight lifting robot would likely be much easier than one that could traverse complex terrain at even 4 mph.
Sure, you could build a weight lifting robot just by increasing it's raw mechanical ability. But to build one that's made of hundreds of strings only capable of individually lifting a single pound and coordinating them around multiple axes to lift hundreds of pounds would be much more difficult.
But there's really no reason to do that since you can just increase the raw mechanics.
A dedicated weight-lifting robot could have far fewer degrees of movement. It could essentially be a couple of pistons at a camber with one more powered axis for balance.
Magnus Carlsen talks a lot about the physical stamina you need to play chess, a purely mental game. Niels Bohr was famously a passionate footballer, who played at club level in Denmark.
Maths/Physics now need a full time career just to reach the current frontier of knowledge, you have to build on existing ground, Athletes must somehow take time to learn this knowledge, and by the time they have learned it, they are not as physically fit as they once were.
Roger Bannister, first person to run under 4 minutes for the mile, was a neurologist. He considered his work in medicine to be more important than running the first sub-4 minute mile.
Just because a person does not use a thing does not mean that he/she is not capable of doing so. Additionally, to quote my favorite math teacher, what one fool can do, so can any other. The issue is our most limited resource: time. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time doing things that further no ability. As such, I’m less than mediocre at both sport and and work. Becoming a good athlete requires an insane investment of time into diet, exercise, training, and study of the sport not only modern but past. To claim that an athlete is dumb is to make a prescriptive claim about what knowledge is valuable. The athlete has an intuitive understanding of physics, tactics, and strategy that others do not. The athlete may also have some formal scholarly knowledge on the topic as well. The physicist would not be capable of matching the athlete in use of those same physics with his/her own body without the same training regimen and time use; and should they swap time spent, each would begin to become the other.
Edwin Hubble, while not a Nobel prize winner, was a basketball player, football, baseball player, and pugalist. He also did track and field and waterpolo polo while studying Law at Oxford .
Working out makes you more cognitively sharp because it increases the rate of fluid transfer throughout your body and increases metabolism. Ancillary effects of this are calmness, endorphins, and regulated sleep. There I said it, no magic science required. You bring balance in, you get balance out. This ain't the type of cut throat science most of you on HN expect, but sometimes the simple explanation is the one.
How about working out makes you cognitively sharp because it requires COGNITION? It's not the kind of "thinking" we normally consider but your brain is working to direct your body.
Basketball is my favorite way to exercise and there is a lot of analysis of how to get my body to the right places to achieve a goal. Or how to deceive a defender and manipulate their body to the wrong place. Or simple shot mechanics or how to move my eyes so I don't lose awareness of other players.
I started dance because it's such a different way of moving my body that I never tried before. Figuring out how to do something and improve (even physically) takes strategizing.
Yep. I find climbing 100% mentally absorbing, and the problems and solutions are so far from my day job’s domain that I believe it helps with mental adaptability.
Running doesn't require much cognition (imho), my body is on auto pilot and I forget time has passed - but I still feel like I get the beneficial effects from doing it.
In my experience, the cognitive load depends on the speed at which you're running.
Jogging at a leisurely pace, I don't need to consciously think about the jogging process at all and my mind is free to think about the books I have been reading lately, or to listen to an information-dense podcast, or to plan out the rest of my week.
But that all changes if I switch to running at near my maximum speed for the distance I'm going to run. Then understanding a podcast becomes nearly impossible and/or it interferes with the running. Indeed, having any internal, verbal 'train of thought' is difficult, other than my internal voice metronomically saying 'left, right, left, right' in time with my leg movements.
This is a very good answer. Even walking on a treadmill requires cognition you typically take for granted. There are other exercises that are more obviously related to cognition such as mental math and crosswords, but physical exercise is likely in the same league.
FWIW, one set of snippets from Joe Rogan on YT included this statement: I believe academics underestimate just how mental it is to get through a hard workout.
> Even before physiological changes, there's something strange in moving. 200m from my house, my brain starts to have different ideas.
> I cannot keep from thinking that our brain and our legs are connected neurologically. They tap on the same space exploration abstractions.
Absolutely. Something happens during a bike marathon where my body and brain are eventually independent of my thoughts and I'm moving on autopilot with mild tunnel vision while thinking about complex thoughts, old memories, things I could have handled better. I can only attribute it to persistent eustress and the post-metabolic state of endorphin saturation combined with adrenaline.
That's exactly the state I get into on a long mountain bike ride. Right before I have a crash!
Which is to say some sports have a way of forcing you back into the present moment. It can actually be a good thing for those whose minds tend to wander.
Anecdotally, I find that I come up with ideas almost every time I'm on a long drive. There might be a shared mechanism, whether that's something related to navigation or simply an inability to occupy oneself in a way other than thinking.
I believe most of this, except that no one I know who works out a lot is calm.
If anything, I’m always looking around for empty syringes. They act like they are gonna climb a mountain then come back and try to make me do Beachbody and chalean extreme, then yell at me about what I eat ;)
Not saying exercise is bad, but I do not associate it with calmness. (I’m a healthy dude, you are not hearing this from someone 50 lbs overweight)
> I believe most of this, except that no one I know who works out a lot is calm.
Back when I tried exercising a lot more for a bit, I actually experienced way more calmness in my life. A part of that might have been that a lot of physical exhaustion brought about unparalleled ease of falling asleep and actually improved the quality of the rest I got.
Another part might have been the fact that for a while it felt like the "baseline" of how much energy I had slightly increased. It was easier to find motivation to do things and I didn't need to rely upon discipline so much as I do now, a zen sort of feeling instead of (as much) procrastination doom and fidgety thoughts. One might also talk of some minute cardiovascular/metabolism improvements as well.
Maybe I should take up more exercise again, it's been a few months and even though I hate actually exercising the benefits, even if relatively minor, are hard to argue against. Just need to find a podcast or something of that sort to keep myself busy and make the experience less mundane.
Though exercise alone won't have any really significant effects, you also need to eat right, take care of yourself in other ways (e.g. sleep schedule, mental state, any addictions or unhealthy habits), so there are a lot of factors to consider.
Disclaimer: these are my subjective and anecdotal experiences.
Letting you in. It was a joke about people coming at you and the contrast with health. I am a writer, it was intentional. Hope the wild ride was enjoyable!
