What Sort of Exercise Can Make You Smarter? | Hacker News Reader

What Sort of Exercise Can Make You Smarter?

well.blogs.nytimes.com

66 pointsrobg58 comments

My vote is for rock climbing. A lot of tech people do it, and it takes serious problem-solving skills. Figuring out how to contort your body to be able to extend your reach that last inch towards the next hold, and how to position yourself to move after that, takes a lot of thinking.

Plus, it's an amazing whole-body workout.

I would wager that a "fit" worker is more productive than a sedentary worker, even taking into account the time for training.

That depends strongly on the amount of time it takes for getting fit, doesn't it? In my experience in Basic for the Army, even very high levels of exercise do not prevent one from putting on fat ("Oh, just eat as much as you want; they'll work it off you!", I was told. I believed them. I shouldn't have).

Being fat doesn't mean you aren't fit.

I've been thin my whole life, but am working to get fit now after a year or two of largely sedentary existence and it is making a big difference for me.

Being fat does mean you aren't fit. Being thin is necessary but not sufficient for physical fitness.

I suppose that the first step to "getting fit", or in other words living a wellness oriented lifestyle, is to actually define what this means to you in your world. My belief is that "change" starts from within, which means that you can eat all of the right food and exercise on a consistent basis, and still not be "well." The change that I was referring to is the space between your eyes, controlling how you think, also known as tangebalizing (I made this word up) your thoughts. Can you imagine having the literally controlling how you think and how you perceive a situation? Because you can and the first step to eliciting change is realizing that you were born with all of the tools to evoke this type of result...

I am not sure why you are being down voted, unless people are equating this with being able to 'think' your reality into existence.

We can't magically effect the world around us with our thoughts, but it is the thoughts that control the actions we take, so in a very real sense it does need to start from the mind.

I was slightly confused as well...and I appreciate your support!

I agree that thoughts cannot control the world with our thoughts, however keep in mind that Since the early 1930's, psychologists have known that the brain emits electromagnetic waves . There is no scientific evidence that it has any impact on materialistic outcome but there is no evidence that it does not either. I know it is totally unscientific and I would say more philosophical thinking but there is a possibility that someday we will discover that our thought might have some impact on the outer world. This is one of the main concept that new age philosophy manipulates. Also our thoughts not only control our action as far as our body goes but also effect biochemistry of our brain that might affect how our body reacts to it. For example depressing thought might lead to certain physiological disorders.

There is no scientific evidence that it has any impact on materialistic outcome but there is no evidence that it does not either.

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, especially if you have a cottage industry devoted to looking for evidence, fruitlessly.

Many discovered facts that are known today did not have any evidence years ago what does not indicate its absence today. Absence of results of searching industries is not an indicator thus it takes many years and many intermediate discoveries before some hypothesize are proven. Keeping mind open to possibilities is the engine of progress and discovery.

"Tengebalizing" is a funny neologism.

You might be interested in reading the old Stoics, who advocated precisely the type of mental control over your own perceptions that you seem to have happened upon.

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is a good place to start. After that pick up Epictetus and Seneca.

That is a great recommendation...I have actually read pieces from Meditations which is extremely congruent with my statement...I am happy that you enjoyed my neologism!

sounds like self hypnosis or NLP or landmark seminar info. What are you reading these days?

Well, not being fat doesn't mean you are fit, but being fat is certainly incompatible with being fit. I speak as a fat guy who's probably less unfit than 95% of people at my weight (over 320 lbs): I'm still not "fit".

I guess it depends on how fitness is defined. I would say a person can definitely have good cardiovascular fitness while being fat. They could also have strong muscles, low blood pressure, low cholesterol, normal glucose levels and generally be healthy. I would describe that as being fit.

Seems like weight should be considered one indicator of fitness but not the most important one.

Is it wrong that I chuckled at this revelation that gives new meaning to your nick, "randallsquared"?

Heh. People used to spontaneously call me that when I was a kid (due to my name "Randall Randall" rather than my size, I expect), and it's way easier to google for. :)

my name "Randall Randall"

I'm not sure if that's cruelty or awesome on the part of your parents. I'm leaning towards awesome.

