The Link Between Exercise and Brain Health
As the weather starts to change this fall we may be more inclined to turn inside and exercise less. With restrictions tightening again as well as we weather the storms of another COVID-19 wave, many of our options for fitness may be limited again. But for certain we need exercise in our lives for the benefits that it provides.
Today let’s talk about some of the most important benefits of regular exercise and how you can keep going this fall and winter in spite of the circumstances
Most of us are familiar with the benefits of exercise when it comes to cardiovascular health. It’s good for our heart and our lungs to get our heart rate up and sweat.
What’s just as helpful and important to know about is that exercise improves many factors related to brain health as well. Right now as we combat the pandemic we need to stay as healthy as possible and keeping our brains sharp is part of that.
Feel Good Neurotransmitters
The first beneficial effect of exercise on the brain is one that we often associate with long-distance runners and the Runner’s High effect but the release neurotransmitters that boost our mood come from any type of exercise.
Movement and increasing circulation is something we’ve evolved to do and so our brains naturally light up during exercise to release neurotransmitters that make us feel good.
Pushing hard during a workout does provide additional results as the hormones released during harder exercise further stimulates the release of endorphins which will then give us the euphoric effects of the Runner’s High.
Our brain’s reward systems also feel a lot of satisfaction from these hard workouts and will also give us a boost of dopamine.
Get an accountability partner or set up regular sessions on your calendar to exercise. During this pandemic, we need to stay positive and keep our brains healthy.
Boosting Memory
In addition to making us feel good, research shows that we can improve our memory through regular exercise. The increase in blood flow to the brain is the first reason why exercise has been linked to improving memory. It is often recommended that students take regular breaks from school work to exercise and help with memory consolidation when studying or between different assignments. The same practice has also been used by many of the greatest writers and thinkers, including Darwin, Thoreau, Emerson, Einstein, Steve Jobs, and countless more.
If there’s something important for you to study and remember, after going through the practice of reading through it, get out for a walk or do some sort of exercise to give your brain some time to process it and let it set in.
Higher Performance
The vast majority of individuals who perform at a high level in their lives are regular exercisers. On average, the people we see making the biggest difference in our communities and around the world are incorporating exercise into their routine at least four times per week as a way to stay healthy and keep stress under control.
Maybe you don’t see yourself currently as a high-performance individual but whatever goals you have for yourself if you start to treat exercise as a more important part of your routine you are going to automatically see a rise in your productivity and quality of life.
Preventing Aging and Cognitive Decline
Well-exercised brains are healthy brains. As we age we start to see declines in memory and cognitive performance but research shows that regular exercise is one of the best things that we can do to slow down this process. Often exercise along with brain training activities can completely halt cognitive decline for several more decades than where we usually see it begin and in some cases, reverse certain conditions.
Stress can be one of the conditions that lead to more rapid cognitive decline, including drastically affecting memory and so now more than ever we want to use the power of exercise to help us in fighting off stress.
Sometimes We Just Need The Reminder
We all know that exercise is good for us and important to get regularly but sometimes we just need that reminder of all the benefits it is providing for us. So to keep your brain and your body this fall, get your workout routine set. It’s going to help to boost your mood and stay positive during these challenging times and help to fight off stress while keeping your brain functioning at a higher level.
If you want more ideas on how to make exercise routines easy to stick to, read this here:
Make Exercise Easy To Stick To
Use These Strategies to Properly Return to the Gym While Recovering Your Best Post-COVID-19
For many of us, our training has been off of peak for months now. What’s going to happen when the gyms reopen?
I have a thought that we may see an increase in sports-related injuries and rhabdomyolysis as people get back to their routines and feel the urge to push as hard as they were used to before COVID-19 and gyms closing. Rhabdomyolysis (rhabdo) is the breakdown of damaged muscle that can occur in athletes who overtrain by doing too much work without adequate recovery. It’s a dangerous condition because it can lead to kidney damage in addition to the effects of overtraining syndrome.
As gym goers return to their fitness centres, we need to remember the importance of adequate recovery and training programs that are designed for making progress over time.
Here are some ways to approach getting your grind on responsibly once back in the gym.
Listen in to this discussion on the FlowCast
Ramp up your volume now.
