How Your Brain Keeps Your Body Fit
The mind plays a large role in fitness, exercise, and sports—almost as large as our cardiovascular system, strength, speed, and power. Get-Fit Guy interviews neuroscientist Dr. Bob Schafer to learn how habits and mindfulness can improve our training. Plus, which is more important: practicing 10,000 hours or being born with the right genetics?
Brock Armstrong
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How Your Brain Keeps Your Body Fit
I’ve been trying out various brain training regimens for a few years now. But lately, I’ve been really digging into a series of games that you play on your computer or mobile device for just a few minutes a day, every day, to boost your cognitive function. Or so it promises.
Lumos Labs conducted a randomized study of the Lumosity brain training system, and after ten weeks of training, the users improved their working memory, short term memory, processing speed, and overall cognitive function.
Cognitive Function and Fitness
Personally, aside from it being fun to feel like I’m taking a multivitamin for my brain by playing videos games every day, Lumosity (and other brain training systems available) have been showing some promising advantages in the field of exercise and sport.
In a recent paper published in the Frontiers in Psychology, scientists investigated the role of cognition and neuroscience in understanding, predicting, and potentially improving elite sports performance. Although that particular paper stated “we caution around investing too heavily in such methods at this point in time” I feel like it is a no-lose situation. Even if it doesn’t help me bust out a faster time in my next triathlon, I am still doing something better for my brain than staring at reruns of The Simpsons.
Enter, Dr. Bob Schafer
Dr. Bob Schafer is Head of Research at Lumos Labs, and one of the brilliant minds behind Lumosity, the brain training program I have been using. Think of it like a gym for the mind.
Bob got his first taste of neuroscience in the Stanford labs, forged his knowledge during a postdoc at MIT, then launched his own business to help people reveal and embrace their unique mental qualities. So, yeah, he knows what he is talking about. You can also find his work published in top journals like Science and Neuron.
Through his experience analyzing over 5 billion brain games played by 100 million people, he says that he has gained this insight: “The science world is still barely scratching the surface of our understanding of the mind.”
In Bob’s spare time, he loves chasing his own potential by running marathons, raising a menagerie of tropical frogs, and being a new father. This made him the perfect fit to be a guest on this podcast, and I am thrilled to be able to pick his brain all about brains.
To get the full story, you’ll need to listen to the podcast but here is the low down:
Form Good Fitness Habits
For some people, the biggest challenge in keeping fit is building a strong habit behind it. How do we form good habits?
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Check out the work of BJ Fogg, especially his Behaviour Model.
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To be successful you need to have the motivation to build the habit, the ability to make the change, and you need a trigger to remind you.
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Find “triggers” in your surroundings on which you can build positive automatic responses.
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Be sure to design your triggers when you have the best chance of success.
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Get your reps in! You have to repeat the habit, just like lifting weights.
Stay Focused During Training
I see a lot of distracted people at the gym, on the trails, and even during races/events. How can we stay focused on our workouts?
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Bob tells a story of running while he was ruminating (angrily) about his fantasy football league. It was a great way to make the time go faster but it negated the mental benefits of going for the run.
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Practice the skill of bringing your focus back to what matters. Your body, your surroundings, your self.
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Be more mindful with your exercise practice.
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Remind yourself why you started the activity in the first place.
Is Practice All It Takes?
To really excel at a sport or any activity, do you need to simply put in the 10,000 hours or is there more to it than that?
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Is it the 10,000 hours (Malcolm Gladwell) or is it the Sports Gene (David Epstein)? It’s the nature versus nurture debate all over again.
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Epstein is right that your body’s makeup defines how much work you need to put in.
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Gladwell is right that most people at the top have logged thousands of hours of training.
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What really matters is what happens one step before the training—the mindset!
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What made our sports heroes want to grind, work hard, feel the pain, and still come back for more?
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Carol Dweck talks about the “growth mindset” and that idea is a critical part of wanting to do the work and go through the pain again and again.
Habits, focus, and repetition are really just scratching the surface of how our brains can play an important role in optimizing our fitness levels. But I think this is a great place to start. I for one am going to start anchoring my desire to squat better in triggers around my home, do more of my workouts without distracting myself with a podcast, and do a much deeper dive into the “growth mindset.” And of course, continue playing my brain games!
For more brain info, mind tips, and to join the cognitive conversation, head over to Facebook.com/GetFitGuy, twitter.com/getfitguy or BrockArmstrong.com.
Also don’t forget to subscribe to the Get-Fit Guy podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play or via RSSopens XML file .
Mindful athlete image courtesy of Shutterstock.
About the Author
Brock Armstrong was the host of the Get-Fit Guy podcast between 2017 and 2021. He is a certified AFLCA Group Fitness Leader with a designation in Portable Equipment, NCCP and CAC Triathlon Coach, and a TnT certified run coach. He is also on the board of advisors for the Primal Health Coach Institute and a guest faculty member of the Human Potential Institute.