A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression
greatergood.berkeley.edu
greatergood.berkeley.edu
We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true (the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfunctions that are five times worse).
Any exercise where you think about your body as “you” helps with the dysphoria, and being integrated helps with a whole lot of other things.
Especially for men, who are conditioned to not give themselves permission to have feelings and sensations affect their behavior (and then surprise! Are affected anyway, with zero attempts at healthy coping skills).
>> Any exercise where you think about your body as “you”
what does it mean to think of my body as me? and can you provide examples of these exercises? thank you!
I am me. The intellect, the mind, the person.
My body is what carries my intellect, not completely distinct from the way a car or bicycle or wheelchair might. I don't identify with my body as "me". I have at best a cordial relationship with my body.
They feel like their bodies are just the mechanical thing that carries them around. They don’t think of the systemic impact of things that affect their body and consequently, their brain and mental states. E.g. gut health plays a major role in mental health, but this is not an intuitive concept for many people.
Some have argued this is an outcome of Judeo-Christian thinking, e.g. my soul is not of this world, this body isn’t my best body, my soul passes on when I die, etc. These ideas are deeply ingrained from an early age, during the time in which one is forming their concept of self.
And to your point, it has permeated Christianity more broadly, and arguably western thinking even broader still. I left the church in my teens. My conception of self didn’t shift until decades later after many years of intentional deconstruction. It’s a powerful illusion.
“And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral /…/this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, /…/ It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution–a biological or super-biological fact. There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.”
(Screwtape gives advice to use a “body doesn’t matter” philosophy as a way of making the human distracted or ineffective) “At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
They also saw their bodies as created by god, and thoughts/emotions as having metaphysical sources and consequences. Setting aside any specific doctrinal positions, the broader claims and beliefs of the church push one to think of themselves in some rather odd ways.
If certain thoughts and feelings are temptations from the devil, actually believing this explanation short circuits the systemic explanations for those thoughts/feelings, and leaves one to conclude that the body must not have anything to do with it.
I believe the Christian worldview involving a creator god more broadly points people in this direction not necessarily because of specific claims, but as a downstream effect of the broader philosophy.
> thoughts/emotions as having metaphysical sources
Maybe this is a Protestant or a reformed thing? Yes, the devil is a temptor, but pretty much every sect agrees that there is no way for man to redeem himself but through faith. It is our nature to sin, and thus we are perfectly capable of it without the devil's help.
But as a young child required to learn about how the world functions according to these ideas during the critical period of self-formation, such nuance was lost, and many foundational/implicit beliefs were formed and ingrained.
More broadly, I think it’s interesting to consider whether some of this is an unintentional side effect of the teachings, even if the texts technically communicate something else.
I know that for me personally, when I first encountered other schools of thought on the mind/body connection and my concept of my own self/body started to shift, all I could think is “holy shit, this is the opposite of what I was taught”.
For me it is more in the middle of my chest. This is considered odd in the western world but it is not unheard of. I am not my mind, I am not my ego, I am but a wave in the universe, it comes - it goes it will pass - enjoy it for a while.
I’m not sure there’s any clear answer to this as it touches on so many known and unknown unknowns. But, the assertion is that there most people (especially in western intellectual traditions) would consider wherever their brain is to be them (see also the concept of “brain in a vat” etc). This may or may not be true for you specifically.
What's gonna happen when "your brain" recognizes your old body in with another head? Will "it" get horny? Jealous? Angry? Happy?
Phantom pain and stuff like that comes to mind and the question of how many dimensions (not levels on scale) of consciousness there are in this physical world/reality ...
That's a reasonable belief, but some people do not feel that way.
If I had my foot amputated am i still me? If i had my mind transplanted into a different body am I still me? etc. I doubt there are any good answers that are more logical than "I feel this to be true".
> I don't understand your reference to the western world
Some religions believe that people have a soul that is separate from the body, which contains a person's essence (And say, goes up to heaven when they die or otherwise continues on after death). Even among people who don't buy that, it sets the stage (even perhaps just subconciously) for other dualist beliefs where the body is separate from your "essence" (however you want to define that)
If not, then I wouldn't use the embodiment/integration argument to define where "you" is, as the brain can learn to turn just about anything into extra limbs or senses, if you use it frequently enough.
If you keep going down the rabbit hole of looking for “you”, the only consistent answer that comes up is that there is no single or stable center, and that the boundaries of “you” are not so easy to find. Going deeper still points to the feeling of “I” being nothing but a useful illusion, and most importantly, just another feeling that you experience alongside other feelings like happiness or anger.
Some would argue that your whole world is you, and that our internal states and experience of the world are inseparable from the environment and people around us.
This is not a metaphysical claim, but a more broad statement about the systemic factors that influence what it’s like to be you.
I'm in agreement with that; in a way, it's a superset of the point I was making. What is or isn't "you" feels variable, fluid. An experienced driver might find that, when driving, their sense of self extends to encompass the car. I definitely felt this when getting into "state of flow" while playing some first-person videogames. The ideas of "state of flow", "immersion", "becoming one with something", all seem to point to, or in some cases be a case of, the fluidity of the sense of self.
> Going deeper still points to the feeling of “I” being nothing but a useful illusion, and most importantly, just another feeling that you experience alongside other feelings like happiness or anger.
Useful illusions is all we have. As for "just another feeling", I can entertain that thought, and I find it curious, but I haven't really experienced this frame of mind/perception yet. Or maybe I did, but I didn't realize it, so I don't have the memory associated with the phrases you used?
> This is not a metaphysical claim, but a more broad statement about the systemic factors that influence what it’s like to be you.
I appreciate you going for the more "materialistic"/non-spiritual take. I'm not denying the variety and richness of experiencing the world and one's self in it. I was just taken aback at both broad dismissal of "brain / body separation" and it being justified entirely by spiritual and experiential reasons. My point about driving meshes with my other comments (including this one) like this: we know the "sense of you" can be extended to and beyond the body. But if, instead of extending it, you try to contract it, then without crossing into metaphysics, you'll stop at the brain. This is what I believe makes the brain/body distinction meaningful: not what you can make part of yourself, but that which you can't take away.
Dunno about the other poster, but I can promise you I will not.
I think it's kind of a pointless exercise to try to draw a physical boundary of what's "me" and what isn't, but carrying that exercise a bit further: How much of the spinal cord can I exclude in my "sense of me" before I "cross into metaphysics"? If I drop my eyes from my sense of "me", seems like I could also drop the neurons in the brain that are responsible solely for visual processing of input from them. Or is that a step too far and "into metaphysics"?
