Clarification since a number of the comments are reading this as "strength training makes your brain stronger". This study looked at _motor_ neurons, not neurons in your brain. Motor neurons are the neurons between your spinal cord and muscle cells, responsible for transferring the signal from your brain to contract/relax your muscles.
I think it was already known that working out muscles increases the innervation (the resolution of how many neurons are attached to a muscle) of the muscles, which is the mechanism for increased motor control that eg pianists have. I think this study is shedding more light on process, and providing stronger empirical evidence for that exact mechanism. Very exciting that this might be used to help people recover from nerve damage/spinal cord injury!
Worth pointing out: we have some evidence that high-intensity interval training actually does make your brain stronger, through an unrelated mechanism.
HIIT exercise causes muscles to produce lactate, which crosses the blood–brain barrier and induces the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. BDNF is critical to grow and repair neurons, and we can upregulate it significantly by sprinting hard a few times a week. That's good news for those of us with only a few hours a week to work out!
Not sure if you get the same benefits from lifting? I haven't researched this in a while so my sources might be behind the cutting edge.
Great points, and thank you for sharing references as well! I was later thinking that I should have also mentioned that "it likely is good for your brain, just not because of the processes in this study". Maybe if I exercised more I would've remembered! :D
I have a unique related problem. My left leg calf muscle is almost an inch smaller than my right calf muscle. I just noticed it this year. Felt so weird. Why would there be imbalance in calf muscle growth to such an extreme degree. Then I tried to do a single leg calf raise on the left leg and couldn't do it. I still can't do it after 6-7 months. I must admit I am not training the left calf muscle at all, just the usual running and some sporadic squats.
This could have something to do with motor neurons not firing or something I don't know. I went to a physical therapist who suggested some calf and toe stretches and it seemed ridiculous to me. Like why would I exercise a muscle or a bunch of bones that is not functioning as expected, wouldn't that exacerbate the problem ? He didn't give a convincing answer but this paper makes me think he was spot on.
Isolating and exercising the calf muscles could probably help fire those neurons I don't know.I should do some more study on this. It's not debilitating now but I don't know what will be the impact on my balance 20-30 years from now. I am 47.
Maybe totally unrelated, but I had a PT say people that run or walk on the side of a road experience these kinds of asymmetries.
The side of many roads is graded slightly to drain, and if you have a habit of always walking on, say, the right in N. America to go with traffic, you're consistently training asymmetrically without realizing it.
I have the same thing, the PT is right. Activating your big toe kicks off a chain of biomechanics up to your hip muscles (glutes) and will correct your gait and muscles that are not firing if you work on it consciously. I still deal with it when I forget the problem went away and sit in my computer chair all day leaning on one side not using my other calf.
Awareness is key and conscious work will activate it over time.
Do you spend a lot of time driving an automatic transmission? After putting 150,000 miles on my car, I'm kind of surprised I don't have more asymmetry in my legs.
More likely you favor one leg when exercising, which is common and needs to be adjusted for. Asymmetric atrophy creates a feedback loop which exacerbates the atrophy.
Muscles need neurons to control them, so it makes sense that some feedback loop would exist. I remember reading about similar feedback loops between muscle growth and bone density (as you get stronger, bones benefit from being resilient to higher loads).
As I understand it, the kinetic chain goes nervous system -> muscles -> tendons -> bones. It would make sense for all of these to make each other stronger in some way.
I think if I had issues with either mental clarity or sleep I'd cut back more, I do practice dry January and have been surprised and how I don't really feel all that different. Maybe 30 days isn't long enough
I too enjoy drinking alcohol and a few years back went dry for 90 days. I was disappointed. If anything, I felt worse. A clean diet and exercise has much more of an impact on how I feel/sleep than abstaining from alcohol.
Several studies have shown that exercising improves cognition better than brain training games and activities. Alcohol does impact cognition if it is binge drinking, or you exceed 2+ drinks/day. Though it does take years of drinking for it to be visible.
I agree with this, however, the best sleep of my life was when I was doing Ashtanga yoga regular. It's very physical, but I think it also takes care of a lot of muscle tension - notably in the shoulders, hips, and hamstrings - that are an often unnoticed cause of sleep issues.
Not only did I sleep better while doing Ashtanga, I felt better with less sleep. It was amazing. It's something I've struggled incorporating into my current lifestyle for a few reasons.
Agreed. When I was practicing 5-6 times per week my sleep was a lot better. Unfortunately my yoga school closed during the pandemic and I started training Muay Thai in my neighborhood. Sometimes I'm so tired from training it's actually difficult to sleep. With only doing asana practice I can sleep 7 hours and be fine, with Muay Thai I need 8-9 hours to recover.