A lot of gym people really do seem to be addicts and/or have at least mild eating disorders or significant body image issues. Exercise in general is good so it’s not necessarily framed this way. There is a lot of overlap between behaviors of people I’ve known with substance use problems and people who really like exercise. It’s just that for example drinking to excess on a regular basis has quite a few more drawbacks than a gym obsession.
Working out doesn’t by itself make you Albert Einstein or Dalai Lama. It just makes you better than you were before, at least according to these studies.
One could speculate why folks who are already prone to exercising aren’t necessarily calm folks but that’s just speculation.
Is this a thing where it makes a big difference even if you’re typically sedentary, or you have to be pretty active over a long period (e.g. years/decades) to make a real difference?
For me, the main benefit of exercise is immediate. However - the magnitude of the immediate positive effect is somewhat related to the intensity/duration of the exercise that I can tolerate.
So I would say something like "A 5k run would make anybody above a certain fitness level feel pretty good". Like, in a way that you'd notice immediately during, and after. For me, there's runners' high and good body-chemicals and a sharp mind the rest of the day. There's not as much of the good stuff if it's like a real strain to run that far. There's an optimal level of physical stress. Taking a sedentary person and chasing them through a 5k run with an electric cattle prod them is not going to help them feel good. Similarly, someone who regularly runs marathons is not going to notice much of an effect from a short walk at a slow pace.
How to balance this out (how much exercise do you need to feel good) is a very individual thing. Practically speaking, you just have to try stuff and get to know your body.
I will say though that marked changes in physical condition can occur over more like weeks than decades. So if you go for a walk and think "well that was a little bit nice, but not worth taking an hour to do", maybe invest the time to build up to something more intense like cycling or jogging, because, as anyone who exercises intentionally will tell you, it seems to be worth it once you find out what's right for you.
Because most stories are told through stereotypes, not through deep diving into every character's background and motivations. James Bond wouldn't be as fun if you got the back story about the Russkies he callously snapped the neck of and saw that they only took what he thought was a low key security job because he needed to pay for cancer treatment for his babushka.
I don't know... looking back at my career software engineers I've worked with have on a whole been overweight or skinny fat.
Honestly can't remember chatting to any of them about the gym - there's been a couple into biking or swimming but only really a handful that seemed into the gym or into doing sports of some kind.
As a software engineer, I would classify myself as a computer nerd, but honestly feel a bit out of place with a lot of ppl that work in the industry. I don't watch Dr Who or Star Trek, don't read fiction, and I enjoy extreme sports, martial arts etc.
It can feel like a strange dynamic, and I can see how thinking of a "computer nerd" brings up an image of Bill Gates or Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons for most people.
Strenuous resistance exercise also powerfully stimulates the central nervous system. It’s conceivable that the adaptations for better recruiting motor units might spill over.
The stresses that make body need brains and grow these brains and nervous system as a whole, are stresses that were encountered during evolution: hunger, need to endure (long walk, long work) and need to apply force (run fast, lift heavy).
When body experience these three stresses it produces brain derived neutrotrophic factor [1], which acts as a growth hormone for nervous system as a whole and also grows brain, in areas related to long term memory, higher cognitive functions (language, logic, spatial navigation, etc) and learning.
It works as if you can build "thinking muscles" which will help in every aspect of life.
E.g., if you barbell squat, you most probably will also run faster and you also will be more stable. Squats are not directly related to running, but they help nevertheless.
If you do endurange training and/or intermittent fasting, you will be more cognitively capable. Endurance training is not directly related to thinking, but it helps nevertheless.
So, yes.
An exercise for general purpose thinking is an exercise.
"Results: ...Groups of moderate (≈40) and high (≈49) fitness outperformed the group of low (≈31) fitness for inhibition and episodic recognition, whereas no significant differences between moderate and high fitness were observed (ANCOVAs). Breakpoints between benefits from VO2max for inhibition and recognition were estimated to ≈44/43 mL·kg−1·min−1 (multivariate broken line regressions)."
First, I think I should note that amateur boxing does not incur brain damage that is recognizable by contemporary methods. I see no studies contrary to that. Thus, basically, if you like boxing or other martial arts training, do that - having some exercise is better than not having any, and boxing is quite taxing.
Then, I should proceed to my main point: how martial arts training of someone's choice corresponds to the three stresses that elevate BDNF?
Typical martial art will train you for strength endurance. Strength endurance is an ability to exert about 30% of your 1RM for a prolonged period of time and training it is not directly a strength training neither it is an endurance training.
I think one should train for strength and/or stamina (direct relation with BDNF levels) and then take classes on martial arts technique (pattern recognition and reaction). This is how sambo/judo champions are trained, from what I know.
It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it matches my subjective experience.
I think better when I've been exercising, but it doesn't feel like I've given my brain a workout so much as it feels like I gave it percussive maintenance. It feels like exercise turns the sound of my subconscious from a buzzy rattle to a gentle hum, keeping it out of my way except to help. It very much does not feel like I've given my mind a workout.
Though I also have unmedicated ADHD, so my subjective experience of my subconscious might be different than most.
When I was in my 20s and 30s, my health varied a lot; sometimes I was sedentary and sometimes I was very active. But I never noticed a cognitive effect.
Now that I'm well into my 40s, it's very noticeable when I've been off the exercise wagon. Not day to day, but definitely on timescales of a week or two. When I'm active, my recall is sharper and my memory clearer. I also feel this with my diet (real vs. processed foods) and drinking.
Not the op, but I am 45, did a lot of sport till my 20s, I don't exercise anymore, since at least 20 years, what I notice now is the lack of proper rest: not sleeping enough, for example.
Exercise actually makes me numb these days and I need a couple of days to recover.
While immersing in deep focused studying or exercising my mind by learning new stuff, makes me feel a lot better and much sharper.
To each his own I think.
edit: a friend of mine who never did sports at young age tells me he feels better now that he goes swimming regularly at the age of 42, but who can tell if it is just because exercise is a new experience to him?
>Exercise actually makes me numb these days and I need a couple of days to recover.
Sounds like you're under-recovering. With proper food and rest, a normal intensity exercise shouldn't make you feel tired the next day. I had a similar problem and turns out I wasn't eating enough protein(I have to get in at least 200 grams when working out or I feel awful, idk why)
> While immersing in deep focused studying or exercising my mind by learning new stuff, makes me feel a lot better and much sharper.