Heck, I think the classic nerd brain-in-a-meatsuit position doesn't really stop at the brain here either. E.g. I think it places an accurate simulation of one's brain running on different hardware on about the same level as the meat brain, and "you" wouldn't know the difference. That's just not a thing we can do (yet?). Does that position cross into metaphysics?
In practice, I "contract my sense of self" when it comes to my thoughts too, which (presumably) all happen in the brain. I often find it useful to ask "where did that thought come from?" and give an external account ("ah, I picked it up from X") and let that have some bearing on the next thought. I also have "intrusive thoughts"; the act of labeling a thought an "intrusive thought" is (arguably, partially) an act of contracting one's sense of self to exclude that thought.
I'm pretty sure this conversation had "crossed into metaphysics" by the time discussion about expansion/contraction of one's "sense of you" was happening; not when the contraction reached the brain.
This was me for most of my life.
Yoga has been life changing. Cultivating full body awareness and presence opened my eyes to states of being that I didn’t know I was capable of experiencing.
I can feel the subtle changes in strength each day, or a touch of soreness, or the exact spot that anxiety has settled into in my gut.
Gaining the level of focus needed brought with it a deeper and broader awareness of my emotional states, and the realization that I have some separation from them, i.e. they != me. This in turn helped me unwind some big things I’d been dealing with in therapy.
In retrospect, it makes so much sense to think of my body as an integral part of who I am and how I feel.
But that’s a mode of thinking that I was certainly never introduced to as a kid, and never experienced by default.
I don't think that it's unique to the mind body connection either. It's very popular for people to try and look at things in isolation, to try and "scientifically prove" that what they are doing is efficacious, to distill to first principles.
In an academic context this is absolutely the correct thing to do.
But for our lives? You are a human being - you evolved to think, to make love, to run, to get outside and touch grass, to labour for things, to... well, we are general intelligences - generalists.
There is something to be said for accepting that and not looking for the "efficiency hack" that allows you to minimise what it is to be the thing that you _are_.
Much later I discovered contemporary dance, quit my phd in machine learning and became a professional dancer, which really deepened my body awareness and transformed my relationship to being a body even more.
I remember, in the beginning of my dance career, after a three month dance intensive I applied to a (Haskell) programming job again to finance my dance education and went to a computer science conference. It was a bit of surreal experience. The people at the conference were very nice and intellectually curious people and I liked them, but the contrast to the environment in dance communities was very strong. I felt like almost everybody there thought of them-self as a brain, piloting a body like a big mecha. In the dance environments, even during lunch breaks etc., it always felt like there was a lot of subtle awareness in everybody about their own body, the other bodies in the space, the distances and empty space between bodies, a non-verbal channel full of quiet energy and information. In the computer science conference this channel was just dead.
Tai chi has a warmup that’s an easy shift into standing meditation.
I did a lot of teaching of yoga and my primary responsibility was giving people space to be that.
After that, the more cardio exercise you get the better...
Checks username... yeah that checks out. ;)
Something that struck me years ago was in the documentary about Philip Glass - Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts. He did a weekly physical class that is meant to tie mind and body together (I forgot the name, I watched this like 15 years ago). As he said he did it for like 5 years and felt like he got nothing out of it but did it regardless, until one day it just all synced up and he 'got it'.
A similar thing happen with me over the years, the more I got out and moving, the less I found myself involved in the realms of high intellect. Not in an 'ignorance is bliss' kind of way, but not identifying with it as much. It went from "why dance, lift, walk etc - it achieves nothing" to, that is it. It is the flow of the world. It doesn't achieve anything because it doesn't have to, it is a happening, like all life and the universe itself is but an happening. I have had a very similar experience to you with these conferences, it just feels kind of dead in a way, or more you can sense the lack of potential.
That disconnect between the bring and the body is something I have seen many times with those that partake in Buddhism and its many flavors. It was Ajahn Brahm said when he was in university and beginning his path, that one day he was talking with other students and professors and suddenly realized that he did not want to be like these people and that the same path as them, to be a brain and nothing more. He is now a Theravada Buddhist in Western Australia.
In fact in my yogic training, we learned to apply the 'i have' vs 'i am' as much as possible - directly opposite of what you are saying.
As someone growing religiously right now, I like the framework of the body being a vehicle for the soul (or at least, the mind) resonates a lot more.
But so is being fully within your body and not fighting it.
As well as disciplining it and removing any disturbances.
[1] There are Buddhist yogas though, mainly from modern day Bangladesh that were preserved in Tibet, for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Dharmas_of_Naropa and the trul khor exercises. A Baul I've been lucky to practice with a little talks about it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JZ4__GTbjA
That said, weight training completely transformed my relationship with my body. You can only lug a big hunk of iron into the air so many times before you start thinking about how much we really have in common with a gorilla. Yeah we grew opposable thumbs and a much more active prefrontal cortex, but 96% of our DNA is the same as theirs after all. By the pound we're mostly monkeys or something like them and it's a bit conceited to imagine otherwise.
If you're a knowledge worker who sits in a chair and thinks all day it's easy to believe you're nothing like a monkey, but strenuous exercise dispels that notion because it recruits all of your body's monkey systems and makes all of the parts of you work together. In retrospect it shouldn't be surprising at all that letting most of your anatomy wither away is unhealthy and puts you out of balance. It's like getting your car serviced but telling the shop that you only want them to look at the electronics.
This is a completely off-topic tangent, but as a fellow non-religious person I'm sorry: Being non-religious and being an atheist are mutually exclusive positions.
Being non-religious means you are apathetic to religion thereof. God(s)? Souls? Afterlife? Commandments? Nope, you don't care about anything concerning religion one way or another.
Being atheist means you believe in no god, no souls, no afterlife, no commandments, and so on. This is, ironically, a form of religion. You care about believing in no religion.
Some people are agnostic, meaning they are religious but don't subscribe to a particular god or doctrine. However no one makes the distinction between atheism and non-religious that you're making here. It may have something to do with the fact that society in the US is so pervasively religious that the only way to escape it is to explicitly identify yourself as an atheist.
Being non-religious means you simply aren't concerned. Are there gods? Great. Are there no gods? Awesome. Jesus is the one God? Okay. Zeus leads his pantheon of gods? Nice.
Atheism meanwhile is a deliberate belief in no religion. It's different from simply not caring about religion at all, because you do care about religion insofar as to not believe in it.
The way I see atheism is that a belief in no religion is, by its nature, a religion. Joe is a christian and believes in Jesus, Bob is an atheist and believes no god; both are merely two sides of the same coin. You can't call yourself non-religious if you believe in a religion, whatever the specific form.
