Home – Cat Kabira Yoga. How physical exercise makes your brain work better. The brain is often described as being “like a muscle”.
It’s a comparison that props up the brain training industry and keeps school children hunched over desks. We judge literacy and numeracy exercises as more beneficial for your brain than running, playing and learning on the move. But the brain-as-muscle analogy doesn’t quite work. 34 Pictures To See Which Muscle You Are Stretching. You should all know that you need to stretch, whether you are a chronic sitter, a weekend warrior, or a daily exerciser.
Stretching helps your blood reach your muscles and your joints move through their full range of motion, but it also improves your posture and athletic performance and reduces the risk of injuries and pain. 36 Pictures To See Which Muscle You’re Stretching » Make Your Life Healthier. You should all know that you need to stretch, whether you are a chronic sitter, a weekend warrior, or a daily exerciser.
Stretching helps your blood reach your muscles and your joints move through their full range of motion, but it also improves your posture and athletic performance and reduces the risk of injuries and pain. How do you know which muscles you are actually stretching or if you are performing each stretch the right way while you do yoga or the flexibility routine? When I feel unutterably sad, there’s only one thing that helps: exercise.
One in seven people in the UK admit that they have taken no exercise in the past 10 years, according to a poll by the British Heart Foundation.
The excuses for this ranged from laziness to bad weather, and some even claimed that they found exercise too boring to contemplate. Up until a couple of years ago I would have happily put myself in the same category. At school I would always stand on the sidelines during sport or loiter at the back of the gym, desperately hoping I’d be excused. The games captains would always pick me last in football, and I do not blame them one bit. Slow Runners Come Out Ahead. Photo Phys Ed Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.
XBX - Chart 1. Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Plan. This exercise plan is old-school, from the 1950s.
A doctor designed it for the Royal Canadian Air Force. It’s a series of five exercises for men (called 5BX) and 10 exercises for women (called XBX). The idea is to work all your muscle groups in a short amount of time. I liked the sound of that. And I also like the fact that it takes NO equipment. The 5BX plan for dudes takes 11 minutes. toe touching/warm-up: 2 minutes partial sit-ups: 1 minute leg lifts: 1 minute push-ups: 1 minute stationary running: 6 minutes. Scientists recommend 20-minute daily walk to avoid premature death. Lack of exercise is twice as likely to lead to an early grave than obesity, research has shown.
A brisk 20-minute walk each day could be all it takes to avoid dying prematurely, the findings suggest. Scientists looked at the effects of obesity and exercise on 334,161 European men and women whose progress was followed for 12 years. Running 5 Minutes a Day Has Long-Lasting Benefits. Photo Phys Ed Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.
Running for as little as five minutes a day could significantly lower a person’s risk of dying prematurely, according to a large-scale new study of exercise and mortality. The findings suggest that the benefits of even small amounts of vigorous exercise may be much greater than experts had assumed. In recent years, moderate exercise, such as brisk walking, has been the focus of a great deal of exercise science and most exercise recommendations. But the science to support that number had been relatively paltry, with few substantial studies having carefully tracked how much vigorous exercise is needed to reduce disease risk and increase lifespan. For decades, researchers there have been collecting information about the health of tens of thousands of men and women visiting the clinic for a check-up.
The researchers then checked death records for these adults. Standing on one leg may predict which 53-year-olds at risk of early death. The new study found that men who could stand up from a chair and sit down again less than 23 times in a minute were twice as likely to die in the following 13 years than those who could 37 or more.
Among women those who could stand up and sit down again less than 22 times in a minute were twice as likely to die in that time than those who could do the test 35 times or more. Those unable to do the test at all were almost seven times more likely to die. In the standing on one leg with eyes closed test, men and women able to hold the position for less than two seconds were three times more likely to die than those who could hold it for ten seconds or more. Why Does Walking Stimulate Creative Thinking? Marily Oppezzo is on a mission to motivate people of every generation to optimize their creative potential by walking more and sitting less.
Oppezzo and her colleague Daniel L. Schwartz, PhD from Stanford have found that going for a walk may be the most practical way to generate creative thinking anytime during the day. I had a chance to speak with Marily Oppezzo on the phone for an hour this afternoon about her new study titled, “Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking” which was published in April 2014 by the American Psychological Association. Taking your brain for a walk: the secret to delaying dementia. Regular brisk walks can slow down the shrinking of the brain and the faltering mental skills that old age often brings, scientists say. Studies on men and women aged 60 to 80 found that taking a short walk three times a week increased the size of brain regions linked to planning and memory over the course of a year. The prefrontal cortex and hippocampus increased in size by only 2% or 3%, but that was enough to offset the steady shrinkage doctors expected to see over the same period.
Exactly how Exercising turns on our Happiness. {Infographic} Why Sitting Kills While Moving Heals. How Yoga Changes your Body—Starting the Day you Begin. [Infographic] Ask Well: Benefits of Swimming. Walking just 2.5 hours a week could prevent 37,000 deaths - This Britain - UK. How to Become an Exercise Addict. We all have friends who, despite hectic schedules, never miss a day at the gym. Who can't stop talking about the next 10K. Who can't stop smiling after yoga class. Sure, they're a little, well, obsessive about working out. But we envy them! The good news is we all have the potential to become fitness-obsessed, says Tom Holland, a Connecticut-based celebrity fitness trainer, exercise physiologist, and expert in sports psychology. Save Your Life - Workout Move. The Office Worker's Schedule for Healthy Living Behind a Desk. How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body. Danielle Levitt for The New York Times Members of the Broadway cast of “Godspell” do their flexible best.
From left: Uzo Aduba (doing the wheel), George Salazar (extended-hand-to-big-toe pose) and Nick Blaemire (headstand).