You probably already knew that gym attendance spikes in January when New Year’s resolutions are motivating people to exercise - and you’d definitely not be surprised to learn that most of us will lose momentum within weeks to months. Who amongst us hasn’t experienced that disappointment when we aren’t able to live up to our best intentions?
Figuring out what works (or worked)
You may already have a regular exercise or movement routine that you enjoy and if that’s you - congratulations! This would be a great time to reflect on what it is exactly that you love about this activity. Because while regular habits can appear to be locked in on autopilot, the reality is that they are a bit more fragile than we’d like to think.
That’s because our lives are full of moving parts that come with varying degrees of uncertainty. Our routines can be disrupted by little changes—like shifts in meeting times or work deadlines. Or by major disruptions like illness or injury—whether in ourselves or loved ones, the loss of a pet, moving your home, or getting laid off.
Building sustainable habits requires reward
If you aren’t moving as much as you’d like right now, think of a time when you did enjoy a more regular routine. Maybe you called it ‘exercise’ or maybe not. But chances are that you can remember what you liked about it and why you kept it up. Maybe you enjoyed being with a friend or joining a class, watching that garden grow and thrive, or feeling the flood of feel-good endorphins after hiking to the top of the hill.
The point is that building sustainable movement habits requires reward. Yes, you read that right. It’s not actually about willpower or discipline, nor even “no pain, no gain.” It turns out that while fear and pain can help to reinforce habits over the short term, they tend not to be so effective in building long term habitual patterns.
The best exercise for brain health
I’m often asked what’s the best exercise for brain health. And the answer is that it’s complicated.
Taking a deep dive into the science of movement can get confusing, because you’ll find that there’s a huge volume of studies looking at myriad variables. Time frames range from minutes to hours after exercise, to the impact of movement on brain health over decades. And the literature is full of debate on the rival merits of aerobic exercise vs. strength training, duration vs. intervals, and the varied implications of this biomarker or that neuroendocrine level.
The kind of advice that emerges from all of this research can appear to be ridiculously simple and nonspecific to the point of being downright unhelpful:
Any amount of movement is good for the brain. More is better.
Do around 150 mins of moderately intense exercise per week.
Okay . . . so what actually counts as “enough” movement? What’s the least amount I can get away with? Like how about walking the dog for 10 mins a couple of times a week? This is where science typically fails to translate into the kind of advice that’s actually actionable at the individual level.
And it actually makes sense that there ‘s no one-size-fits-all solution, because we are all unique and different in our needs and preferences. The reality is that we each need to figure out for ourselves what’s on our short list of options for how to move our bodies—ideally every day for the rest of our lives. Because moving promotes all kinds of critical neural circuitry in our brains, as well as protecting our hearts and bodies.
My personal guidelines for choosing movement options go as follows:
Make sure you are paying equal attention to aerobic fitness, muscle strength, and flexibility. Get to the point of breaking a sweat and breathing hard.
Move as much of your whole body as possible, over the course of the week.
Figure out how to make it fun and rewarding.
Challenge yourself to build a trusting connection between your body and mind, and let it feel good.
Move the whole body
The reason for moving your full body is that every single nerve in the body maps to the brain. This includes not only nerves that we control when we go to move a finger or eyebrow (a.k.a. motor nerves), but also nerves that sense those movements within our muscles and joints (e.g. sensory stretch receptors). Moving allows us to maintain and strengthen important neural connections that could otherwise get pruned away or wither from disuse (i.e. atrophy) as we get older.
When working out, we usually focus on moving body parts or muscles (like thighs or quads), but actually the body and nervous system are interconnected through a complex network of connective tissue. Some connective tissues like fascia and cartilage serve important structural functions, whereas others support communication and transportation. Moving the whole body gets blood and oxygen flowing, stimulates communication and lubricates joints and fascia to reduce stiffness. It’s like lubing up your joints with WD-40, getting your body’s internal wifi connected, and smoothing out the wrinkly sheets all at once.