Being non-religious means you don't care; it's not that you don't believe, you simply could not care less one way or another. Wikipedia appears to call it apatheism[1] and more broadly irreligion[2], but semantics aren't the focal issue here.
Agnostic means you believe it's impossible to know whether god exists or not.
I do agree with what you're trying to describe, that many people in some European countries just don't care one iota about religion. I don't think Americans can really understand that without living in a secular society. It's such a non-thing in our lives that, non-religious, agnosticism and atheism, etc. all tend to get mixed into one.
Society has become so secular that those technical definitions have become essentially meaningless. God doesn't exist/I've given it no thought/I don't know if a God exists/I don't acknowledge the existence of supernatural entities all are essentially the same position because it takes up so little of our time or brain power and has so little consequences on our lives.
I stress "some" countries as some European countries, or just small parts of those countries, are still fairly religious.
It sounds like you're conflating meditation-the-exercise with spiritual and religious approaches.
Fundamentally they are unrelated. Taking it to the extreme one can consider the mind to be a process produced by the brain+, no soul involved. Taken that way, meditation is no different than weight lifting. The same way a muscle+ specialises itself depending on training (endurance vs strength vs explosive vs volume) the brain (and thus the mind) also specialises in whatever it gets most exposed to. The same way one can lay out a physical workout plan for a specific desired outcome (including rest), one can lay out a mental workout plan for a specific desired outcome (including rest). The latter is meditation.
Meditation may exist in religious contexts, e.g Buddhist or Zen, but even then many forms are in practice detached from any religious belief, with no koan or mantra. e.g Ānāpānasati (sit, and simply watch the breath) and Sōtō shikantaza (meditation with no objects, anchors, or content, striving to be aware of the stream of thoughts, allowing them to arise and pass away without interference). These are fantastic tools to unlearn bad (sometimes traumatic) mental habits, just like one learns to have smooth but effective muscle action instead of being tense and twitchy and forcing it through.
+ I'm using "brain" as a shortcut for a system that is vastly more complex, just as I use "muscle" for a system that is equally as complex.
These practices date back thousands of years, and likely came out of the understanding of the importance of meditation for a healthy society.
The importance of meditation, yoga-like practice and so on has been muddled in our neo Christian western cultures.
Christianity separates mind, body and soul.
So perhaps now US style Christian prayer has become more about worship and less about self awareness.
Anyways, as someone who identifies both as a computer scientist and as a dancer, I can definitely relate to your experience:-)
I don't feel I can achieve this in my flat therefore instead of switching my whole career as you did, I'm trying to move to a big peace of land we're I can be / have to be more active.
I do think so that IT is growing more in a less super nerdy (I don't move) area.
Plenty of my friends got more active over the years
We are RE-learning. Look at all the "new science" on psychedelics. Or gut bacteria. Etc.
I'm not sure what the bottleneck is...we did not evolve to sit all day, inside, at desk, gazing into screens. It really is *that* simple.
p.s. While nothing revolutionary new per se "The Comfort Crisis" by Michael Easter goes a solid job making the case for "this is where we came from, stop thinking where we are is compatible."
Fair point. I got accused of the “noble savage” myth recently in another post and I went the wrong way with it. In trying to be better stewards of the natural world we are looking at vestige civilizations that never lost it, but the fact of the matter is that if you watch history shows, one I’m thinking of was a recreation of feudal life in Tudor England, Western Europeans used to “know” many, many of these things too, but they forgot it all in the Industrial Revolution, then encountered civilizations that hadn’t forgotten, and ground them to dust, instead of remembering.
After hundreds of years of trying to solve problems with the same level of thinking that created them, there’s always a set of people who are asking questions about the trip we are on. There’s a fine line between pastoralism and compromise that we haven’t worked it out yet, and we don’t even always see it when it happens.
There’s a circumstantial chain of evidence out there that David Hume injected Eastern Philosophy into The Enlightenment. If that’s even a little true, this big philosophical Step Forward was really a step “back”, or maybe sideways.
And I think we still don’t know where the Stoics got their ideas from. Themselves, or Buddhism?
And in the gym one can only make significant gains by effectively controlling and overcoming their own response to pain and the body telling you, 'no - stop stop stop!' Why would truly effective control and mastery of our minds be any different? And from there you're already 9/10ths of the way to 'inventing' Stoicism. Somehow this reminds me of a really old (and fun) Arnold interview [1]. His behavior, attitude, and responses there (and even in general, really) really hit on Stoic values.
What I love about Apple Vision Pro is that it has the potential to solve this!
After that, the more cardio exercise you get the better...
What are some examples of this?
She's in some sort of program now that if I understand what they're actually doing, they're trying to manage the vagus response.
I'll never be one of those athletes who lets go of conscious control and runs off muscle memory, but I've really enjoyed learning enough about my body that I can use it the way it was designed. It feels good when you go from "some part of me is always hurting" to "every step I take recruits muscles from foot and ankle to upper back because I learned how to use all of them against gravity".
Oh but you absolutely must try it! I assume being in the zone mentally is a familiar thing to you, so you really ought to try the physical equivalent!
A lot of people feel this way, but the reality is that we already do almost everything without conscious control, we just don’t tend to notice.
Not to mention the majority of the systems in our body are also beyond conscious control, and for many, beyond awareness completely (e.g. the nervous system).
The book “Flow” is a really interesting read, and describes how one’s approach to daily life can lead to something closer to that athlete’s state.
This is closer than most people realize.
It's reaching for the green button and hitting the red one instead. It's driving to the store near your office and ending up driving to your office instead. It's forgetting to drop your kid off at daycare.
“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.” — Thucydides
The prevalence of psychotherapy perpetuates this approach with promotes talking over countless problems with some pseudo-science witch doctor while having a horrible lifestyle that will cause endless ones to appear.
Just like "meditation" is many different things, and "exercise" is many different things, and "healthcare" is many things, and "thinking" is many different things, "psychotherapy" is many different things.
One of the first things by current therapist asked me was more or less how embodied I was. I suspect of all the relationships with other people in my life, the one with my psychotherapist is the one that's most likely to be help me build out a fuller relationship to my body in the way the grandparent comment is advocating.
The therapist before that focused on behavioral "lifestyle" changes when feelings came up, in a way that I guess superficially follows the "I am a body" model, but really felt like it only added distance and abstraction to my relationship to myself. I guess that approach was grounded in a scientific evidence base that those kinds of interventions are what moves metrics.
