Exercise is one of those things that we just “know” we should do.
Personally, I started exercising because I used to be super skinny. I couldn’t care less about my health, I just wanted to look “normal”. And so once I put on considerable muscle, I had little incentive to continue.
If you’re not in bad shape, why exercise?
The “why” is important because it is ridiculously difficult to build any habit without aligned incentives.
It’s one thing to have a vague sense of why certain habits are important or good for you. But it’s a completely different thing to understand how exactly these habits change your mind and body.
Our behavior is heavily driven by incentives. When you have a clear picture of how doing something will help you get what you want, you’ll be much more motivated to do it.
The benefits of exercise go wayyy beyond physical health. I got truly motivated to exercise only when I discovered what it does for our brains. So in this post, I’m going to focus purely on the cognitive benefits of exercise and talk about how it can make you happier, smarter, driven, and focused.
Stronger Emotional Regulation
Let’s start with what you already know — exercise makes you feel good. Why?
The standard answer is that working out triggers the release of endorphins. Endorphins are your body’s natural painkillers. They kill off any pain or stress and produce a feeling of euphoria. However, endorphins are only a small part of the picture. Exercise also boosts the levels of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine.
Serotonin plays an important role in regulating your mood, appetite, sleep, and overall sense of well-being. Low levels of serotonin are associated with depression.
Norepinephrine plays an important role in your mood and ability to concentrate. It also triggers the release of glucose into the bloodstream giving you more energy. Low levels of norepinephrine can cause lethargy, lack of concentration, ADHD, and possibly depression.
Dopamine’s two primary functions are motivation and movement. Modern addictions like social media kill our motivation by deregulating dopamine receptors in our brains. Exercise reverses this damage and boosts motivation by triggering the creation of dopamine receptors in the reward center.
Fun fact: Adderall makes people hyper-focused and motivated by increasing the availability of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain.
Altogether, these three neurotransmitters heavily influence your productivity, energy, and happiness.
Cognitive Enhancement
There’s a powerful connection between the brain and movement. Movement signals to the brain that something important is happening. Because evolutionary, we avoided unnecessary physical exertion and engaged in movement only for the sake of survival — to escape a predator, to forage for food, to hunt.
These complex tasks were simultaneously physically and mentally demanding — moving on a landscape, using memory to not only know where to go but also to navigate your way back, making decisions while paying attention to the surroundings, and monitoring your motor systems over complex terrain.
And so now, when we move and engage in intense exercise, our brain gets primed to learn faster and better remember things. Numerous studies confirm the positive association between exercise and cognitive performance.
Exercise creates lasting changes in the brain’s anatomy, physiology, and function. Brain scans show that the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus — the regions that control rational thinking and memory — are larger in people who exercise regularly.
A powerful little protein called Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) is key to these changes. Regular exercise bathes the brain in BDNF. BDNF is like fertilizer for your brain — it improves the function of neurons, encourages their growth, protects and strengthens them. It also increases your brain’s plasticity. High BDNF makes you learn faster, remember better, age slower, and rapidly rewire your brain.
Mental Health Benefits of Exercise
Chronic stress is a major precursor to mental and physical illnesses. Exercise is extremely effective at dissipating stress and equipping you to better handle future stressors.
Given what we’ve discussed so far, it should not come as a surprise that regular exercise is associated with lower neuroticism, anxiety, and depression. Not only that, but physical exercise is also a proven treatment for depression, anxiety disorders, and addictions. Studies show that exercise is as effective (if not more) as anti-depressants and psychotherapy.
Regular exercise also protects your brain against cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases (like Alzheimer’s and Dementia).
Increased Willpower
Willpower is your ability to delay gratification and resist short-term temptations. It’s not an abstract concept. Willpower has a biological basis, in the brain and the body. And like a muscle, you can strengthen it.
How willpower works is that when your brain detects a conflict (or a possible future regret), it launches a sequence of events called the Pause-and-Plan response to help you make a decision that’s conducive to your long-term goals. It is essentially the opposite of the body’s Fight-or-Flight response.
According to The Willpower Instinct, the single best physiological measurement of the pause-and-plan response is something called heart rate variability. Consistent aerobic exercise increases the heart’s stroke volume, thereby lowering the resting heart rate. This creates more space for variability between heartbeats.
Exercise increases your willpower by strengthening your ability to engage the Pause-and-Plan response.
Relevant Plug: The Physiology of Willpower
Closing Thoughts
Sources for all these claims? There are a lot of links so I neatly organized them in a google doc. I had to omit a lot of benefits to keep this post short. And we’ve only focused on the cognitive benefits of exercise.
Remember that being physically inactive is abnormal. Our bodies have evolved to require the stresses inherent in physical activity to grow and function properly. The modern sedentary lifestyle wreaks major havoc on our minds and bodies. So try to move around as much as possible.
As for what kind of exercise is the best, just pick something you can stick to. However, a lot of the benefits we discussed above are tied to aerobic exercise. You gotta get your heart rate up to reap those benefits. The easiest and the most enjoyable way to do that is to pick a sport.
Exercise is one of those keystone habits that will create a domino effect in every area of your life.
“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.” — Mark Tarnopolsky
Godspeed.
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