Curious if you've read Catch-22. One of my favorite characters in the book was called "Major Major" (and of course his rank was Major). At some point they managed to get a 4th one on the end too.

I know about the novel, and about that character, but haven't read it (or seen the movie).

Play Go, Chess, Sudoku and Dual-N Back. Learn another language. Learn to play an instrument. All this can make you 'smarter'.

Interestingly, I remember one study that tested the effects of "brain games" versus exercise on the mental cognition of people as they age. The result of the study surprised me because it indicated that brain games do not seem to have a significant impact on the prevention of cognitive decline among the aged, but aerobic exercise did -- which, in some sense, aligns with this article.

Apologies in advance because I am having trouble finding the citation.

Edit: based on some searching, it appears that mental exercise does enhance neurological function among seniors. However, aerobic exercise has an equal or greater impact. I suspect combining both would be the best.

If you want to do an interesting experience, doing sprints teach your brain to think faster (because it has to keep up with the information of your steps).

Based on your theory, Usain Bolt must be extremely intelligent.

That conclusion really doesn't follow from the stated proposition. The proposition is that doing sprints will make you smarter than you are now, not that it will make you smarter than someone else who doesn't do them. The only conclusion about Usain Bolt that you can reach from the stated proposition is that he's now smarter than he was before he started sprinting. </pedantry>

I read the point as "doing a high speed exercise makes your brain have to work at a faster rate". Sprints being the example chosen as increasing the brain processing speed. Which is quite interesting because there are other activities that require high speed mental abilities. Playing an instrument in a thrash metal band for one. According to this theory, a member of Megadeth would be a faster thinker than a classical musician. Interesting thought.

I am not sure about the heavy metal / classical music approach. There are many classical music that are very challenging by themselves, even more than some heavy metal songs (which usually are 'play the same note at light speed'). I've heard of an author whose name escapes me now that composed songs that weren't suposed to be played due to the sheer difficult of them.

My point is that you can't draw conclusions about two different people this way. If playing speed metal is a good mental exercise, then the only thing you can conclude about Dave Mustaine is that he's smarter now than when he started playing. You can't conclude that he's smarter than anyone else, no matter what activities they participate in. The classical musician very well may have started out at such a high IQ that no amount of mental exercise will allow Dave to catch up.

It's not pedantry it's verity/accuracy.

Oh, perhaps that was pedantry?

Only more intelligent than he would be if he didn't run sprints, to be fair. That's going to be hard to show after the fact.

Your reading comprehension is lacking. I didn't say intelligent. I said 'think faster', which is true:

"Nerve conduction velocity (NCV) has been shown to increase in response to a period of sprint training." http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/adis/smd/2001/00000031...

When you sprint, your brain must fire every signal, and process every step so you can keep your balance. Sprinting is, by definition, running as fast as you can, which also means running as fast as your brain can process it. By training it, you train your brain to think at a higher speed than it normally would.

Sprinting is all fast-twitch muscle and technique. It has little to do with your brain. Anyone who ran track knows that short sprinters are the dumbest guys on the team. The smartest runners are the distance guys. Out of the whole team, the smartest guys were the ones who specialized in the oddball events like steeplechase, triple jump or discus.

As has been pointed out, the comparisons are only useful pertaining to the same brain before regular exercise is present and after. You can't glean much from comparing one person to another because baseline intelligence varies too much to account for.

Now, what you are describing may be a case of self-selection. It may be possible (though I do not concede this point) that smarter people tend to gravitate toward the more oddball sports. That doesn't indicate that sprinting does not benefit the brain. Here's a thought experiment:

There are 100 people at the pool and 50 life jackets. People are allowed to choose to use a jacket or not, until all jackets are gone. You may find that better swimmers on average choose not to use a jacket. That does not indicate that the life jacket is not useful for swimming.