I haven't had a drink, or smoked for two months and my sleeping has improved so much it is crazy, absolutely crazy... I do need to get back to the gym, it is just so hard to muscle the strength to go when I'm not feeling particularly good about myself, which is dumb, since that is the reason I want to get back into it...
Maybe get yourself a couple kettlebells and do some kb swings at home? You can build a lot of baseline strength with a kb or two. Even just doing 100 single arm swings per day is enough at the beginning, and it takes no more than 15 minutes or so. Set yourself a goal of doing it consistently for a while and I'm sure you'll feel pretty confident walking into a gym again after 45 or 100 days.
Rogue is actually doing a 5-items ship for $5 promo for the month, kettlebells included.
Oh for sure, I just am very happy with my Rogue equipment and am wiling to spend a little more for it. It's easy to get damaged equipment in the mail with something so heavy, and Rogue is good about reshipping things. I've never purchased anything from Walmart (I live in NYC, we don't really have them), so I'm not sure what they're like.
But yeah, get whatever works for you to start training!
I never associated alcohol with poor sleep (it makes me fall asleep!) until I got a garmin watch and could see whenever I went to bed after drinking, my rest was absolutely awful.
I've had a lot of fights about this with my girlfriend. We both work in academia and regularly go to the gym, but she insists to have a drink every now and then, which she says helps her take an edge off work stress. She also scolds me some times when I want to go to bed before 10pm, saying this is too restrictive and less fun. We ended up breaking up last week - not exclusively because of this, but these incompatibilities definitely contributed to the decision.
Her approach might not be the literal peak healthiest, but that doesn't mean its wrong. If she's only having a drink every once in a while and is getting 7+ hours of sleep most nights then the negative effects are probably negligible anyway.
To a certain extent, most people need to sacrifice some amount of health and performance to live the fullest life they can. If you don't feel that you benefit from that, though, and its important for either of you that you share your lifestyle, then perhaps you just weren't that compatible.
> To a certain extent, most people need to sacrifice some amount of health and performance to live the fullest life they can.
I agree 100%. I did not post to complain about her, but more to note about incompatibilities in things like sleep schedule. I do believe though she should drink a bit less, but as long as it makes her enjoy life, why not.
In this scenario, I am your girlfriend, and you are my boyfriend (or from my perspective you are my wife ).
For what it’s worth, I’ve found that if I try to go to bed too early — as my wife often insists — I wake up in the middle of the night. This happens constantly enough that I really try to avoid being in bed before 11pm.
Everybody is different. The reason I need to go to bed early is that I wake up before 7am every day, regardless of when I go to bed. So the only way for me to get 8-9 hours of sleep is to go to bed early.
Your body is different from mine so you need a different routine. My point was that it's important for me to maintain a certain schedule which was incompatible with my partner - which is fair enough.
Note this study provides no evidence in support of this statement; strength training caused motor neurons to grow -- the neurons between your spinal chord and the muscles -- not neurons in your brain. Your statement is likely true, but just not because of this study.
That doesn't really say anything about alcohol's effect on (non-dementia related) mental clarity and sleep.
Also if you continue to read that meta-analysis beyond the sentence you linked to it seems that much larger studies did not find a correlation between reduced dementia risk and moderate alcohol consumption. In fact they found that high alcohol consumption was associated with significantly higher risk of dementia. The overall conclusion of the analysis was "Available epidemiological studies are not sufficient to verify a protective effect of alcohol on dementia development."
Dementia seems highly related, if not inversely synonymous, with mental clarity? I think your comment is a bit misleading - while it does seem clearer that _high_ alcohol consumption and alcohol "use-disorders" are correlated with elevated risk of dementia, results pertaining to light-to-moderate consumption are "heterogeneous" - I read 4 studies or meta-studies with results showing _decreased_ risk of dementia (Rotterdam, Whitehall-II, Anstey, Xhu), 2 showing no correlation (California, HUNT), and zero showing increased risk when it comes to light-to-moderate consumption. Anyone interested should of course read the linked text in full and draw their own conclusions.
Everyone who starts working out notice this. Very fast gains in strength and resistance the first weeks due to neuronal signals improvement. And then a slow down where muscle gains take over.
This frustrates me because I see this said often, but I have never experienced it myself. It makes me feel like I am doing something wrong that somehow everyone else is doing right.
fwiw it took me a few months to see any gains myself. The key for me was consistency and showing up on a regular schedule. Twice a week for me, with a third day thrown in if I could manage it. But those two days I chose were absolutely non-optional and I held myself to it. Took about 60-90 days before I noticed any sort of improvement.
A brisk one our walk or hill climb of a few lifts of a 10-15lb weight weight set does wonders for reducing anxiety, stopping stiffness and soreness, getting the brain thinking.