I certainly agree with you on this. In my case, a healthy lifestyle makes taking on new challenges much easier: I'm less intimidated, and less frustrated by the slope of the inevitable learning curve.
My cognitive abilities at my actual age (mid 40s) improved significantly when I quit with my younger age lifestyle, much more than exercise could do.
Of course I'm not saying that exercise is futile it surely keeps the body healthy and that's extremely important as years go by.
the old saying "mens sana in corpore sano" ( a healthy mind in an healthy body) is still relevant today for a good reason.
My theory is that is not exercise per se, but the power drained by the excercise.
There's a good example about it in an episode of the BBC series Horizon where people are asked to solve simple arithmetic computations and then to do the same while walking at a fast pace.
All of the people involved need to stop to complete them.
The cognitive part of our brain is very power hungry and can't function properly when power is needed somewhere else.
I think that power drain from exercise can prevent becoming more and more risk adverse because it keeps us from over thinking things, the inner thoughts are mostly about negative outcomes (not specifically negative thoughts, just the outcome)
So theoretically we could gain the same benefits by tricking us into thinking about the positive outcomes.
I am not an expert in such matter, so take everything I say with many grains of salt.
p.s. I was walking when writing this and I had to stop to write something that made sense.
I'm in my mid 30s, and feel that same effect on the timescales of a week. I was particularly sedentary for most of my youth, and have only been intermittently active since my early 20s.
I also have unmedicated, diagnosed adhd. I view it as training my brain to STFU. It’s gotten good enough that in my every day life, I find that now, even a few sets of push ups can help me reset when I’m in a doom loop.
“Exercise turns out to be the closest thing to a wonder drug that self-control scientists have discovered. For starters, the willpower benefits of exercise are immediate. Fifteen minutes on a treadmill reduces cravings, as seen when researchers try to tempt dieters with chocolate and smokers with cigarettes. The long-term effects of exercise are even more impressive. It not only relieves ordinary, everyday stress, but it’s as powerful an antidepressant as Prozac. Working out also enhances the biology of self-control by increasing baseline heart rate variability and training the brain. When neuroscientists have peered inside the brains of new exercisers, they have seen increases in both gray matter—brain cells—and white matter, the insulation on brain cells that helps them communicate quickly and efficiently with each other. Physical exercise—like meditation—makes your brain bigger and faster, and the prefrontal cortex shows the largest training effect.” - Kelly McGonigal
When I read things like this I can't help but wonder why so many "gym rats" are... lets just say "not quite all there". Obviously some are far above, above, or of average cognitive abilities, but at my school many athletes/kinesthesiology students were embarrassingly, shockingly bad at math/science/logic despite spending by far the most time in the gym - and all the tutoring in the world doesn't seem to make up for it.
You restricted your sample to student athletes and kinesthesiology majors. There are plenty of people who work out regularly who don't fall into those categories.
The student athletes are, likely, being forced to seek out tutoring to remain on an active roster. Academics is not generally their top concern, and they're being coerced to see you. They're there to check a box.
I'm sure there are good people going through a kinesthesiology program, but it doesn't have the best reputation for attracting the best students.
Cal Newport talks quite a bit in his books (definitely Deep Work, but probably others too) about the linkage between walking or running and thinking creatively and solving hard problems.
In high school, I noted with curiosity that the cross country team had an extraordinary proportion of kids who excelled academically, going to top-tier colleges based on their academic merit alone. I chalked it up to an overlap between the traits required for both distance running and academic excellence: daily persistence, measured in hours, at something that doesn't involve a lot of action or cheering crowds. But there's probably more to it than that.
Military flight training is known to be like medical or law school for many people, spending all day memorizing technical manuals and regulations when not in the cockpit learning to fly. Despite military requirements for physical fitness, and the fact that officers need high fitness scores to get into flight school, many officers let their fitness slide in that environment. I found early on that making time for exercise had a very noticeable effect on my day-to-day performance, both in memorizing stuff and in the cockpit, and I rose to the top of my class. In particular, practicing golf (which involves a lot of finesse, but I also walked and carried my own bag) for a few holes after class every evening seemed to help with learning to execute precise maneuvers on the flight controls.
I thought long & hard about motivation and how I've kept it up. "Will power" is not it. And I've heard every conceivable excuse about why someone does not exercise. Here's a big one: "people will look at me weird." Or on the flip side, "All my friends exercise, so I have to, too." The great Richard Feynman had something to say about that.
And lastly, don't listen to people telling you that you need a regular schedule that you stick to, no matter what. You will never keep that up for long, and if you really hate some exercise, you'll stop:
> don't listen to people telling you that you need a regular schedule that you stick to, no matter what. You will never keep that up for long...
I've been running 6 days a week for 15 years now. What works for you may not work for other, and vice-versa. I definitely hated running for most of my life, and despised sport in general, but sticking to a routine definitely was the right solution for me.
Running is an exercise that is only easy to enjoy if you reach and maintain a certain level of conditioning. If I run once a week or less, I'd never get in the zone, but once I am regularly running 20+ miles per week, I can start to actually like the way it feels.
6 days a week is a lot for most people, but I'm glad it works for you. For me, it's easier to think of it in terms of miles per week. I can't commit to 6 days, but I can commit to 15 or 20 miles.
I hadn't really thought about "reaching and maintaining a certain level of conditioning" but that's probably true.
I guess I reached that a long time ago. I've been on a 3-mile plateau for decades now with no desire to run any farther. I definitely don't feel like just running is enough, so alternating cardio and strength works better for me. YMMV.
This comment reads antagonistic and oppositional. I don’t think you should have a monopoly on advice just because you’ve been doing something for longer.
Anyone can keep something up for a while. Eventually it builds up. In the case of running, you get knee problems, foot problems, and shin splints. If I only had a dime for everyone who's said, "You're lucky. I can't run anymore!" I'd have, well, several dollars.
You're right, I don't have a monopoly. Go ahead and offer your own. Do you have some?
Reminder for Hacker News readers to step outside more than once a month so you can realize this naturally instead of applying your booksmart brains to reinvent things that most people not glued to their screens already know.
The inclination towards reductionism by the more intellectually-minded folk.
