The Only Thing Kept Me Motivated to Exercise My Whole Life
I didn’t even realize it for years
Whenever I make small talk with someone, the subject usually comes to exercise. I hear one of three sentences below:
-I need to start working out too
-I am starting to work out soon
-I had signed up for a gym 6 months ago, went once, and I am still paying for that membership.
The common theme for all these sentences is people want to exercise but not be able to stick with it on a regular basis. I always wonder why? There are many people out there who can do it. What is their secret?
Everyone starts exercising with a different goal on their mind. Losing weight, having six-packs, looking better, meeting new people, having a new hobby, etc. The list goes on. But, these goals lose their priority in the long run. People change, goals change. What I see is that people who stick to exercise long term have one thing in common. I will explain it from my point of view and back it up with scientific research. If you want to start exercising, this article may present you a new perspective. If you exercise on a regular basis, this article may motivate you even more.
Starting with a simple question: What does motivate people to exercise? Why do people spend their time on a physically demanding activity instead of just laying down on a couch and watch reruns of friends while eating chips? Friends is funny, chips are delicious, so why not? Because we are evolved to move, not to lay down on a couch. Let me explain.
Why Do We Move at All?
Our ancestors were always on the move to feed, run, find a place to spend the night. We had to hunt or gather food; a sedentary lifestyle wasn’t an option. Starting with the First Agricultural Revolution around 10000 B.C. we started having luxury to be inactive. In this modern age, we consider sedentary lifestyle is normal.
Cars, machines, technology have enabled us to not move at all. We can exit from our apartment and get on the car which parked just outside of our house, go to work and park the office’s car park, take the elevator, order lunch to our desks, spend the entire day in front of the computer, leave work, take the elevator, arrive home by car, park, eat dinner in front of TV and sleep. Does it sound familiar?
We have lost the connection between body and mind, we only notice our bodies when there is something wrong with them. This is the new normal. We may think this is normal, but for our bodies, this is not normal at all. Our bodies are evolved to move.
Body and Mind
Body is the combination of all the organs, bones, muscles which creates us physically, and the mind is our thoughts. Mind shouldn’t be seen that it only gets affected by the brain. Changes in our bodies affect our minds, and whatever going on with our minds affects our bodies. Body and mind should be seen as two parts which mixed in each other.
A deep breath relaxes us. Whenever we get stressed, our jaws get tight. If the stress gets out of control, we switch to short and fast breaths rather than deep and relaxed ones. If we have depressive thoughts, our bodies get into the shape of those thoughts. Our shoulders collapse, our posture gets hunched and on the contrary, if we are happy and confident, we stand tall, front of the body gets open to receive every new experience inside. Body and mind are inseparable.
I have tried to include some kind of exercise in my life ever since I know myself. I cannot think of my life without it. I remember the worst part of my life was the time I didn’t participate in any kind of exercise. Whenever I stop moving, my body was slowly getting used to the sedentary lifestyle and my mind was following it. It only wanted to be inactive and do nothing. Whenever I start moving, my mind started moving as well. This goes both ways. Whenever I feel excited, my body wants to move. Not only to exercise but just to move. Do you ever feel so excited, so happy that you couldn’t stand still you wanted jump, dance, run? The thoughts are so powerful, your body wants to join it with movement.
General idea is to link the brain with the thoughts. According to neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert, “The only reason humans and animals have a brain is to achieve complex movements”. He gives sea squirt as an example: it has a nervous system. At some point in its life, it sticks on a rock. And the first thing it does is to digest its brain and nervous system for food. So, once it doesn’t need to move, it doesn’t need a brain.
Gillian isn’t sick. She’s a dancer
I immediately thought of Sir Ken Robinson’s TED speech when I read Daniel Wolpert’s reasoning for the brain. Sir Ken Robinson is an author and a speaker. He gave a speech with the title “Do schools kill creativity?” If you didn’t see it, I strongly advise you to check it out.