Moving allows us to strengthen important neural connections
If you typically enjoy running or hiking, it’s worth considering how you might choose to also engage your upper body in movement on a regular basis. Or if you play a racquet sport that relies heavily on your dominant hand, it’s a good idea to figure out what activities can help to rebalance the other hand/arm/shoulder. Swimming, dancing, and yoga are excellent examples of movements that utilize the full body.
In considering where to start with rebalancing, I’d encourage you to focus first on your feet. Most of us don’t realize that our feet and ankles are crucial for maintaining mobility and preventing falls as we live longer. We wear shoes to protect our feet but we also need to allow the 34 muscles and 33 joints in each foot to breathe, stretch and strengthen. Your feet will benefit from practicing simple mobilization and strengthening by rolling out your soles with a tennis ball or practicing toe lifts while holding on to a counter or chair back.
Figure out what’s rewarding for you
The best way to establish a new movement habit is by making use of our brains’ ability to automate through repetition. We think of drilling as building muscle memory for the activity, but that’s actually just the tip of the iceberg or the visible part of the habit pattern above the water line.
Habit patterns include behaviors that we see as well as invisible layers of feelings and thoughts that drive each behavior. Most of us aren’t even aware that our actions are driven by thoughts and feelings. We think, “That’s just what I do,” or “That’s just the way that I am.” (See Fig 1)
But just think about the last time you felt conflicted about something you did or were about to do. There’s a good chance that conflicting thoughts and feelings were involved in that habit pattern, and that they were either pushing you toward, or pulling you away from doing it.
For example, Sally could be feeling the desire to get away from work and see her friends at the gym, but she also felt guilty about taking time away from work or family. In this case, her “desire” habit pattern could accelerate habit formation, as long as her “guilty” pattern wasn’t pumping the brakes too hard.
We need to be paying attention to both the visible and invisible components of the whole habit pattern in order to avoid sabotaging our own best efforts. In other words, we can’t get the momentum going on new habits unless we proactively address the inertia or drag that’s keeping us stuck.
When it comes to building new habits, it’s a good idea to keep an open mind, because we are all our own subject and scientist when it comes to the trial-and-error process of figuring out what’s actually going to work. It turns out that the most important discipline for us to exercise isn’t so much about willpower as it is about staying open and curious to what is happening in each repeat attempt. For Sally, that means that she gets to observe what’s happening even when she doesn’t make it to the gym.
Like maybe when she misses her Monday gym session because she has to work late. As scientists, we get to learn the most when the experiment fails. So rather than judging herself for failing to exercise, Sally can instead examine her work/life boundaries. Maybe she’ll decide to request overtime pay when she stays late. This would give her boss the choice to compensate her fairly for her time, or he could stop expecting her to stay late.
We reinforce habit loops when we are able to figure out what our accelerators and brakes are for any given behavior. The more rewards (or accelerators), the better our chances of overcoming the friction (or brakes). For Sally, the rewards are getting away from work and seeing her buddies, as well as feeling stronger and a sense of relief from stress, after working out. (See Fig 2)
Each of us is unique in terms of what we’ll find rewarding. Sally may enjoy working out with friends, but her husband may prefer to tune out the rest of the world by listening to music or a podcast.
Small tweaks in our experiments help us to learn what's accelerating for us. Maybe we find it more convenient to walk just a little longer with the dog, rather than having to carve out time to go to a gym. Learning something new about ourselves can be its own reward, as can feeling a sense of pride in accomplishment, like when we get to serve those cherry tomatoes for dinner, fresh from our vegetable garden.
Habit loops are also operating to reinforce unhelpful habit patterns. So when Sally avoids requesting overtime pay and stays late at work anyway, she’s also reinforcing a habit pattern for both herself and her boss. And while she may tell herself that it’s okay for him to take advantage of her this one time, she may eventually become resentful and stressed out when he keeps doing it. It’s human nature to want to avoid conflict, but we can get into some very stressful and unhealthy habits over time when we do.