If we reduce ourselves to a bunch of "computers" there's not much left for the stuff that actually matters, like the actual awesomeness that is having a body, which is highly sensitive and able to experience amazing things.
This does not follow, except for stripping away the religious/spiritual part. Computers are amazing! So is hardware! And so is the dance of software and hardware that makes magic happen.
I've seen nothing so far in this whole thread that would convince me I should stop thinking about my body as the meatsack carrying my brain, as every argument I've read so far triggered my "religious/spiritual mumbo jumbo" detector quite hard.
This is not to say the body isn't an important and tightly integrated part of the experience. But the fact remains that a hand or a heart or a lung can be removed or replaced without loss of self. A brain can't.
Agreed. Sounds like a number of people have found a spiritual way to look at this, which seems a bit like a kind of quasi-religion, similar to the mystical aspects of Zen or yoga.
You seem worried people have found a deeper connection to their bodies and then, for some reason label it as “spiritual” or “mumbo jumbo” and go on trying to diminish their experience, why ?
Personally, the more I see of this anti-spiritual enforcement, the more I see intellectualism and science becoming the dogmatic religion of the Catholic Church when it was illegal to have unorthodox ideas. Interestingly, true mystics and fee thinkers have always been attacked.
If people like to think their more than just their brains, and instinctively they feel this is accurate, what’s it to you ? Why go on the internet and try tell people otherwise. It’s their business and if others want to share that view well that’s none of your concern. It’s also ok to debate the point sure, just be respectful?
None of these posters are hurting anyone by discussing their ideas or feelings?
> "It’s also ok to debate the point sure, just be respectful?"
Could you please explain where, in my previous comment, I wasn't being respectful?
I was simply observing that the way people often talk about these ideas, including in this thread, resembles spirituality and religion. Which is true.
> "Why go on the internet and try tell people otherwise."
This subthread started with you saying "This is why I think all the 'meatbags' and 'hardware running on software;' analogies are actually really primitive and silly."
So, in your own words, "if people like to think [that,] what's it to you? Why go on the internet..." blah blah blah.
You can dish it but not take it, apparently? You're making a much stronger attempt at policing than anything I said. Perhaps you're projecting something onto me?
In any case, you seem to be having a problem with a false dichotomy. It's not as though any of us are saying our bodies don't exist, or that there's no interaction between our bodies and minds. There's lots of well-established science on that. See the last line of the comment by TeMPOraL that I originally replied to.
Agreed. Sounds like a number of people have found a spiritual way to look at this, which seems a bit like a kind of quasi-religion, similar to the mystical aspects of Zen or yoga.
You wrote that?
What I don’t think is healthy to new ideas is bashing anything seemed spiritual with rationality and science.
They can coexist just fine so long as either side isn’t too dogmatic.
Personally, I think it's too common that people conflate spirituality and religion with shady institutions, which exist just as much in science and engineering as anywhere else.
But it's a different case where you have a whole thread of comments that reject out of hand the obvious framework of thinking that yields good results and good predictions, to replace it with a more fuzzy framework of thinking that goes against observable evidence, and recounting stories of "getting it" after meditation or doing yoga for 5 years or such. It's one thing to enjoy and recommend different kinds of experiences of self, and we know the mind is quite malleable in that regard. But the brain/body split isn't just an experience, it's an actual model that's useful in dealing with objective reality. If someone is trying to replace that with some embodied wholesome "me is my body" or "me is universe" view, then that is pushing spiritual mumbo jumbo into scientific and pragmatic areas of life, where it doesn't belong.
And if someone bashes people for having that more mechanistic/objective model inform their perception of self, then... well... when did it become bad to look at the world with clear eyes instead of having your head in the clouds? Or is it the dreaded, bad, no-good "Western philosophy" again?
Here's a related observation that tipped me a bit away from thinking about my body as the meatsack carrying my brain: cutting off a hand doesn't cut off the experience or sensation of having a hand. (E.g. people with missing limbs have phantom pain.)
Lots of emotions are at least partly "embodied". People feel love in the chest. Fear in the stomach.
Not sure about anybody else, but I feel frustration in my elbows. I strongly suspect that if my arms were removed, I would still feel frustration in my elbows. I don't think removing my physical arms would remove all the ways "having arms" is baked into my experience. Even if an external physicalist account accurately places those phenomena "in the brain" and not "in the arms", that's not really all that relevant to an internal account of someone actually having the experience.
As I see it, a human's brain-from-the-inside (mind? soul?) is "body-shaped" in a lot of ways. When I hear warnings against "reducing ourselves to a bunch of 'computers", I read them as prompts to recognize this. As warnings against recognizing and engaging with *only* the parts of one's experience that can fit into an "abstract reasoner" model.
Can you expand on that and / or provide some links? Very curious. Thanks.
Old Alan Watts lectures cover this nicely, and can be listened to for free on YouTube and elsewhere.
I joke that doing these rides feels like I'm re-boring my arteries because my heart pumps so hard. I feel great afterward. Recommend!
Another example - it's pretty damn hard to think about doing the laundry when you have 100+ kg on your back.
I have found my biggest mistakes were all when I had gotten comfortable with a weight and ended up losing mental focus. Thanfully no injuries. It seems I have to be nearing my edge to be forced into focus. I am better at opting in to focus now thanks to lifting I feel. Similar to downhill riding, all my crashes have been on easy stuff as I lost focus.
I think I agree with you that these experiences are pivotal, because they are moments when you just are without thinking. That constant monologue some of us carrying our heads is gone, and the universe didn’t end.
Taking that information and finding the spot halfway between the two is the real lesson, IME.
Heck, a week ago I did a 100 mile MTB race, with the goal of finishing and being happy. While bits and pieces are there, some chatting with folks and things I saw along the trail, but I honestly do not remember most of the ~9 hours I was riding. It was just a thing I was doing, disconnected from most of the rest of the world, and content doing it.
(Note, I'm talking about XC/cross-country mountain biking, and to some extent trail biking. NOT the big downhill/jump/whatever stuff that comes up most often in media when sees mountain biking. It's still quite exciting, but far safer because it's really just riding bikes on hiking-ish trails.)
The community is pretty rad too, it has the atmosphere of surfing and hiking combined.
I also suggest XC / blue / "intermediate" / rolling trails. They're less exposed and dangerous than steep descents, and better cardio. The MTB industry and press is increasingly downhill-oriented, but you can ignore that noise. Before you buy a bike, try renting a few, and riding them on your own local trails. It'll give you a better idea of what sort of bike and riding you want. If you don't have much singletrack nearby but you have dirt roads, consider a gravel or "all-terrain" road bike instead (like a Kona Dew, Kona Rove, or Hudski Doggler). It's not mountain biking, but still a lot of fun, and you cover more ground. (They're also simpler and cheaper than modern mountain bikes.)