Sure, whatever. The original point about your brain moving faster to keep up with your feet is stupid in any context. There's countless techniques in nearly every athletic sport about how to shut your brain down so that only your muscles and autonomic nervous system are doing the work. Athletic speed has no effect on other forms of intelligence. If anything it has a negative effect because sprinting is anaerobic and therefore is cutting off oxygen to your brain. I have no idea what you're getting at with the life jackets.

It's tough to use intuition to bring any real insight to bear on biological systems, I'd be really interested in finding some real research into the matter.

Re: the lifejackets I was demonstrating that the effectiveness of the jackets is not effected by who chooses to use them. I was pointing out that saying less intelligent people gravitate towards sprinting does not prove that sprinting has no positive benefits on intelligence.

Wow! That is interesting. Would love to see that citation there... was this it?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/01/010117074808.ht...

The study you reference from Duke for people suffering from depression is interesting. Another one I came across from Maastricht University in the Netherlands addressed aerobic exercise and cognitive ability in seniors:

http://www.emaxhealth.com/36/21947.html which references http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9346168

Here's a reference to a Columbia study: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/sports/playmagazine/0819pl...

However I'm failing to find the study comparing mental games and aerobic exercise among seniors.

Bilingualism has a major disadvantage:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=648393

I wouldn't call that major

English is the only language that matters in today's world. The more fluent you are in it, the more successful you are likely to be.

Try to get a job or start a business in mainland europe without knowing another eu language besides english.

Knowing multiple languages is extremely valuable.

It is hard to get a job in mainland Europe without knowing English (as a developer). While the "another eu language" varies from country to country, the demand for English is constant.

No, the demand for language X + English is constant.

I know several people who have done exactly that without much trouble at all.

Hardly. I think it can arguably said that in the Western Hemisphere and certain parts of the Eastern Hemispher knowing English is in general more valuable than knowing any other single language.

That hardly makes it the only one that matters. I personally have derived enormous benefits from studying Latin. There have been several times I have wished I spoke Spanish and a few times I had wished I could speak Japanese, Pashtun, Arabic, and Dari.

Knowing more languages is definitely a good thing.

Not quite. I would argue the total opposite in fact.

The cited study postulates in the discussion that Tip of Tongue events come from simple reduced frequency of use in any given word stemming from a much larger lexicon. There's no evidence at all suggest that there's actually a neurological disadvantage to bilingualism.

Also, it seems pretty counterintuitive to think that practice in an entirely new cognitive arena, something like a new language, could do anything but improve your ability to process language. If there's a paper out there I'd love to read it.

"Mens sana in corpore sano" - a healthy mind in a healthy body

I'm surprised the article didn't mention martial arts training: it's terrific for improving mental relaxation and awareness.

It didn't mention it because the study wasn't about martial arts. It would also likely be difficult to get mice to do martial arts.

It would also likely be difficult to get mice to do martial arts.

Cute.

P90x has given me amazing results both mentally and physically, so I think the article is right on. (The program is split between muscle building and aerobics, including Kenpo and Yoga as well as good old push ups and pull ups and dumbbells, etc.)

Can they show that it was because of the "exercise" and not the adrenaline rush of being forced to move your body torturously and indefinitely by a power much greater than you? among other possibilities...

It would seem that the last sentence of the article isn't substantiated by the study and sounds rather off the cuff. I wish they wouldn't make a sweeping generalization based on a specific study or two; the human body just isn't that simple.

The last sentence of the article is a direct quotation from Chauying J. Jen (任卓穎), the co-author of the research. It's very doubtful that Jen's analysis of the results of his own study are "off the cuff".

I've tried Brain Gym a few times with a licensed instructor and found it to be quite helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_gym

> Jen says researchers suspect that treadmill running is more intense and leads to improvements in muscle aerobic capacity, and this increased aerobic capacity, in turn, affects the brain more than the wheel jogging.

So the subjects didn't know how to lift and the researchers didn't know how to instruct the subjects to lift. The suggestion that a proper 20 minute lifting session would be less intense than 20 minutes on a treadmill is ridiculous. Done correctly lifting will leave you gasping for air.

Different. Literally.

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