The whole body is a thinking system with nerves and muscles that need feedback to work as well.
Can relate to the hair growth thing, I've started to enter my "balding" era and I've been having a nervous breakdown. I never really cared about my looks before but the balding thing is really getting to me. Finasteride makes me depressed and minoxidil is so annoying, makes me feel less alone when I read a comment like yours, ha.
If that doesn’t work for whatever reason, then cutting it very short (a few mm) is the second best alternative.
Trying to hide it is the worst.
Stressing about it is a waste.
I started shaving my head when I was about 25. I wish I had done it sooner. No haircuts, no hairstyling, no “bed hair”. I just shave my head when I shave my face, usually in the shower.
I lost all of my hair at 19 years old inside of about 3 high-stress months. From long hair to Stage 7 MPB. Too poor to medicate so I just had to deal with the new me. I don't even remember the experience of getting a haircut and what that's like.
I encourage you to embrace it. Go skin bald. There's a lot of hidden benefits and really it's no big deal. All of the treatment options have huge downsides or look like shit.
if you can, start right away. i've always been known among my friends as the most sedentary, lazy, and effort-averse person in the world. but five months ago, that changed, and I regret not starting sooner. it seems like you develop a self-challenge component that you'll only understand once you start
I've done varying amount of exercise throughout life, but really dedicating myself to whole body weight-training/yoga/core-and-balance over a period of about a year has fundamentally changed my life in countless ways.
I wouldn't even say you understand it once you start. I think understanding requires going for a while without injury, passing your noob gains phase, hitting a plateau and seeing results again.
Especially for someone like me into "depth" in strategy games... you realize that the only limits are genetic & mental and the "skill curve" is infinite. Putting effort into training, eating or resting has largely supplanted my desire to play video games.
NB: I had previously done a Starting Strength program a decade ago with a not-so-great coach. Coach was a dickhead and didn't discourage me from some really bad training habits that led me to get injured. Injury led to depression, weight gain and not getting back to training for a decade. Maybe that's on me but it's a serious regret and the approach I took to training this time around made all of the difference.
I thought this, and nothing could be further from the truth. The gym (and gymbros) have been one of the most positive uplifting experiences of my life so far. I had a BMI of over 35 when I stepped into a gym for the first time ever at 41 years old.
The non-zero financial expense is really the only issue I can see as "real" on your list. You can avoid #3 by spending money on a personal trainer to learn. Gym memberships are also not cheap. The long-term costs of not doing so I would argue are far greater.
I didn't say "they're all going to laugh at me because I'm fat". I intentionally left the reason unspecified, but fat-shaming wasn't even on my list of considerations.
To be more specific: They're going to laugh at me because I have no idea WTF I'm doing. I have no idea what my own (or anyone else's) expectations are in a gym. I don't know what anything does, how to use it, or even what it may be called. I don't what cultural norms, unwritten rules, or written rules may exist in that environment.
I don't even know when to go, when not to go, what to wear, what not to wear, or et cetera. All I really know is that gyms are things that exist -- and that those who do go to gyms all seem to have the broad assumption that everyone was born with the specific knowledge needed to go to the gym, and that it is all implicitly obvious to anyone who is breathing.
But it is not implicitly obvious at all, to me, except for step 1: I am going to fuck this up.
And then: Yes, they're all going to laugh at me. (That's step 2.)
Step 3 is: Fuck it, I'm done. (I can get right to step 3 without even bothering with steps 1 or 2.)
AFAIK, absolutely zero of my friends "hit the gym" (or ever have) so it's not like I can ask for local guidance from someone who I know and trust.
It's daunting just to think about, much less consider actually doing.
> To be more specific: They're going to laugh at me because I have no idea WTF I'm doing.
This was my exact fear as well. I included BMI in my reply to illustrate I had never stepped foot in a gym before but perhaps that was a mistake to focus on.
In fact I could have written your entire post nearly verbatim 2 years ago. Even down to the "what do I wear" question. I was terrified for all the reasons you list, and am in general quite socially anxious from the get-go. Especially in totally alien environments to me. I spent months selecting gym wear and a bag prior to first stepping foot in one.
> and that those who do go to gyms all seem to have the broad assumption that everyone was born with the specific knowledge needed to go to the gym, and that it is all implicitly obvious to anyone who is breathing.
This is an assumption I held as well, but is simply outright wrong. The folks who are hardcore gymgoers love nothing more than helping newbies out, and they don't make these assumptions in my experience. They have a hard time not coming over and helping you out with proper form if they see you doing something that might injure you. They don't do so because they are afraid of making you uncomfortable. If anything, they get excited to see someone putting in the consistent work - they know how hard it is to do so, and love to see people attempting to improve their lives since they generally know how positive it is in theirs. There are assholes in all demographics, but they are rare in my experience.
