If you think muscles are just for meatheads think again! Exercising the body is one of the best ways to boost your brain power and intelligence.
We tend to assume that brains don’t go with brawn but that assumption is seriously flawed.
Researcher has found that exercise plays a role in improving learning and memory with experts believing that as little as 15-30 minutes per day, three times a week, may be enough to noticeably improve brain performance. 30 to 60 minutes per day, four to five times a week is even better!
Exercise that is appropriately challenging, like agility, can also be fun as well as rewarding. This type of training stimulates richer connections among multiple regions of the brain, tasking them to work together. You might not consider yourself very graceful or skilful in areas such as: speed, agility, reactivity or quickness, but they're not exclusive to elite athletes. In my training you will practise quick stops and starts, hand-eye coordination and speed drills.
Like High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), agility training burns a serious number of calories and tones your muscles. Think of a female footballers’ legs, they’re revered for their toned, defined legs which are built in part by performing rapid changes of direction at speed, something that's required for success in their sport. Involving all of the muscles of the legs, the aesthetic results it produces cannot be replicated by a single exercise or machine.
Taking your sessions outside of the booking; Studying + Slow Exercise = Success
One recent study found that “light to moderate exercise while encoding new vocabulary” had a positive mental effect. The study took a group of young German females who had no prior experience speaking Polish and divided them into three groups. One group simply relaxed in a chair for 30 minutes prior to listening to a set number of Polish vocabulary words and their German equivalents via headphones. A second group rode stationary bikes moderately for 30 minutes prior to listening to the same audio. A third group rode a stationary bike gently while listening to the words via headphones. The third group performed significantly better in a recall test than the other two groups.’
It is believed that light exercise might be responsible for this improvement by increasing the rate that highly oxygenated blood reaches the brain. When we exercise blood flow throughout all of our body, including to the brain, is increased. This means more oxygen and more energy, making our brains perform better.
Exercise also helps to trigger endorphins which improve the prioritising functions of the brain. Your ability to think clearer after exercising can raise your focus for two to three hours afterwards. This can help you come up with bright new ideas, block out unwanted distractions and make you more productive in your day-to-day life.
Now you’re exercising the smart way.