Bike fit is important, take your time to get it right. Don't buy the wrong frame size! (I've made that mistake at least twice.) Find a shop (or experienced friend) to help you dial in the fit, and expect to swap some parts. This (and physical conditioning) makes the difference between riding kind of hurting, and being comfy on the bike for 2+ hours.
Obviously you can get hurt. MTB injuries tend to be less severe than road cycling, because you aren't riding in car traffic. But several years ago I tore out my triceps, going over the front of the bike in a rock garden and landing on my elbow. That was a surgery and slow recovery. I'm fine now, and even with that injury, cycling has been a benefit to my health and enjoyment of life.
It can be a gear-intensive hobby. I have a mostly-bikes room. It can also be an expensive hobby (though doesn't need to be). Still much cheaper than motorcycles, sailing, and so forth.
Sorry, one last thing. Be courteous to hikers. Yield to them by default, call out if approaching them from behind. Making hikers feel safe and respected is more important than carrying your speed. When riders forget this, angry hikers show up to meetings and agitate for closing trails to bikes.
I am lucky enough to live within riding distance of a trail centre, they aren't the best trails but having any trails nearby in a suburban area is amazing. It's a 10 minute pedal and I get out once or twice a week to those trails.
They can be windy smooth trails through the forest, or rocky technical trails to test your bike handling, or gnarly steep downhill trails, or jump trails, the list goes on. You have full control over what you get yourself into, and I can just barely scratch the surface of the variety of riding available across all the disciplines and locations. The basics are the same, you and your bike on some trails.
You can develop your bike skills and challenge yourself on fast or technical trails, or you can just take it easy on flowy easy trails or cross country trails. You can dial up the adrenaline as much or as little as you want, and the terrain can be vary wildly from trail to trail so it's always new and interesting. You'll end up riding parts of your locale you'd never imagine and if you go travelling with it, there are trails in rainforests, deserts, mountain ranges, rolling hills, all over.
For the fitness side, you build strength and dexterity across your whole body as you ride more, and the ride up the hill will develop your cardio and often be interesting trails of their own.
Check out the Trailforks site/app to find trails near you, go rent a bike for ~$50 for the day from any MTB store. It's very easy to try without spending much.
The only equipment you need is a helmet, any bike helmet will do for your first rides. You'll figure out the rest of the gear as you go. Modern bikes are so easy to ride and have made it a crazy fun.
It probably helps that increased appetite never fazed me. I am hungry now, cool, I'm still not eating until dinner regardless of how I feel.
I’ve found Yoga and cycling to be the right fit, and they allow me to challenge myself without feeling too hyped up later.
But choosing to exacerbate that state when there are other options to achieve my fitness goals is counterproductive, and I’ve been advised to avoid it.
There’s an important difference between getting comfortable with hard things, and subjecting yourself to unnecessary/avoidable hyper-arousal states which can become their own form of health problem in the long run.
People injure themselves this way, and should pay attention to their bodies when exercising.
I also hate cardio but it is much more palatable if I'm on a mountain bike and climbing up for a descent trail.
That being said...
I really don't know any serious athletes who enjoy going to practices or going to the gym to workout. In my opinion it's rarely about enjoying the moment. Rather, it's about the way it makes a person feel when they're done. Or, it's about reaching a long-term goal and the joy that comes with accomplishing something currently out of reach.
And, of course, that type of joy can come from a wide variety of activities - exercise, coding, music, arts, etc.
Edit: Removed unnecessary quotes.
You end up doing both.
Luckily I had been building up the habit for years in advance but that was the most I had ever exercised and it was also the most I had ever been depressed. In my case I don’t think the exercise helped at all. Perhaps if I hadn’t of been exercising maybe I wouldn’t even be here now though… I’m not entirely sure. Finding the right medication and getting therapy has been what has really helped me. With those two I can see an almost day and night difference but with the exercise I noticed no difference at all. At least I had a great physique though!
Now that I am in a healthier state of mind, I find that exercise helps a lot more as long as I can do it in a healthy way.
I find that exercise without adequate sleep grinds me down into a twilight zone state of everything seeming a bit unreal.
Last time I had a period similar to yours, the problem was too much screen time on social media and gaming, which was disrupting my sleep.
I cut those out, started feeling tired enough to sleep again, and bounced back to normality.
Therapy is what finally taught me how to actually process my thoughts and feelings, and let me make real progress against depression.
And now, when I go for an outside run or walk, I can spend that time focusing purely purely on my internal thoughts/feelings. Done like this, exercise can be a great therapeutic activity - but it's not the dopamine or act of exercise itself, it's creating the time for self-therapy.
> Physical activity had medium effects on depression (median effect size=−0.43, IQR=−0.66 to –0.27), anxiety (median effect size=−0.42, IQR=−0.66 to –0.26) and psychological distress (effect size=−0.60, 95% CI −0.78 to –0.42), compared with usual care across all population. The largest benefits were seen in people with depression, HIV and kidney disease, in pregnant and postpartum women, and in healthy individuals. Higher intensity physical activity was associated with greater improvements in symptoms
I think comparing exercise to drinking is pretty silly and doesn't suggest a wide berth of knowledge on the topic. I'm glad to hear that therapy was the silver bullet for you, but if there's one thing that's _abundantly_ clear about mental health treatments, it's that there's no one-size-fits-all solution.
What about the studies with clinically depressed people who treat their symptoms as effectively as SSRIs with exercise? I'm thinking specifically of a running therapy study that was done recently, I haven't read the study linked by OP.
I agree with you about therapy and medication: in my experience, they are the only things that work. Expensive though.
As a side note, I sort of feel triggered by this kind of article.
Depressed? Have you:
- exercised enough?
- drank enough water?
- slept enough?
- meditated enough?
- gotten outside enough?
It's passed as "helpful advice" by well-meaning people but always makes me feel like I'm not "enough". If I've done all those things but I'm still depressed, I must not have done those things "enough". Does that make sense? I'm so tired of trying to explain how hard I'm working, I just don't talk about it with people for fear they'll bring out "the list" of things I ought to be doing, and I'll have to explain that, yes, I get 8 hours of sleep a night. Yes, I drink a gallon of water a day. Etc.
Like when you see a master of some art, they do not stop and hesitate to do something, they just do it and it looks so effortless and yet it is an amazing thing they have done.