We want to isolate a small chunk of a phenomenon and understand it really well, but in the process divorce it from its context.
We analyse cognitive performance in terms of a few isolated carefully selected variables rather than acknowledge that it is dependent many other variables present in its environment - physical, emotional, social
Good for developing expertise in a narrow domain, but perhaps not so good for developing a balanced worldview
It was once widely believed that for the body to be healthy, it needed the right balance of “humors”: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. That was partially right, but mostly wrong. We don’t believe that model any more.
It’s always valuable to reassess common knowledge. That is the heart of human progress.
Even so, the number of people in the comments asking for book recommendations on fitness and nutrition shows that many people here would rather cling to their comfort zone of digging deeper. You can re-evaluate words on paper all day, but it will never, ever compare to the understanding you get from actually trying the thing you want to understand.
How is asking for book recommendations an indication people are not willing to dig deeper? An intellectual approach to exercise is highly advisable. Yes, you can become too extreme and never end up actually exercising, but conversely a lack of knowledge can lead to poor outcomes depending on your goals.
I believe that the Brain-Computer analogy has been very harmful.
I grew up thinking of myself as a "brain on a stick" - my body didn't really matter and only my brain was important. I think read a bunch of science fiction that made fun of this idea, but I didn't realize it was making fun of it and I took it seriously.
You are not a brain on a stick - your body is important. Developing an understanding of your sensations and emotions is important. Developing an understanding of your deeply held beliefs and assumptions is important. Keeping your body healthy is important.
The first mistake is to exclude the brain from the body. The brain is just another part of the body. It doesn’t live in a universe of its own hermetically sealed off from the body. It is the body! Every region of you is you. Certainly, some regions (I hesitate to use the word “parts“ with all its mechanistic baggage) are more critical to your existence and operation, but that doesn’t have anything to do with your identity qua identity. The brain is seamless with “the rest”, and in a state of mutual and coherent dependence with “the rest”.
(Now, I can argue that the intellect as abstracting faculty is not material, but this faculty is not disconnected from the brain and needs the brain to operate, and so again, the health of the body affects even those faculties which, strictly speaking, are not bodily per se.)
We probably are not, but I'm not convinced that the opposite is true.
Stephen Hawkins did not notoriously exercise much, given his condition, and yet he died at 76, despite the odds.
Einstein routinely walked a few miles a day and that's all the exercise he did.
Many other popular great thinkers of the past spent a lot more time on books than improving their bodies.
In Italy we learn as children about Giacomo Leopardi, a very popular poet, writer and philosopher of the 19th century, according to Wikipedia "considered the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and one of the most important figures in the literature of the world", that His continual studies undermined an already fragile physical constitution, and his illness, probably Pott's disease or ankylosing spondylitis, denied him youth's simplest pleasures
Without evidence I reckon that all we can conclude is that only sometimes exercise is the best cognitive exercise, but we don't know why nor if it is actually true.
> Einstein routinely walked a few miles a day and that's all the exercise he did.
Do you mean to say this is insignificant? I think even if you don't work up much of a sweat or do some heavy lifting or whatever, a daily walk is very good for your health.
Without attempting to take away anything from your comment I will point out that a routine of walking a few miles a day is sufficient to reap most cognitive benefits.
Most people in the US don't walk a "few" miles a day, the average is 1.5-2.5 miles (depending on the study). Our very car-centric society makes it difficult to get incidental walking distances up. If you switch to kilometers, then yes, the average person in the US walks a few kilometers a day.
I'm lucky if I even get that without supplementing with intentional exercise and I guarantee I walk more than anyone else in my office (during the work day)
I'd agree with that. Unless I'm trying to increase the amount I walk, I usually come in under 5K steps a day. It's not at all hard to add a few tasks to get it up to a more reasonable number, and I do, but if I don't intentionally add those tasks, the baseline is very low indeed.
Yes, it is a relative thing, not a determinative thing.
It's hard to talk about this without tripping on ableism - but - Stephen Hawkins started out with such a great cognitive ability that a deficit later in life would have been less noticeable. Life is more than a cognitive experience, it's a human experience. Hawkins' human experience was not great. I've read that he was very hard on the people close to him. Even if exercise 'only' helped with dealing with emotions, that would still show up as a cognitive improvement - it's hard to think straight when you are upset.
> I'm not convinced that the opposite is true.
I'm not entirely sure what 'the opposite' means. "You are a brain on a stick"? It is evident that the brain does not survive without the body. It is evident that the brain is affected by what the body does. The body is not a stick.
The brain does compute, but it is not a computer. A computer does not actively take in information about the world. A computer does not form familial and tribal affiliations. A computer has a very limited experience of the world.
I always understood the brain as a computer analogy to be more that the brain performs computations, which seems kind of obvious but wasn't really obvious before it was adopted as a model. That doesn't mean it's entirely distinct/separate from the rest of the body at all.
Mind-body dualism is an older position than Descartes, but cartesian dualism is distinct from the Aristotelian hylemorphic theories that were popular for a long time before, and still profoundly shapes the way we think in ways that may be difficult to even realize because the world view completely permeates all modern western thought.
It does however become very apparent when you read pre-cartesian authors that their views on the soul are off.
If you equate the soul with consciousness, it's obvious that a potted plant does not have a soul.
If you view it as the animating principle, it's equally ridiculous to say a potted plant doesn't have a soul, since it's so clearly growing.
IME running allows me to solve problems and my theory is that my brain has less capacity to waste because it’s having to concentrate on all those things it needs to propel me safely, leaving my thoughts less cluttered. When I become fit enough I often find myself ‘waking up’ during longer runs, as though I had been in a meditative state. It seems completely plausible that the brain has to do more when running than when solving a puzzle.
Here's a short (unscientific) article (that kinda links to scinetific articles) about the link between lactic acid buildup and its relation in the brain. Sounds like exercise generates a natural nootropic. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/lactic-acid-...
This reminds me of something Goggins said, along the lines of working out is almost entirely a mental thing.
You access parts of your brain and your being when you’re giving everything you got to squeeze out that extra rep, or when you are going for a new PR with heavy weight. Or even when you don’t feel like working out, and you say okay I have to get my brain out of this and just do it, similar to life where I have to do work when I sometimes don’t want to.
