Aerobic exercise is good for the brain; easy wins for behaviour change
brainpizza.substack.com
brainpizza.substack.com
Oh good, exactly what I'm looking for. If only the executive dysfunction didn't mess with my ability to form any kind of stable exercise routine.
If we're talking about aerobic exercise, you don't need to "form" anything. It's a monostructural movement. Buy a treadmill and jog on it for 20 minutes when you wake up. Buy a rower and do 5k every morning, or evening, or over lunch. Get a stationary bike and do 10 minutes on that whenever you remember to do it.
This isn't strength training which benefits from having an actual program to follow put together by someone who knows what they're doing. Just pick a thing that you can do for 20 minutes without wanting to kill yourself, and do that thing for 20 minutes a few times a week. The most important part (in what the kids today would call "my lived experience") is to push yourself hard, sweat a lot, and do it at least 3 or 4 times a week. More is going to be better, especially at the beginning to build a habit, but twice a week is just sporadic enough where it's too easy to miss one and 2 becomes 1 becomes "once every 4 weeks."
"Stable" also doesn't need to be the same amount of time at the same time of day on the same days every week.
I don't think GP meant "routine" as in an elaborate set of exercises, but rather the daily/weekly routine of doing any exercise at all.
I get where you’re coming from, and I think you’re missing the point. Executive dysfunction (for me at least) means I can “want to do the thing” a LOT, heck I can even have the motivation, but getting my brain and body to actually do the damn thing can feel insurmountable. There are certainly ways to work with and around executive dysfunction, it’s just difficult that one of the key aspects of it is that it makes the act of executing feel incredibly difficult.
Just read the answer below
> The only thing ever stopping you from going out the door and running is putting on shoes and shorts, its easy to form a habit!
For people like us, this is akin to "if you are depressed, just cheer up!". It's ridiculous, bordering on the offensive.
Get an easy win.
I do get out to walk occasionally, and I absolutely love it, and nothing about that makes it “easy” to turn into a habit. I’m working on it, but it’s a slow process. The thing with executive dysfunction is that the desire and will are often there, they just aren’t making the call.
The 5 minutes (or even 30-60 minutes) is the EASY part. I have no problem with that. It's my brain screaming at me with every ounce of its energy that the effort of stopping what I am doing and starting something else is insurmountable. The length of the thing is mostly irrelevant.
It's a battle for most people, some more than others.
One lever I used was self hatred. Instead of babying myself, I decided I was pathetic and worthless if I couldn't even manage to exert myself for 10 minutes every day. Maybe not a psychologically healthy viewpoint in the long term, but it creates the leverage I needed to get out of that dark place.
I struggle with executive dysfunction; when people describe a more aggressive routine than I could manage, I just mentally translate the numbers and level of consistency into what's achievable rather than berate them. Their point was: start with what's possible for you and go from there, because you don't need to achieve a certain threshold of activity or knowledge for the exercise to benefit you.
Anything that gets your activity up will help. Lots of low intensity stuff is probably even more valuable than 20 minutes of moderate effort.
I'm not diagnosed, but have pretty severe trouble getting into a task-oriented mode, so much that dishes go unwashed, and my home is a mess. I feel the mess wearing away at me, but just can't deal with it. I'm not overly busy or tired, just procrastinating.
After 5 minutes on the rower my mood drastically improved and I was much more productive than usual, and the effect lasted about 3 hours. I've had a few more sessions since then with similar effects.
Also, it's a little spooky how often a subject comes on my radar, and then a few days later the subject surfaces on HN. Feels too frequent for it to be a coincidence.
I wouldn't even say you need to push yourself hard. Getting yourself into 120-150 bpm for 30-60 minutes 3x per week will get you most of the benefits.
Have one. Plus chin up bar, and there's always bodyweight.
> and jog on it for 20 minutes when you wake up.
That's a routine.
> Whenever you remember to do it.
That's more akin to how my brain functions. But "when I remember" (/ have energy/motivation) is a huuge variable I struggle with.
I understand you mean well but this is a thing I've struggled with for years. It tends to be boom or bust. I can go months with going to the gym regularly and it helps, then things get chaotic and it all falls apart, and it's exceptionally hard to restart, probably because of exactly such an executive deficit such exercise would help with.
The only thing ever stopping you from going out the door and running is putting on shoes and shorts, its easy to form a habit!
Only bad part is you get depressed when you don't get to run.
EDIT: if you suffer from executive dysfunction disorder, this is not good advice, but running is awesome either way and will change your life in a small but significant way if you have the appropriate amount of neuro-typicality.
I’m not sure that you do, because
> The only thing ever stopping you from going out the door and running is putting on shoes and shorts, its easy to form a habit!
feels very invalidating, as someone who struggles with an executive dysfunction disorder.
If you feel invalidated, those are your feelings coming from inside you, not something they planted in you. Perhaps it's a sign that you have things you need to work on.