Then I hurt my back three years ago doing weight lifting. I haven't been able to practice BJJ ever since, and I've been suffering with constant anxiety for the past three years. Every day since has been a struggle, with some really bad days, and some better ones.
if you're a younger man, it's a much more competitive environment. since MMA has become popular, there are a lot of guys coming in who did high school wrestling or maybe a little combatives in the Army -- so purportedly novices but in fact already quite skilled and fit. some of these have big macho attitudes and enjoy kicking your ass if you're an actual untrained beginner.
Being a good jiu jitsu teacher doesn't necessarily mean you're good at handling this dynamic. Some gyms handle this well, and BJJ gyms often have informal ways of "encouraging" this kind of guy to cool off but I noticed people don't always bring them out on behalf of a younger guy getting slammed around. So you either have to be a very fast learner or willing to be knocked around and embarrassed a lot more than the other students.
This is 100% false. I trained for about 3 years and the number of people that had to drop BJJ or stop training for periods of time due to injuries was high, including myself. It's a sport where you accumulate a lot of minor injuries, especially if you roll at a semi competitive pace. This doubled for people who would come in from non-athletic backgrounds (as in white collar professionals not on TRT)
That said it was the most fun i've had with sports in my life
These kinds of articles are always annoying because it invites a certain kind of person who will gush unendingly about how great exerting yourself is.
For me, exerting myself sucks, it is only something I want to do when it's attached to a game I want to play (and even that gets stale). It's only ever something I am either forcing myself to do (yuck) or doing for something besides the physical aspect of it (saving gas, playing a video game).
But instead of health advice being tailored to someone with my neurological makeup that causes this dislike of useless exertion, I'm just told that I need to "meditate" more or do yoga/X. If anything, meditation makes my body seem less like "me".
Just to add my contrarian two cents to a comment section that is otherwise mostly the former.
What works for me might not work for you, but my broader point is that exercise != exercise. Try to find something that you like, and that you can fit into your schedule. Even if it's only a 15 min walk each day, during which you can e.g. listen to music or a podcast, reflect, do some people watching just or do nothing.
Your comment isn't particularly contrarian, and agrees mostly with the article. It says consistently throughout the article that the type of exercise doesn't matter, and that people should do exercise they enjoy, and tailor their choices towards their own personal wellbeing needs.
If DDR is what gets you going, then have at it (dancing is specifically highlighted in the article as beneficial). If yoga doesn't work for you, don't do it.
Quite a lot to unpack here. I would argue the advice given is really good and valid for most people and so that's a good thing. I am sorry you feel under-represented and hope you find something valuable for yourself elsewhere.
Additionally I think lots of people find that they have to force themselves to start and finish a workout and only some eventually come to learn to like it. But for many it starts as a chore like preparing food or doing laundry or taking a shower. It costs time and effort and often hurts. And people can go for a while without any of those but it usually has consequences which are usually worse in the long run than the initial invest.
You seem to have a fairly static view of who "you" are. I used to be in the camp of "my body is just a vehicle for my brain" camp and did not understand why I would exercise at all since I was always skinny (but also super weak) and my mind was what I was working with. And then my grandpa told me: "A healthy mind likes to reside in a healthy body" and that took a few years to really sink in. And now I realize that pushing myself through regular workouts and making myself deliberately suffer exhaustion, fatigue and pain makes me more happy, stable and relaxed in general and I even think of myself as a fit athletic person now and made that part of my identity.
And lastly I am kind of curious about a thing: You said that you only want to do it when it's attached to a game. So if you share the notion that exercise is good and you already know that this is how it's easier for you to do it, then why not focus on exercises which are also games. There are so many of them. And for everyone else who does not need or want a game, meditating or doing yoga seems to be another great venue to start.
This complaint reminds me of someone digging into a bowl of ice cream and going “still waiting for someone to convince me to eat healthy on MY terms.”
Your comment is contrarian since you presumably agree that there are benefits of exercise. Maybe you’re trying to convince yourself that your level or exertion is enough?
Giving alternatives to marginally improve might be more useful than a tough love aproach of saying "Since you know the best thing to do, if you don't want to do it that's on you".
In that vein some things that may improve the amount of exercise you do:
Joining social sports club, the focus may be more on wining/improving skills/social aspect than exercise and so may help take focus off the unenjoyable part and a commitment to your group/team/opponent may be more motivating than a commitment to themselves for some people.
Walking/cycling desk setup. An initial outlay in cost but if it's there and you're doing it while concentrating on something else it might be a significant improvement.
Setting an alarm/timer to do a set of weights or squats every hour or so, stops your muscles atrophing if nothing else and will mean when you do purposfully exercise your not immediately discouraged by how sore you are 1 minute into it.
Any everyday routine you can more easily force into your day. Maybe a jog around the block/up and down apartment stairs before your morning shower. Or join the gym that is along your commute rather than the cheaper one that you need to purposefully drive/walk to. Maybe you listen to a chapter of audiobook while doing pallates as soon as you get home. Forming a habit has the highest initial cognitive load, quite often it's easier(not easy) to tie it to the begining of or end of another action you do everyday than it is to do something at a specific time.
Don't let best be the enemy of better.
For me, past age 40, it was transformative finding a neurodivergent personal trainer and getting into weightlifting (yes, this is a cliche, everyone is doing it). Having an appointment and working with somebody makes me actually do it.
It's not always euphoric. I would like to make the too-obvious point that exercise is often really tiring. But the feeling of power and capability can be really valuable at times, even if it's fragile and physically contingent.
Changing your tires and doing an oil change also sucks, not doing it will suck way more in the long run.
I exercise, not because I like it but because it's the right thing to do. Whatever misery you feel while doing it will be a fraction of the misery you'll feel when your body will give up on you if you don't do it.
It's an investment in the future, probably the single most beneficial investment you can make actually
Even for those people who feel the "meat-mecha" disconnection, the mecha benefits from maintenance.
"For Case, who’d lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he’d frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh." -- Neuromancer, 1984 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/293994/neuromancer-b...
Yes, if the worst decisions in life can be ie smoking cigarettes or being lazy couch potato, the best is easily to work out somehow, anyhow.
So I've taken up hand tool only woodworking as a hobby. It keeps me active and allows me to trick myself into learning a new skill and having fun while making sure I won't die in 10 years time.
Exercise sucks, it really, really sucks. So work out some other thing that is exercise-like and try and trick yourself.
Acknowledging my broken brain, I avoid taking my car anywhere that I could reasonably walk or bike, because having a destination makes the exercise easier. And I’ve leaned in heavily to DDR, creating a semi-permanent station for it in my basement, complete with balance bar. If not for those things I would have nary an ounce of muscle on my body.