The physical benefits (muscle mass, testosterone, appearance, strength) for me are entirely secondary to the mental/emotional benefits of working out.
100% agree. Working out for me is often an exercise in learning to be fully embodied and seeing what my limits are. At the age of 40 I finally feel like I understand myself a bit more on some deep level, probably because I'm not trying to ignore the reality of having a body.
Re: testosterone, for men it helps keep your marriage together, I’ll let you figure that out
Muscle mass starts to erode with age (I think correlated with decrease in test) separate from the looks, you don’t want to be losing muscle mass because it means you’ll be weaker. Being weaker makes you more prone to injury and increases your risk of all-cause mortality.
The other thing is muscle mass takes time and effort to put on, so you really need to start early, I missed out on my prime years (teens and early 20s) but better late than never I guess!
Peter Attia (Stanford MD, longevity researcher) great source on this subject
You don't need a lot of muscle mass to stay strong enough to avoid injury. Any form of regular medium intensity exercise will probably be fine from that point of view.
Of course if you want to build big muscles, that's fine. I am always a little wary of people extolling the health benefits of doing so. Eating well and doing a moderate amount of exercise will get you 90% of the way to any purely health-related benefits that you'll get from more intense exercise. And more intense forms of exercise carry their own non-negligible risk of injury.
Attitudes to health, diet and exercise seem increasingly to vacillate between extremes. There's a happy medium between sitting on your couch eating cheetos and straining to lift huge weights four times a week.
I love lifting, and I agree with this. Even running outside, though repetitive, causes you to constantly scan the ground ahead of you for obstacles (crack in the cement, puddles, dog poop, etc), you have the stimulus of the moving background, cars/people/stray pets to avoid. You may not have to think hard about theses things, but your mind is always processing and responding to the stimulus.
For me, I think I get the most mental benefits out BJJ. I'd wager any martial art with live sparring would give the same results.
When you're doing live sparring, as opposed to just drills, you have to make constant, near instant, adjustments to your defense, look for offensive openings, scan your rolling partner's movements and try to anticipate their next attack, all while being aware of other trainees on the mats (to avoid a random foot or falling body), and working to slow your breathing and maintain composure.
I totally agree regarding bjj and live sparring. I do bjj, a bit of judo and also climbing. I think climbing is a bit similar in the way that you need almost constant focus, doing small adjustments and so on. For all these three (and similar) activities there will be consequences if losing focus and starting to think about something else.
I tried out the square dancing class my boomer parents attend and found it similarly challenging. You're changing direction, changing partners, and remembering calls. Now I wonder if I'm stagnating by just doing trail run.
I think what's being challenged here is whether tasks that we consider "cognitively challenging" do actually require more "computing power" than physical exercise does. I guess it's decoupling "cognitively challenging" from "computing power".
Dunno, I feel the effect of lifting is mostly one of persistent clarity.
Whatever wandering thoughts I had bouncing around in my head before a set of heavy deadlifts, all that is gone after, because the effort of pulling up the bar doesn't permit anything but complete focus.
I'd argue against that. If you offer someone a choice between a suduko puzzle or a solidly difficult workout before they're allowed to get one with their evening, I'd guess most people would choose the puzzle. Drumming up the mental fortitude to force yourself to do something difficult is a cognitive challenge.
I know plenty of people who exercise a lot and are still idiots. I also used to be very fit, but I only felt cognitively sharper after learning a lot of different complex stuff over time
> So, here’s the speculation / thesis: exercising, that is, operating our bodies at a higher than baseline level, with everything that entails - energy regulation, unconscious balancing, spatial awareness, etc - requires more computing power than crosswords, sudoku, finding relations between measure theory and first-order logic through category theory, etc
Even if this is true (which seems plausible, but I'm not aware of it being proven), I don't think it tells us anything about the extent to which we're looking at "exercise inhibits cognitive decline" vs. "cognitive decline inhibits exercise".
Lots of handwavy / subjective comments led me to post this.
Personally I prefer understanding the acronyms as to what's been measured in the body due to regular exercise. No need for anything less than hard detail, imo. BDNF/VEGF expression, etc etc. Worth reading and looking up all the words you don't know yet.
I agree that this is a good idea overall, but also keep in mind that there are some major caveats:
1) A specific measure going up or down with exercise might or might not actually lead to the practical improvements that "should" go with it (cf. Goodhart's law)
2) Many studies are poorly designed or outright defective, and it tends to take a shockingly long time for people to stop routinely citing known-bad studies.
3) Even studies that lack fundamental flaws still often come with major practical limitations that tend to undermine attempts to generalize them. Exercise studies in particular are often limited to either "healthy" people of a relatively narrow age range or people who have a specific medical condition. In the latter case, there may be exclusion criteria that render the sample population non-representative of the overall population with that condition (e.g. in terms of overall severity, specific complications, or comorbidities).
4) Results are often summarized in a way that exaggerates their importance. A small effect size might be glossed over by emphasizing the large percentage of subjects for whom the change was statistically significant, for example.
I have found the specific nature of exercise to be very important in this regard.
Moderate cardio is definitely beneficial and helps to maintain some baseline. But, I have never really felt like I "stepped up" to a new level without reaching out to things like HIIT, heavy weight lifting and other forms of plyometrics.
Something about pushing your brain into the "oh shit I don't know if I should be doing this" territory seems to trigger the most powerful effects.
The logic makes sense, especially if you consider sensory negotiation its own special activity using various cognitive tools.
But also, there are some very interesting layers of things going on.
In talking to various athletes about running, the mental process and related result of the activity sometimes seems completely different from person to person to a stark degree.
As an example, some long-distance runners experience running as a de facto journaling exercise, as they are able to benefit from an ongoing internal monologue. So the results are similar to getting free mental wellness care for as long as you care to run.
So, that's also a lot of what we'd call growth and development going on.
They also report that this is unique to running for them, IOW they don't experience this sitting at a desk.
And that's just one example process and outcome, with others being similarly prized, if completely different.
(If this was something I experienced myself, I think I might be a distance runner too... It's pretty cool.)
+1 for the theory. I do my best thinking running, biking, and walking while I find sitting in place inhibits my ability to think dramatically. However, I also find staring out the window in a moving train or car conducive to thinking in a way staring out a stationary window is not.