He gives a little girl as an example:
The school, in the ’30s, wrote to her parents and said, “We think Gillian has a learning disorder.” She couldn’t concentrate; she was fidgeting. She went to see this specialist. So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother, and she was led and sat on this chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes, while this man talked to her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school, because she was disturbing people, her homework was always late, and so on. Little kid of eight. In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian and said, “I’ve listened to all these things your mother’s told me. I need to speak to her privately. Wait here. We’ll be back. We won’t be very long,” and they went and left her.
As they went out of the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. And when they got out of the room, he said to her mother, “Just stand and watch her.” And the minute they left the room, she was on her feet, moving to the music. And they watched for a few minutes, and he turned to her mother and said, “Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn’t sick. She’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.”
What impressed me is the sentence she made after her mom took her to the dance school “I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. We walked in this room, and it was full of people like me, people who couldn’t sit still, people who had to move to think.”
Magic Pill
What do experts always tell? “You should exercise to be healthy, not to get a cardiovascular/heart disease or to lose weight.”
You will be healthy with exercise. According to a genetic metabolic neurologist, Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky “Going for a run is going to improve your skin health, your eye health, your gonadal health,”. He says “It’s unbelievable. If there were a drug that could do for human health everything that exercise can, it would likely be the most valuable pharmaceutical ever developed.” but an unclear goal such as being healthy doesn’t motivate people to exercise.
Not getting a cardiovascular/heart disease only may motivate older people. And I am sorry but exercise will not make you lose weight, diet will. You may even gain weight while exercising due to whether from new muscle mass or a fired-up appetite. Don’t get me wrong, exercise can be an accessory part to accomplish all of these goals, but it is not its’ main feature. When there is a far-reaching goal on the horizon, it is really hard to get motivated on every session. Long term goals motivate people in the short run but after a while, this motivation wears off.
What does motivate people? Rewards do. Especially instant rewards. You do an action and get a reward in return. And what is the instant reward for exercise? Feeling good. Not just happier. After every exercise session, my brain always feels clearer. I find myself more focused, more on the moment. We know that physical activity helps bump up the production of your brain’s feel-good neurotransmitters, called endorphins. Releasing endorphins wasn’t enough for me to explain that mental clarity I feel after a workout. An article on Time magazine in 2016 shed a light on the subject for me.
Fertilizer for The Brain
Scientists found that exercise improves blood flow to the brain, feeding the growth of new blood vessels and even new brain cells, courtesy of the protein BDNF, short for brain-derived neurotrophic factor. BDNF triggers the growth of new neurons and helps repair and protect brain cells from degeneration. “I always tell people that exercise is regenerative medicine–restoring and repairing and basically fixing things that are broken,” says Bamman, director of the Center for Exercise Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
New Brain, New You
Department of Neurology, University of Muenster, Germany researched regarding learning performance, they assessed directly after high impact anaerobic sprints, low impact aerobic running and a period of rest in 27 healthy subjects in a randomized cross-over design. Dependent variables comprised learning speed as well as immediate (1 week) and long-term (>8 months) overall success in acquiring a novel vocabulary. They found that vocabulary learning was 20 percent faster after intense physical exercise as compared to the other two conditions.
I dug into BDNF, it turns out, many scientists refers to BDNF as “fertilizer for the brain”. BDNF regulates the growth, protection, maintenance, and repair of neurons in our brain. BDNF not only helps in recovery and repair in brain injury and depression but also with regular tasks such as learning and memory. It also binds to receptors at the synapses, to improve signal strength between neurons. Low levels of BDNF are often problematic and have been linked to Alzheimer’s, accelerated aging, poor neural development, neurotransmitter dysfunction, obesity, depression, and even schizophrenia. It strengths brain cell communication with each other and increases brain capacity.
When you start exercising, your brain recognizes this as a moment of stress. As your heart pressure increases, the brain thinks you are either fighting the enemy or fleeing from it. To protect yourself and your brain from stress, you release BDNF and it has a protective and also reparative element to your memory neurons and acts as a reset switch. That’s why we often feel so at ease. Things are clearer after exercising and eventually, we feel stress-free.
After an exercise, BDNF creates new brain cells so, you are truly a new person.