It gets my heartrate up, though I don't ride every day, so I'm not sure if I'm reaching the threshold for the recommended amount of exercise. But it's better than nothing.
I purchased both a Hybrid and MTB bike one year and haven't turned back. I use a lot of Strava - compete against myself, friends and strangers. My thirst for competition is filled, plus I'm in extremely great cardio shape.
For me that's cycling and kayaking, alternating every day. I had tried running just because it's convenient and requires very little gear, but found it incredibly boring. But many of my friends absolutley love running. So asking others might help with some ideas, but ods are, you'll prefer something else.
https://peterattiamd.com/ama37/
https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/will-continuing-to...
That said, don't expect magic. There are no silver bullets. I often see people asking about ADHD and related issues being told to go out an exercise. In my experience you'll be a slightly fitter, slightly healthier, slightly happier person with the same ADHD issues as before. Absolutely go do it, but keep your expectations realistic.
(For mental health.)
high intensity would be work you can do for only maybe a minute, not twenty, and as a result it won't keep your heart rate elevated very long.
so if they're basically saying 30 minutes 5 days a week, that's low intensity exercise.
Actually according to the article, high intensity can be done for twenty minutes. So what you’re calling “low intensity” is actually “high intensity.”
(Funny how this works both directions, isn’t it?)
Also, an exercise you can only keep up for 20 minutes at a time is pretty high intensity.
Depression Four reviews42 44 57 58 presented analyses by weekly session duration (68 component RCTs, >5016 participants, online supplemental eFigure 12). The median SMD for ≤150 min/week and >150 min/week was –0.58 (IQR=–0.77 to –0.30) and –0.29 (IQR=–0.40 to –0.07), respectively.
Anxiety One review58 provided analyses by weekly session duration (17 component RCTs, online supplemental eFigure 13). The median SMDs for <150 min/week and ≥150 min/week were –1.23 and –0.99, respectively.
I definitely got the impression that this was working better than when I rode 15-25 hours a week, and there were definite diminishing returns with walking for distance. Not unlike how the first few bites of a candy bar are most of your experience and then at the end you’re mostly just finishing it. After the second or third bite it’s all downhill.
For me I find ~3 hours a week are what I need to feel good. As things ramp up (like they tend to in the summer) I tend to need those big rides, but if I do have to back off (say, winter) then as long as I don't go below an hour every other day, I'm good.
"Bicycle widows" is the term for spouses of cyclists who disappear at 7 am on weekends and don't reappear until after 1 pm, at which point they're stinky and exhausted, so they're useless until about 3 pm.
The thing with casual cyclists of a certain age (my club's demographic) is that they like to eat long lunches. So you might be making a respectable 16 mph for hours at a time and then a trip to a diner tanks your average mph. Club riders tend to go for distance, not speed. On a good day those guys would average 11+ mph door to door. Most days was closer to 10.
If you're prepping for a century, I believe the protocol we used for new cyclists was to ride more than 75% of the target distance on the previous Saturday and more than 65% miles on Sunday. And a lot of that is just ensuring your body can handle the amount of friction you're going to deal with in 100 miles. If it was just the serious members, it was more like 80/70. You're likely going to go slower on day 2, so however long it takes you to do 80 miles, it takes about that long to do 70 the next day.
I would not suggest anyone try to go much more than 100 miles (my longest day was 112, and my dad went out after to round up to 115). After I went to college my dad got into 24 hour challenges, which seemed properly nuts to me, and it turns out actually is. Ultra-endurance athletes can damage their heart, leading to atrial fibrillation, which he got. He's been living post-stroke for about 8 years now. He was volunteering some place and was fortunate the guy standing behind him when he went down was a retired EMT.
[0] https://dutchreview.com/culture/history/netherlands-flat/
Even 5 minutes of HARD rowing a day and you’ll see amazing results.
It's very convenient, weather independent, joint-stress free, measurable with an app and multitasking-friendly! I just attach an iPad there, get the noise-cancelling headphones and row for an hour with my YouTube playlist that I fill regularly.
For Concept2, be sure to add additional cushions, my a.. hurts after 30 minutes without them, and after 1.5h with...
Start slow, find something that you enjoy. Escalate as and when you can.
Too many people think of exercise as like, get on the treadmill and run as hard as you can and make yourself feel like shit to the extent that you can't go again for a week. The vast majority of people, even people who train hard, don't do things like that.
When I was active duty in the navy through the 90's I specialized in psychiatry and worked at an inpatient psych ward.
One of the things we did for all patients was force them to go to the gym every day.
Yes, force.
Military psych wards were a bit different than civilian. You could give orders.
In this case, it was necessary - the last thing you'll willingly do when you're suicidally depressed is exercise.
Getting a nearly catatonically depressed patient out of bed was a huge challenge, getting them to the gym even harder.
But we did it. Every day.
In my experience, this was more effective treatment for depression than any meds or psychotherapy. It worked wonders, way faster than SSRIs.
Not so great for the psychotic disorders though. We had some "interesting" incidents at the gym.
Outdoor though you're right, totally different demographic and very few of them are software engineers.
The grueling, daily, multi-hour practices... the extreme physical conditioning required to succeed... the extremely nerve-wracking matches, especially the lead up to them... honestly, my FAANG job is a total joke compared to the difficulty of this stuff. I think wrestling prepared me quite well for life.
According to reader mode this article is about 10 minutes long so instead of reading it, go for a walk.
This is true if you're going to exercise once. On the other hand, finding an exercise that's good for you and that you can keep with might be worth investing some time, because you can use this knowledge for years. Even a 10 hour research project is only .75 minutes per workout when amortized over 2 years of 4x per week workouts.
Any form of cycling really clears my head. The sensory stimulation, the forced focus, the sense of freedom, it's wonderful.
Didn't go so well.
You reach an unfortunate point when depressed that makes it difficult to listen to actually useful advice. It's an unfortunate state of mind to say the least.
It's of very little consequence to you. You suggest they try something /obvious/. It's reasonable to assume they might have considered it.
How is that going to be perceived positively as a suggestion? Do you think it possible?
For someone with major depression, maybe it's like suffering from major arterial bleeding and we suggest an band-aid because it "can help stop bleeding"
For me it was fixing a shower by myself that started that upward cycle.
For someone else it could be a single exercise session that leads to it.
It's always worth a try to encourage someone to take that first step.