I’ve got a really obscure personal anecdote. I have cerebral palsy. For all intents and purposes it’s really mild. It only really affects my left hand and slightly my left foot.
I’ve been an average runner at times in my life (10 minute miles up to 15Ks), a part time fitness instructor for slightly over a decade from my mid 20s to mid 30s extra.
What I noticed when it came to anything highly choreographed like dancing or a complex fitness routine and trying to listen to the beat and stay on beat, even though I can physically do the moves, it takes me a lot longer to process choreography than most people. It was mentally much more challenging and tiring than anything I do at my day job (software development).
I don’t see how simple exercise could be cognitive exercise. I could completely zone out while running.
Most of what your brain does is not available to consciousness. You can be zoned out and brain-busy. Placing your feet running on a rocky trail is an amazingly complex task.
I’ve been “fit” at various times in my life by various definitions - ie a decent runner, weightlifter, etc. But I’ve never been “coordinated” enough to be even average at any sport.
Luckily in High School and college, I could choose swimming and weightlifting as my Physical Ed requirements,
Even being a fitness instructor didn’t take dynamic coordination since I was in charge of the class, do moves I was completely comfortable with and rehearsed extensively. I was never a good student in a highly choreographed fitness class. I picked up moves here and there from other instructors and made them my own.
Interesting. I’m very similar myself. As far as I know I don’t have cerebral palsy or any other neurological condition, but I did grow up in a very “intellectually focused” family where any seemingly “out of control” activity was frowned upon. Have a feeling my brain just allocated a very large chunk of cognitive capacity to intellectual endeavors, and not enough to motor skills / coordination. At least not enough to be good at something like soccer.
>Robots still have a hard time navigating terrain and manipulating stuff
The author argues that doing things at higher pace should be cognitive intensive. But robots are not bad at doing things fast: if they can do things, they can do them also "fast" (at my understanding)
> But robots are not bad at doing things fast: if they can do things, they can do them also "fast"
Robots are not a single thing. You can't draw general conclusions about them like that.
They are objects designed by humans, they go as fast or as slow as they are designed to go. The design space is heavily constrained by physics. This means some things are possible, some things are possible but very expensive and other things are just not possible.
A FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile is a robot. It has an onboard computer, a sensor, and fins to change direction. It flies about 300 m/s as top speed and it doesn't do things slow. It can't. [1]
A Konecranes AGV is a giant self-driving platform carrying containers in automated ports. It carries a maximum of 70t and the top speed of it is about 6 m/s. It is also a robot. [2]
There are many kinds of robots. I intentionally selected here two extremes here to show how you can't make generalisation like that.
You gotta be real careful when generalising like this. A human-like robot is generally going to struggle to be faster and stronger than a human, even for a pre-programmed action. The robots which are faster and/or stronger are purpose-built (and usually are stronger because they are much larger). But also robots can be super-fast at object recognition. See automatic sorting machines, for example, which can process data extremely quickly to reject bad fruit/veg/cooked crisps/etc from a full conveyor belt. Everything is a tradeoff: there are multiple avenues in which robots will beat humans every time and many where robots are not even close on multiple fronts, not just cognitive.
Of course! I guess I should drop the ‘very fast’ comment (Though that is typical).
They can move as fast as they have been designed to move, if further computation is not required.
In most cases (repetitive work, stuff with relatively basic, straightforward computation - the human equivalent of reflexes), that means they’re basically constrained by their physical limits.
Those fast object detection algorithms require an extremely artificial environment (with high contrast backgrounds, tuned high intensity light), and are generally only good at sorting specific classes of items, at least last I researched them.
The algorithms involve do a LOT of down sampling too, if I remember.
They aren’t general purpose navigation or object detection algorithms, I’m trying to say, and won’t work at that speed in anything but a very controlled environment. It’s the problem that a lot of players have been dumping billions into for decades - Waymo, DJI, Tesla, and a million smaller names.
General purpose navigation in an unknown environment starts running up against real hardware limits right now at speed, even with essentially unlimited power budgets (aka a car, truck, drone with a huge battery and limited flight time, etc). Based on the context, I understood the question to be in reference to something portable, and most of those hardware implementations would be nearly impossible to fit in a humanoid style robot.
It’s going to take a decade or so for that to change probably, maybe a half that, depending on what Skydio and DJI have cooking.
Single datapoint: I ran 50k per week on average for 1.5 years during Covid. I don’t feel it changed my cognitive ability. I also deeply believe that exercise should make a difference in these areas. I’m at a loss to explain the lack of impact that it had.
50k per week is kind of a lot. I’m assuming you were training for something specific and were therefore on top of it, but that amount of work could definitely negatively effect your cognitive ability if you weren’t getting enough calories/protein/water/sodium to replenish what you were losing.
“Running” starts at about 10km/h: say 5 hours spread over a week is not a lot. Walking is about 5 km/h, jogging is in-between. Average pace is something near 10 km/h for Strava users aged 20 to 49: https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/average-r...
It is more about the metabolic situation that you put your body in vs an explicit pace.
Elite runners can easily be in fully aerobic zones at 4 min/km paces, while unfit runners could be getting into anaerobic zones at double that.
I’m not sure why but “jogging” is a term that isn’t commonly used these days. Perhaps it is because one person’s easy run can be pretty fast while another’s full out run (beyond 500m or so) can look like jogging.
I wasn't so much that cognitive ability was lower. It just wasn't any different. Basically, no observable impact on anything, positive or negative from this 18-month experiment.
I built up to that over a few months. Basically, three 10Ks during the week + 20K on the weekend. I was using the Maffetone approach so none of these runs were taxing.
On a sample of size one. I found that sticking to hard exercise (I am a runner, so intervals, tempo runs, long runs, etc) seems like it is making it easier for me to stick to hard exercise in the future. I have some theories about it (like upping my tolerance for pain) but I think ultimately it all comes down to willpower. If so, it means that willpower can also be exercised and you can increase/improve it to let you do things that are not necessarily pleasurable right now but give you delayed gratification.
Can't tell if it transfers from exercise to my actual work.
In a sense yes. I started a low carb diet a month ago and at this point i no longer actively crave those things. Not saying I would never eat them again but I have definitely lost the habit of doing so.
It works on multiple levels. After a month without chocolate you might find it much easier to avoid buying it, and if you don't have it in your home it will be easier to avoid eating it.