And I appreciate your response - the invalidating part was just that it’s “easy” to start a running routine with just shoes and shorts. It probably is for most people, and for me the shoes would sit there as a reminder of an investment in myself that I can not seem bring myself to take advantage of more than once or twice a year.
Or you actually hate running.
And you will be surprised how quickly you scale from wherever you begin.
Sprinting was the least unpleasant actually, but only for a short while for the first time and only once/day.
Thankfully strength training is much more enjoyable, as is walking, so I'm relying on this combination. Plus some swimming occasionally.
I moved from being mostly sedentary to being able to run 10km, swimming regularly, joining a field hockey team, doing archery. I also do hiit 3 times a week. Still my schedule is fucking chaotic, so beside the field hockey training which is on a fixed date, the other activities are done at, let's say, interesting and random time.
After that, I came up with fun ways to meet that goal, like specific paths I might take or things I might do. It feels much less like work if there's some sort of reward along the way, like a coffee or something.
It's not actually about any difficulty in establishing a stable routine. It'd be very easy for almost anyone to maintain a routine of eating snacks and watching Youtube for 20 minutes per day.
The root issue is we've become conditioned to avoid discomfort. Collectively our mental fortitude relatively weak in this area. Engaging in an activity which requires enduring discomfort will be strongly avoided even if the benefits are clear. We need to figure out how to strengthen our mindset.
Exercise is medicine! And requires exertion and discomfort.
From GP's executive dysfunction reference I am assuming something like ADHD, and...you'd be surprised.
Executive dysfunction is fundamentally different from laziness in a way that a lot of people have trouble grasping.
Maybe the Youtube and snacks example was a bit misleading in that perspective. In my head exercise is in the same category of routine as brushing your teeth, showering, getting dressed, and feeding yourself. If one struggles with those on a daily basis then I agree that's a whole different issue. Putting a time slot for exercise on the calendar may work for some but in my view it's a more fundamental part of living.
ADHD is a fickle mistress.
- strength/resistance training: to build and keep muscles; one benefit of which is better stability at age and metabolic regulation.
- high intensity cardio/HIIT/zone 5/95+% max heart rate: to build VO2max, was also shown to reduce arterial plaque.
- normal cardio/zone 2/50-80% max HR: mitochondrial efficiency, fat burning?, endurance, memory (the current link)
Good frequencies seem to be 3x/week for normal cardio and strength, and 1x/week for HIIT.
A fourth could be stability/stretching/yoga-style exercises. I'm doing those on cardio days currently.
Not easy really. Though anything is better than nothing, so don't stress.
Some recommend 3 hours of walking or equivalent a day. 10,000 steps is an similar recommendation.
Hard for a desk job like most of us have. OTOH, as long as you're getting other exercise just standing instead of / as well as sitting might be enough if you're otherwise active.
Also hugely important for delaying bone density degradation, which starts declining after age 30, which is part of why the strength training should be reasonably heavy.
It doesn't help that when I do get outside that I tend to go "comfortably hard" and I'm in the no-man's-land somewhere between zone 2 and 5, not really capitalizing on the full benefits of either regime yet maximizing fatigue.
Like squatting with hundreds of pounds on your back is inherently unstable and forces you to have good balance, and moving your body under load is literally weighted stretching, which is one of the most effective ways of increasing your range of motion if your current range is insufficient for your needs.
Turns out it was video fitness classes (and strength training with dumbbells). It's hard for me to figure out exactly what exercises to do and how to keep it interesting and varied. The different Apple Fitness instructors all have a different approach and I rotate through them.
Edit: Jesus, this thread is proof than HN techies think they know math but actually have no clue about statistics. They are easy prey for this kind of journalism.
> Point estimates for effect size on all cognitive tasks were 0.164 > (SE = 0.028, n = 96, p = .05) for control groups and 0.478 (SE = > 0.029, n = 101, p = .01) for exercisers, suggesting that both groups > improved between Times 1 and 2. However, the control groups’ im- > provement was about 1/8 a standard deviation, whereas the exercise > groups’ improvement was nearly 1/2 a standard deviation, on average. > Both values are significantly different from zero, and from each other > (see Table 1).
Earlier in the paper they define their effect size as:
g = (M_Post - M_Pre )/SD_P , where M_Pre is the preintervention mean task performance, M_Post is the postintervention mean, and SD_P is the pooled standard deviation.
I think the standard deviation mentioned is relative to overall population spread of cognitive performance, given that standard errors of the effect size are given separately?
But it's not about how big the effect is. It's how likely that the effect was or was not due to chance. A very small effect can be statistically significant. You missed "sample size" in your list above - a big sample size can help you show a small effect is probably not chance.
I imagine the average HN user to look like Richard Stallman.
(Just saw your rebuttal about "significance" below. Statistical significance is not how big a movement is, it is the chance that such a movement could be due to random chance. A very small movement could be statistically significant if your sample is big enough to show it's probably (e.g. 95% probably) not due to chance.)