Sure, absolutely. While keeping in mind it may not even be possible today. If it is the obvious way may be counter-productive. And the road to hell being paved the way it is, accidentally kicking the crap out of someone who is well and truly down is probably worth at least trying to avoid.
I am very sorry that you went through that. Your experience may not translate universally to those afflicted with the wide variety of ailments that are all referred to as depression.
If your sleep or nutrition is trash, exercise will help you identify that.
This is exactly why I use a Quest 2 / pro to workout. When you’re killing zombies, fighting ninjas, or boxing fighters, working out is almost always novel. I’m just playing VR video games, which is why it’s easy to keep a routine even after 3 years
I hope Apple Vision can provide this benefit to people who are still skittish about even trying the current generation of VR headsets
Beat Saber
Les Mills Body combat - trainer guided workout where you can compete against player recorded avatars
FitXR - trainer guided workout where you can compete against player recorded avatars. Subscription only but has HIIT, boxing, and dance workouts
Ninja Legends - you’re fighting ninjas
Knockout League - Punch Out in VR with lots of variety
synth riders - music rhythm game that has a lot of variety on its own
Holopoint - shooting targets with bow and arrow. Lots of moving and dodging involved
Mothergunship forge - bullet hell shooter. Lots of dodging
Pistol Whip - bullet hell music rhythm game. Lots of dodging like Neo
Path of the Warrior - double dragon in VR
Until You Fall - slashing sword game
GORN - gladiator game
Creed - another boxing game
Punch Fit - minimalist boxing training game
Racket NX - racket ball inside a dome
Rezzil Player - lots of mini workouts like heading soccer balls
Stride - mirrors edge in VR
I tend to rotate these games, but I always try out new games for novelty.
There’s also a lot of games where you can walk or jog in place like Fallout or Skyrim that I didn’t count here. Not to mention a fighting game and soccer game with full body tracking that’s PCVR only
In the Bay Area, we’re blessed with multiple nature preserves that are beautiful and stunning, but it takes me 20-40 minutes one way just to drive to one so those hikes tend to be limited to weekends. With AR VR, I can instantly just workout in my living room. It’s a big time saver
It’s also really easy to make excuses not to do it eg it’s raining, it’s too dark, the air isn’t good today etc…
Yes, I do enjoy the alternatives you’ve listed, but they are expensive in terms of time and coordination. I just don’t always have that time during the weekdays and even on some weekends, and neither do my friends and family.
There’s also the pollution aspect since not everyone has good public transit or lives close enough to a gym or court to bike
Also we might have the privilege of being able to afford a personal trainer, but what about other people?
Our bodies use of exercise for healthy regulation of our mental state is probably an evolved dependency of that life as well.
I was a little confused about the “less is better” part of the article. I think it just meant diminishing returns with more exercise, but it says that less is actually better.
I ~workout~ train 20+ hours per week. This is definitely bad for my mental health, but the goals won't achieve themselves.
Turns out qualifying for Boston is no joke.
An hour or more of moderate activity per day? Dunno about that impossibility of one hour. Perhaps you're talking about some hectic Amazon-style working environmen,t or people that just had babies, or commute for 1 hours each way?
"Adults aged 18–64 years"
> Should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity throughout the week, or do at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of both.
> For additional health benefits, adults should increase their moderate-intensity physical activity to 300 minutes per week, or equivalent.
> Muscle-strengthening activities should be done involving major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week.
But Aji is attacking near a loss, turning the loss into a win (very, very rarely, resurrecting the dead pieces). The existence of a failure on the board can put pressure on neighboring areas, and they can still sometimes be turned to a redemption story. Lose ten stones here but gain 8 nearby. Still a loss but maybe enough to win the overall game.
Not mentioned here that I think should be considered is how much of the benefit was just due to _novelty_. If the effect wears off over time then at least part of it may be going out and doing something different.
It’s not only physically exhausting, it’s also mentally very difficult. And not just because it requires deep levels of knowledge to be good, but it also resets any preconceived notions of strength. It’s not uncommon for a new white belt male that weighs 200lbs to get absolutely waxed by a 100lbs brown belt female. I see it happen all the time. Of course, as you belt up, and gain more understanding of the sport, there are ways to utilize a size and strength advantages. But that’s secondary to knowledge.
As someone who used to train at an MMA gym, going to a pure BJJ gym is weird because yeah, I'll shrimp out, get up to my feet, and my training partner is sitting there on their knees waiting for me to re-engage and my first thought is "this would be a great time for a kick to that completely unprotected noggin right there..."
Of course once on the ground, the BJJ peeps dominate, which is what UFC spent 3 decades demonstrating!
BJJ does not start on the ground as standard, let alone "all the time". Matches start standing, and if you are only training from the ground you are missing out. That's not to say that stand-up and takedown training aren't much more in-depth in judo than in jiu-jitsu, though.
Though don't discount other forms of martial arts, the amount of mental effort in kickboxing is still high, the coordination needed to be planning your foot work and balance out 2 or 3 moves in advance is non-trivial and that alone can take years to master!
(Also IMHO kickboxing is a more intense workout than rolling, my opinion consisting of a polar heart rate monitor strapped to my chest ;) )
exercise has made my anxiety and depression worse. I've done all kinds from weight training to ramping up to a full marathon
I don't believe this metareview one bit
For some reason I really dislike casual talk amongst people about this subject. When people causally give simple solutions to their depression I wonder if they were actually “clinically depressed.” Or they say X helped but forgot to mention they were also on drug Y and seeing a therapist Z many times a week. My favorite internet depression cure is travel.
Simply, it's not helpful. Fat people know they're fat because they have a caloric surplus. They've tried eating less. They're not stupid.
I think the defensiveness people exhibit is a byproduct of their cumulative reactions to a bunch of unsolicited advice. My own (unsolicited) advice would be: don't give people advice, unless they specifically ask for it. I can guarantee you that every depressed person on the planet has heard that exercise is good for your mental health. Instead, you can say something like, "I'm very sorry that you're having a hard time. I want you to know that you're important to me, and if there's ever anything I can do to help, let me know"
Problem?
Haven't read the whole study, but i assume people with fewer symptoms of X are able and motivated to exercise more because they have fewer symptoms.. And the article is just inventing the most interesting causal link for a study that doesn't travel far from correlation?
I am interested in knowing if my thinking on the benefits of socializing are out of date, on this.
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2023/03/02/bjsports-2022-...
It’s no that you won’t face depression and anxiety but now you have groked the skills in your body, you are able to answer it with action and not just give mental arguments.
After that, the more cardio exercise you get the better...
We are close in getting inhibitors that block enzymes from breaking down endocannabinoids !