I used to drink at least one can of soda every day, and after almost a decade of regularly going without it, I can now drink a soda at a restaurant without falling back into the soda trap.
I'd argue that habituating lowers the amount of willpower required. I'd also note that it is easy to lose habits of activities that require a lot of willpower to create a habit around.
The brain is cognitively efficient for physical movements and situations you experience regularly. We experience this subjectively as opportunities to “zone out” or let our thoughts wander as we do the activity. If you run the same route regularly, after a few dozen times you’re probably not thinking much about the running itself anymore.
People learning new activities experience it as the activity “slowing down” subjectively as they learn, giving them more comfort and greater opportunity to think about further improvements. For example learning to ride a bike requires intense thought. But once you know how to ride a bike, it just happens and you can think about where you’re going, or whether you’re in the right aerobic zone, or how fast to take the next jump, etc.
So I would bet that to optimize the cognitive benefit of physical activity, it needs to be somewhat novel. Running on a treadmill or swimming in the same pool or lifting weights in the same gym over and over probably would not do it. You’d need some sort of sport (where other players are constantly creating novel situations) or an outdoor sport where natural conditions are always changing. Or frequently trying new sports or activities.
This is so admirably true. My workout story started at 30. I spent one year doing pull ups, dips, push ups, squats.. various weight training as well. At a certain point I had improved my diet just to change my workouts. I want as many blessings to resonate through me from the universe as possible. I don't even have any preconceptions of what those will be; I have done my best to accept them. The effects of time under tension become remarkable for mental and cardiovascular health if you find a routine you enjoy. Start with a group, friend who goes, many non-national gyms will even have someone let you around if you call in.
For me it was the local park having some shaded calisthenics equipment. Do a search in your area!! There is no pressure there, its outside, there is people of course it improves you! It can teach you all you need to know for atleast 6 months to a year if you let it.
Anyone you come across will either not bother or be very friendly. Most commonly the regulars working out at these parks have a cool and unique mindset and would answer any workout question for you. After a year THEN try all that fancy stuff you would have possibly ego-lifted, struggled/injured yourself on. You will be amazed at your performance.
Exercising is just more honest than using brain, for say, reasoning with words. In the order, I will say 1. Physical Exercise 2. Building Something that stands by itself and works, 3. Solving a well defined problem are all honest undertakings. In real messy world, we deal with ambiguities and people, and it requires some skill reduce them to the above three and be honest about it.
> Recent advances in AI, and less recent advances in computing in general showed that a lot of the things we consider “cognitively hard” - from symbolic manipulation to arithmetic, “drawing” and even reasoning - can be reproduced by computer machinery a lot simpler than we originally thought, at a (likely) higher than human level in the near future
Robots still have a hard time navigating terrain and manipulating stuff
...
> So, here’s the speculation / thesis: exercising, that is, operating our bodies at a higher than baseline level, with everything that entails - energy regulation, unconscious balancing, spatial awareness, etc - requires more computing power than crosswords, sudoku, finding relations between measure theory and first-order logic through category theory, etc
I don't buy it. Stuff like "navigating terrain" is something that insects can do often better than robots. It's simply not that hard for animals, which have specialised hardware for this (but on the flipside we lack hardware IEEE compliant floating point units).
Exercise is good because the brain is an organ, and general health is good for organs. And because of psychological factors. General and mental health have a huge impact on cognitive performance.
Cognitive training is not particularly effective because it's a lot of wistful thinking and snake oil (there might be something to it, but I've seen little evidence that it's particularly effective especially when it comes to transfer).
There probably is some cognitive benefit to exercise. Decision making under pressure, discipline, spatial awareness, etc and there would be some transfer to related domains. But I suspect the main effect is just health (which both is better for cognitive performance, and encourages other activities which are good for cognitive performance).
I guess it depends on what one considers "exercise". I don't think lifting weights in disgusting smelly rooms translates improved cognition by itself but I don't mind if people think it does.
That said, I experienced a real physical and mental decline quickly after I gave up my morning routine because it was too hot. I felt it mere weeks into the pause. Pretty ordinary.
Back squats are amazing. If you want to recruit even more muscle groups, you can try front squats instead. These are typically a precursor/supporting exercise for olympic lifting.
I’d go as far as to say that the burden of proof is on anybody claiming that regular exercise is not as fundamental as regular eating or regular sleeping or regular breathing. Reductionist, functionalist science has been extremely harmful in shaping how people understand themselves.
Let's suppose for a moment that the numerous studies showing the benefits of exercise don't exist and its influence on cognition is neutral. Shouldn't you move, then? On the contrary - exercise is absolutely necessary for our survival and minimizing the probability of a huge number of illnesses, from cardiac problem to cancers. So a person who is not exercising is basically neglecting their condition.
Now, when you add the numerous cognitive benefits to the equation, you would be crazy not to add some movements to your daily routine. Literally everything counts. I use every opportunity to increase my oxygen and blood flow - and I'm not surprised that the best ideas come when I'm not in front of my computer.
I don't do any workout at all. Nevertheless, I'm very physically active. I work from home, and in general I set my own schedule. Whenever I want, I can open the door, go out, work some in the garden, build something, or do any of the house chores - doing the dishes, making bread, cooking something, fixing something. It keeps me on my feet basically the whole day long.
I've been doing this every single day for the last few months, and it just feels so good, so satisfying. I feel sharp, in form, physically content. I also feel it gives me a solid emotional center, a calmness and a deep feeling of connection to the moment.
The question is, what is the exercise for? We already know from studies that there's very little transfer even between logic-related tasks (say, Sudoku and Chess), so what sort of carry-over could we expect from fitness to logic-related tasks?
I guess the answer will be something like: if you want to be a good programmer in old age, your best preparation is to program a lot and regularly. If you want to be a good mathematician, chess player,...., practice those. If you want to have a healthy body in old age, your best prep is regular exercise. You can do more than one, of course, but you can't substitute one for another.
Graham (inventor of Graham's number) also juggles quite well. A lot of mathematicians climb. His friend, Erdos do not exercise as much afaik from reading his biography (takes amphetamine...)