Learning to trust yourself
In the knowledge worker era, we spend an extraordinary amount of time working with our brains. We are constantly engaging with our computers or phones, or in meetings with other people. We tend not to pay much attention to our bodies most of the time, but moving is an excellent opportunity to check in and reconnect with what’s going on.
I will often notice that my neck feels a bit stiff in the mornings, or maybe my left shoulder is a little twinge-y. I find that gentle stretching is a natural and easy way to begin exploring how my body feels. These little aches and pains often resolve themselves, once I get my muscles and joints moving. Each day is a little different.
You are the authority of your own body
I used to believe in the “no pain, no gain” mantra that encourages us to keep pushing ourselves—no matter what. But I’ve learned that that type of athlete mentality is no longer for me. “Mental toughness” may be required for elite performance, because dissociating from pain can sometimes allow for breakthrough progress. But as we live longer, we each have to get to know our own limits, because our bodies become more prone to injury and take longer to recover. So we are only setting ourselves back, when we push past our limits.
We need body awareness to be able to walk that fine line between challenging ourselves to get stronger and risking injury. Remember that you are the authority of your own body, because you have been living in it for decades. Don’t let the “experts” push you beyond what’s comfortable for you.
Trusting ourselves doesn’t mean that we can’t take some risks. It just means that we need to figure out how to take safe risks. After all, it’s important to keep challenging ourselves to try new things and even to feel awkward sometimes. That awkward learning phase actually acts like Miracle Gro for our neural circuits—whether we are learning to play pickleball or a musical instrument.
That’s one of the reasons why I like Zumba dance class so much. There are always new steps to learn, and knowing that I’ll look and feel ridiculous doing them always makes me laugh, because everyone else is also laughing at themselves and having fun too!
I also love dynamic stretch and strengthening exercises that challenge me to move slowly while focusing on certain target regions of my body. My Moving Meditation teacher Kristin Moritz is always encouraging us to tune in to our mind-body connection - practicing the skills of interoception or sensing what our bodies are telling us. She provides gentle cues and instructions, but adjures us all along to “make the workout yours,” which is how we learn to trust ourselves.
Let it be fun
Getting ourselves moving on a consistent basis has been shown to be the most important thing that we can do to enhance cognitive function. But no one says that it can’t be fun.
Not that all exercise has to be fun all the time, but why not try to get some enjoyment in along with the work? And if you’re yet not sure what kinds of movement you like, give yourself permission to go on a journey of discovery. Try out different ways of moving, but most importantly, give yourself credit for whatever you are already doing.
I recently spoke to a retired doctor friend of mine in her 80s who was telling me that her housecleaner moved away, so she decided to just do the cleaning herself. She doesn’t try to do the whole house in a day—just one room at a time. Now she says, “I don’t need to go to a gym. My whole house is full of workouts!”
Our inner critics are programmed to constantly tell us that what we’re doing isn’t good enough, that we didn’t do it well enough or for long enough. But what if you were to remind yourself that self-criticism is an unhelpful habit loop that pumps the brakes on your progress?
Having fun is the best way to strengthen your self-coaching mind skills while also building physical strength. And that’s how we’ll get to be healthy of mind and body at age 100.
Dr Em coaching tips
Make a list of all the ways that you are moving your body. This could include going up and down stairs at home or walking to the carpark, as well as any “exercise”. See if you can estimate the number of minutes you spend moving each week. This is your “minimum baseline protocol.” On a scale of 0-10 out of 10, how would you rate your satisfaction with how much you are moving? Notice how you are feeling about that score.
Starting with a blank sheet of paper, brainstorm 10 ways to sneak additional movement into your weekly work and home schedule. For example, could you add 5-10 mins when walking the dog? Go for an extra 5-10 mins walk around the building after your potty break? Roll out your soles with a tennis ball under your desk?
Now brainstorm a list of 10 physical activities you’ve always wanted to try. This could be anything from belly dancing to scuba diving. Rank your list from 0-10 in terms of how fun they’d be for you.
Resources
Moving Meditation founder Kristin Moritz is a fitness instructor and life coach offering live zoom classes as well as private instruction and coaching.
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