I can't read the original article because it's paywalled, but assuming that the original claim is correct ("increased performance by approximately .5 of a standard deviation across all tasks tested") and that by "significant" you mean "statistically significant" then you are spectacularly and confidently wrong.
Imagine we have a normal distribution of IQs around 100 with a standard deviation of 15.
Imagine there were some intervention which resulted in a uniform increase in IQ by half a standard deviation across the board. Perhaps the intervention is "literally add 7.5 points to every single score in the treatment group."
You seem to be asserting that because the effect size is "only" half a standard deviation, we have no way of determining whether or not the intervention actually increased scores, no matter how much data is collected. We could collect 100 million IQ scores in the control group, and 100 million IQ scores in the "treatment" group, and see that the average score in the control group is 100 and the average score in the treatment group is 107.5, and we'd have to say "nope, the null hypothesis looks completely plausible here, because the effect size was just half a standard deviation."
Does that seem like a reasonable claim?
And yet you are the one confusing the standard deviation of an effect size with the standard error of a point estimate...
I do get a lot of exercise, but I keep it in the lower zones to avoid this complication and I still feel like I get such a great mood boost and improvements to my cognitive abilities wrt to work.
If it wasn't for the health and aesthetic benefits, I'd choose to never to exercise again.
tldr: people who never push themselves will never likely achieve an exercise high. Also, people starting at 0 have a much harder slog of it than those with a decent base & athletic background.
To each its own, but don't lump exercise into a single class. Try some variety!
But I do have a clearer head for a few hours after a run so I keep doing it.
When I first got back into running 2 years ago after a long hiatus, I had to learn the painful lesson that I was being way too hard on myself. I eventually figured out that I can slow down and start with just a very slow 0.5 - 1 mile jog. I can even stop and stretch in the middle of the run if I'm feeling tight. It sounds silly, but I didn't realize that was allowed. There are no rules. If anyone judges you, that's there problem. You do you.
Here’s one of many, many possible examples:
* Walk for 10 minutes 3x a week for a few months.
* Walk for 15 minutes 3x a week for a month or two.
* Walk for 20 minutes 3x a week for a month or two. Stretch for 5 minutes before or after walking.
* Walk for 5 minutes, then jog VERY SLOWLY for 5 minutes, and then walk for 5 more minutes. Stretch for 5 minutes before / after.
* You get the idea…
And if running isn’t your thing, try something else. The only that matters is that you move and use your body. There are a million ways to move the body! I bet you can find one you like :)
———
More philosophical / technical approach:
Treat it like a puzzle. You have a System in State A (your body and your current behavioral patterns).
How can we get the System to State B? Or wait, perhaps State C or D are just as good or even better! We just didn’t realize those were possibilities.
Consider dropping old assumptions. Experiment! Try different things :) What are different ways of interfacing or evaluating the system? Perhaps some of the old interfaces and metrics aren’t as useful or applicable to the current state?
hold up gym bros! I don't want your technique. I want a drug like Ozympic that alters my behavior towards that lifestyle change.
disrupted, some might say
There are three things that made a difference: a) realizing that exercise can potentially make a positive difference to health [1] and that not exercising would turn out be a bigger waste of time in the future, b) getting an Apple Watch and closing the rings everyday [2], and workouts (with apps) on video by instructors so that I don’t get bored and keep looking at the time or figure out what exercises I should do. [3]
[1]: no guarantees because of complex factors like genetics, stress, environment, etc.
[2]: there was a brief period where the addiction to close the rings was done by just letting the watch be in workout mode without me working out, but that kind of lying to myself got boring too.
[3]: I know there are several programs with instructions and progressions that are freely available, but I get distracted and bored if I have to do something by myself and there’s no audiovisual guidance. I don’t like going to a gym either.
Here are a few recent posts I loved.
https://x.com/Alan_Couzens/status/1726591761277943959 - Death zone health metrics to avoid and an aside demonstrating that an elite VO2max in the Mount Everest Death Zone is equivalent to a very old/unfit person teetering on the edge of death.
https://x.com/Alan_Couzens/status/1720437671623868878 - Decrease in all cause mortality directly correlated to MET-hours/week. MET-hours is effectively a measure of exercise level energy use you put your body through. It's also why people with a lower VO2max have to put in more hours to receive the same benefit, because a person with a high VO2max can do moderate exercise which would be an extreme effort for a less fit person, thus stacking MET-hours more quickly.
https://x.com/Alan_Couzens/status/1720437671623868878 - "50 and 50 goals"
His paid substack is also a wealth of valuable information.
I hate this saying so much. I can’t imagine how many people don’t bother to exercise because they already have a bad diet, read stuff like this, and think “what’s the point then” and give up. Despite the fact that exercising on a bad diet is so much better than not exercising on a bad diet.