I think modern AI or for that matter engineering is fairly broken model for how the human brain or the human body works; and lead to these silly conclusions: It is easy to make a machine that adds two numbers therefor adding numbers cannot be "cognitive hard". Likewise it is easy to make a machine that runs fast, lifts a heavy object or stands one leg therefore ...
As for the most challenging activity for keeping sharp at old age: My guess is directly interacting with other people.
But if you think lifting weights work for you, then I am not going to argue against you.
I've heard similar evidence in the past about how physical exercise is "good for the mind". If the author's reasoning about the computational requirements for motion are correct though, perhaps we need to do a bit of digging into why yoga/meditation is also supposedly quite "good for the mind", and yet they are significantly less complex from a motion standpoint than things such as martial arts/dancing/sports - which don't have the same reputation. Would love to see some research done though!
There's a lot of literature on various kinds of cardio (esp HIIT and 'zone 2') and lactate production -> BDNF which is loosely understood to be very important for your brain.
Some more recent stuff on myokine release (from strength or cardio training) and warding off cognitive decline. Similar with training your balance (a parameter in exercise that is often forgotten).
More speculatively: crosswords and sudoku seem fine, but what about something much more cognitively demanding like doing serious mathematics?
> Recent advances in AI, and less recent advances in computing in general showed that a lot of the things we consider “cognitively hard”...can be reproduced by computer machinery a lot simpler than we originally thought...
> Robots still have a hard time navigating terrain and manipulating stuff
I actually think you're seeing the same thing. The way DALL-E screws up important details is the same as how self-driving cars work perfectly fine 99% of the time. The devil is in the details.
I did the stairway to heaven in hike in Hawaii. Started when it was still dark. It was exhausting, but in many ways it felt mind opening.
Certain physical experiences build neural connections that you can't get any other way. Just being in a position to slip and die will make you alert and releases adrenaline, and you need to focus. Regular mountain climbers are probably different humans. Plus the views were spectacular.
For me, I feel best running a couple of times a week. More than that and it becomes fatiguing, less and I feel heavier, my back plays up, etc. I say running, I mean jogging, and not seriously either, just a couple of miles around the neighborhood. While I've no idea whether this is the actual physiological effect, it does feel like an internal power wash of sorts.
As I write this, a family jogs past. It's rather sweet.
Exercise can also directly develop job-relevant skills. I've learned a fair amount about project management from my long distance running. And I don't think the idea that team sports teach you to collaborate and lead more effectively in your day job is at all surprising or controversial. As programmers it should be easy for us to see that these are just different instances of the same class.
I will sound negative on purpose, I wish to be wrong.
Everything so far in my life seems to be "if you want to be good at something, do that thing repeatedly, or the parts that compose that thing, repeatdly".
It makes sense.
So why would this be any different, wouldn't use your brain to learn, be the best cognitive exercise?
The story is about the brain computing power needed for exercise, not the physical aspect. Obviously, different kinds of exercise require different computing power. Playing a musical instrument likely requires as much brain activity as physical exercise, without much of the physical part, and should work as well to keep the brain active.
I know that one thing that really distinguishes humans from other animals is our ability to throw objects with incredible accuracy. Some of our primate cousins can throw as well, but not with such precision. Consider the amount of processing our mind is doing with each throw, especially in a fast moving game.
I have no basis for disagreement (although how many "only humans can" statements have fallen over the years). I wonder if a human proclivity towards organized sports could contribute, though. Organized sport also suggests organized practice and many opportunities for repetition. These could be required for accuracy up to physical and cognitive limits.
Infrared from the sun penetrate the skull and prevent inflammation in the brain. The effect is reduced dementia in people tha go outside. The infrared is reflected by the plants and thus walking in the shade of tree give increase of infrared exposure.
It affect every cell of our body (mitochondria in fact)
I try to exercise 3 days a week and can say it dramatically improves my mental performance as well as my overall disposition. Always find it sad when people are against exercise and at the same time seem like they could really even fit from the emotional psychological boost
There are a number of things that take effort, but I know I will feel much better afterwards and be happy I did them. But it takes so much to get myself to do them that they often don’t get done in favor of low effort low to medium reward things.
The book "Spark" by John Ratey also talks a lot about how regular aerobic exercise simply balances out a lot of systems, and very likely will help against everything from depression to Alzheimers.
I came here to post the same thing re: Ratey's work. Spark has been an important book for me, it's the reason I bought an exercise bike for my apartment. I've always worked out 2 or 3 times per week, but extended high heart rate cardio was something I always avoided before I discovered the neurological/cognitive benefits.
If exercise is so important, why are people not driven to exercise like they are driven to eat, sleep, and have sex? Despite so much research about the benefits most people do not exercise.
Our brain is made of different parts with different responsibility. Will exercising one part materially help rest? For body we have exercise schedule, does something similar exist for brain?
Depends on the relevant margin. If you get adequate sleep then sleeping more won't help (and may actually hurt) but exercise can actually raise the baseline. To use a very rough analogy, sleep is like the fan in your computer. If it's working optimally it ensures you can utilize the CPU close to its physical limit. But exercise is like upgrading the CPU.
i am right there with you our "like minded" individuals are gaining traction and so far this true every thing for me is backwards on this upside down inverted reallity of actuallity
Solving problems, learning and building new things all day can be very mentally exhausting. Cardio, sports, lifting; helps re-balance the physical with the mental. I am sure there are more scientific words and biological descriptions that I lack the vocabulary for. If I get too mentally focused on a project/job/problem and go days without matching it with vigorous physical activity, I end up not sleeping as well, am less tolerant, more scattered and brain fog tends to start rolling in. If I counter it with the physical exercise or physical energy expenditure the mental clarity comes back, I sleep better, and don't have hair-triggered verbal impulse control issues. Otherwise, if I let it go for too long, lethargy sets in - which I attribute to the body/physical and mind/mental trying to rebalance itself. I dont think it cares that it makes me feel like crap overall, more that it's neutral in just wanting a balance however that comes about.
I often refer to exercise as me taking care of my mental health - as opposed to being physically fit. That could be seen as "exercise [being] the best cognitive exercise". Looking at it that way, exercise creates a mental-out imbalance, which causes the stored energy in the mind to be stimulated and need more output creating the mental sharpness. Obviously I have nothing to back up the claims other than decades of experiencing this to be true for me time and time again; though I do believe there are better biological explanations than energy.