BDNF Levels and Intensity of Exercise
The study on the journal of applied psychology compared BDNF levels of continuous exercise (CON) protocol at 70% of maximal work rate and a high-intensity interval training (HIT) protocol at 90% of maximal work rate for periods of 1 min alternating with 1 min of rest (both protocols lasted 20 min).
“[BDNF]ser levels gradually increase during both types of intense exercise, CON and HIT, and that this increase is temporary, with BDNF levels returning to baseline values 20 min after the end of the exercise. Moreover, we showed that [BDNF]ser levels after our HIT protocol were slightly higher than after our CON protocol when they were tested in healthy, active young men using a crossover design.”
“HIT induced greater [BDNF]ser levels than CON, and because most of our participants preferred the HIT protocol, we recommend HIT as a potential intervention for increasing BDNF levels in the brain, which might promote neural plasticity and good cognitive function.”
HIIT (a.k.a Most Bang For the Buck)
As we can see, intense exercises do wonders for BDNF levels. Therefore, I would recommend high-intensity interval(HIIT) training for the optimum BDNF raise. A high-intensity interval training workout alternates between short work intervals (70 to 90 percent max heart rate) and rest periods (60 to 65 percent max heart rate).
When it comes to exercise there is always the infamous scapegoat. TIME. People never have enough time. So HIIT comes in handy. Time-efficient and great for raising BDNF.
This is the general formula for HIIT:
- Start with warm-up
- 1-minute work followed by 1-minute rest, repeat these 5 times
- Finish with cooldown
This formula is not carved in stone. If you believe you can push yourself hard as you can in 20–30 seconds, it is enough. But I am talking about giving %90 to %100 of yourself to the exercise. Always start small, start with %50 or %60 in 1 minute and use high knees running in place as exercise. Then increase the intensity and switch the more advanced movements (e.g. burpees, box jumping) after you feel comfortable.
You can use any kind of exercise that gets your heart pumping. Running, bicycle, stationary bicycle, burpees, jumping jacks, rope skipping, jumping, box jumping, swimming, high knees running in place, sled pushes, etc. And, you can do it anywhere you want.
It is important to properly warm-up to avoid injuries. I usually use a light version of my main exercise to warm-up. E.g brisk walking if I am going to run.
Cooling down with a couple of stretches after the HIIT relaxes the body and mind. I choose my stretches according to my main exercise. If I do a lower-body dominant exercise (Box jumping, sprinting, etc.), I mostly stretch my quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings.
High-intensity interval training is a physically demanding kind of exercise. You must consult with your doctor before trying it. Especially if you have problems with the heart or blood vessels, you are new to exercise or have prior injuries.
An Example
I use the following routine for the last couple of weeks:
- Warm-up: 3 sets of squats. 3 sets of push-ups. The number of sets may change. I try to get my heart pumping a little.
- Burpees (I started with no jump. Two weeks later, I added the jump) 1 minute. 1-minute rest. I do this 5 times
- Cooldown: Deep squat hold, hero pose, and chest opener
In these days, everything going with COVID-19. I stay at home as much as I can. Therefore, I choose an exercise that I can do at home. The moment we get back to our old life. I am going for a run in the park. I am very much looking forward to it. Till then, I will alternate among burpees, high knees running in place, jumping rope and box jumping.
This routine takes 20 minutes of my day. I try to add any physical activity into the other 23 hours and 40 minutes. Physical activities include all types of movements, not just exercise. I am trying to make movement a part of my lifestyle. I am trying to walk as much as possible. I am taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Even the small changes make a big difference.
Mindful Mindset
The last but not least, I try to do all these movements with a mindful mindset. This is underestimated when it comes to exercise. I see many people looking at their phone between sets in the gym. One of the most demanding things for the brain is to switch focus. If it constantly changes its focus between exercise and social media. The brain will not get all the benefits of exercise. Just let it focus. Exercise is here to make us feel better but it doesn’t go well with social media. Let your body and mind to focus only one thing at a time. Let it experience what you are doing. Let it give all it has to do one thing at a time.