Knowing that gyms in Ontario are gearing up for re-opening soon, the first thing that I encourage anyone who is camping outside the gym with their Zubaz pants and fanny pack to do is start to increase the volume and intensity of your home workouts now. Do more bodyweight workouts and incorporate the exercises that you don’t like because they hit your weak points. If you’ve been sticking to a program consistently throughout the last several months, try to do whatever you can to increase the intensity by adding weight to the movements. Throw on a backpack loaded with books if you need to.
If you’re stuck on what you can do to ramp up the intensity right now, it’s the perfect time to support a local personal trainer and get a sensible training program for returning the gym designed for you.
Start slow - you’re not going to be at your best immediately
So your local gym has announced that they’ve reopened and day one looks like the onslaught of people who’ve made resolutions at New Years to get in shape.
Everyone is training like it’s the zombie apocalypse and the only suitable soundtrack to fuel such intensity is an 80’s Training Montage a la Eye of The Tiger.
This is where we will see the risk of overtraining and potential injury run at a fever pitch in the oncoming months.
In the training world, we talk about having true one-rep maxes and training maxes. And this is the time to be extra conservative with the percentage of your one-rep max that you use. A typical training max is set at 95% of your true one-rep max so that you can continue to make progress without getting stuck at a plateau and also for reducing the risk of injury, which is especially important for training athletes.
It would be wise to consider working off of 90% of your true max or even 85% when programming your volume and intensity at least for one training macrocycle of 4-6 weeks as you get back into the gym.
After your muscles and nervous system have re-adapted you can start to resume a little more of your normal training, provided that you keep in mind the need for recovery and balancing the stress that isn’t going away anytime soon.
Implement proper recovery now
Many of us use the gym as a way to “de-stress” so we often forget that it is imposing additional stress on our bodies.
Training too hard - non-functional overtraining - is one of the most common sources of stress alongside things like poor diet and breathing patterns as well as relationship and work stress. In normal times we don’t have this additional burden of the anxiety surrounding the global health situation and recessions which only further stoke our stress levels.
Before you get back into the gym and start training hard again, identify the ways that you like to recover and restore your body so that you can plan it into your schedule. This is just as important for peak performers as the training itself and is one of the strategies that separate the world-class from everyone else.
If you are training hard and working hard, there should be recovery time included in your daily schedule with longer sessions in which you treat yourself with doing the things that help you relax and enjoy at least once or twice per week. This could be spending half an hour in the sauna after one of your workouts or going for a float to unwind and decompress.
If you spend a lot of time at a desk, your recharge time may look like getting out to golf or going for a lunchtime walk through the local trails.
The more that you see this as part of your job in staying healthy and well, the better you will be able to perform and fully engage in the other areas of your life.
Join Peak Performance Monthly Coaching
This month’s peak performance training was on functional overtraining and HRV tracking for peak performance. Visit the Flow Academy if you want more advanced training on recovery for training and performing your best.
7 Workouts You Can Do From Home (While Supporting Ptbo Businesses)
We’re facing a very difficult time for a lot of people and I wanted to share with you some resources that can help you to get your mindset right this week and for the duration that we are physically distancing ourselves.
7 Workouts You Can Do From Home
The listed businesses are local to Peterborough and as with all small businesses right now, keeping the support close to home is crucial. We all need to band together to stay strong and make it out the other side of the COVID-19 business closures.
Check out the following businesses on social media for many free workout ideas and to learn more about their workout programs that you can do from home.
Telsi Szanyi @telsi.flows - Animal Flow small group coaching through Zoom - Get the feedback you need to learn this fun but challenging bodyweight workout style.
House Fitness - @houseftns $10 home workout plan and gym equipment rentals starting this week.
Pilates On-Demand - The largest On-Demand pilates workout database in Canada. Get a free 21-day trial when you use the code FlowSpa at checkout.
Peterborough Yoga - @peterboroughyoga Livestream Yoga sessions on social media as well as new online members area.
Pulse Physiotherapy - @pulsephysioptbo Daily workouts for at home with minimal equipment on their Instagram page.
Sweat Happy Wellness - @sweathappypilates Small group pilates workouts through Zoom for guidance and immediate feedback.
Dohjo Muay Thai - @dohjomt New online martial arts classes being offered for members.