My first trip to the gym with a personal trainer was highly specific: I want to be taught like a 5 year old on the easy machines so I can use them without feeling like an idiot on my own. This lasted a few sessions and definitely was a totally new experience for my trainer. She obviously felt a bit uncomfortable doing it since it was so far off-script for her.
Over time I graduated to feeling a lot more comfortable, but those first few months were really difficult for the reasons you describe. I felt like an outsider and a complete idiot since I barely had a clue. At some point I just surrendered to looking like a moron.
I am very lucky I have a wife who is very socially capable and was in the gym a lot beforehand. I was able to use her to setup that first training appointment and explain how out of the ordinary I wanted it to go. Otherwise though, I did it on my own with said professional help once a week.
I honestly wish you were close to me (maybe you are?) because I'd love to bring you to my gym and take you around - tell my trainer there is another one of me who needs the same treatment! It was life changing to me and I wish I had figured out a way to do it sooner in my life.
I still feel awkward as hell in the gym. I do half my routine "wrong" and still feel self conscious about it. But I'm slowly getting better, and I slowly realize literally no one cares.
If I can work up the courage, anyone I ask is quite happy to show me proper form/give advice vs. judgement. I'm sure a few do judge, but they thankfully keep it to themselves. I also continued to work with a trainer and developed a nice rapport where she can laugh at me in a good way while we correct my fuckups with a sense of humor about it all. She's basically become a family friend at this point.
Even with all that said, I now look forward to my training sessions. Less so my solo trips, but I feel amazing afterwards. Both physically, and the sense of accomplishment. So many of my "feeling like shit" days have been cleared up, and I now have a little bit of self confidence in my strength as well.
What I'm taking away from the discourse here are these things:
1. Yep. I'll fuck it up.
2. But that is usually fine, because people tend to be kind and helpful in a gym.
4. I can also hire someone to help, and perhaps I should.
5. Although none of this come without cost, the rewards of doing these things tend to be greater than the cost.
And that brings me a hell of a lot closer to being able to make informed decisions and set reasonable expectations (for all things gym) than I have been previously.
I know that feeling, I was nervous about the risks you listed when I was broke and started lifting around 2000/2001 anyway. Trust me, the expense of losing one's health due to inactivity is higher than any financial cost. I trained intuitively, which mostly means going it alone at the school of hard knocks by trying everything and keeping what sticks. I got hurt countless times from ego lifting too much weight in my 20s, not going through the full range of motion, etc, but nobody else got hurt on my watch. But athletes pretty much always recover anyway. That's the important part - learning that proper exercise, nutrition and supplementation makes the body fungible, so there's really no limit to what it's capable of. Now I'm one of the biggest guys at the gym as a lifelong natty and nobody's laughed at me since I got the eye of the tiger about 3 months in.
You can avoid all 5 almost* entirely and make amazing progress by doing bodyweight exercises at home, 2-3 times a week :) There are plenty of free guides out there where you can start at almost any level. E.g. can't do a pushup? put your knees down. Still can't? Do it at a head-up incline. Still can't? Push against a wall. Keep track and make progress until you can move to the next harder exercise. And always remember it's a marathon, not a sprint, so be patient with yourself.
* Can't make any promises. You might get hurt. You might need to pay for some kind of pull up system. But generally speaking: the sooner you stop looking for the perfect time/situation and just start, the easier it all becomes.
I keep getting hurt via various forms of exercise. My last injury was a herniated disc which has cost me so much time and money for surgery and PT and missed work time and such.
So a big #1 and #3 for me...
Maybe they were because of #2, but I tried to learn as best as I could.
I couldn't care less about #5.
A lot of time, money, and effort and I still have pretty much nothing to show for it. I am still quite thin and weak. I wont give up, but it's definitely not as simple as some people make it seem.
It takes an hour at most and you can go twice a week, working different muscle groups. Your muscles need 3-4 days of rest especially as you increase intensity.
So you can only do bicep workouts once a week for example. Even then, any exercise is better than none.
You can even just start at home with adjustable dumbbells and go to the gym when you hit those limits..
If I did everything people said isn't a big time commitment, I'd have no time left!
Edit: A more direct response - I agree with you that it's not a big deal, especially if you have dumbbells etc at home. (I think it's worth it, and lift weights.) It's still a time commitment, and therefore opportunity cost. That is a downside, irt the parent comment. I think you'll find many weight lifters spend more than the amount of time you cited. (Especially if they don't have a home gym), and I suspect any benefits are proportional (not linearly) to time spent doing it.
I'm not sure which part they're claiming here is novel? Myokines' effect on neuron growth and wellbeing is a well known phenomenon, no? Or is this another instance of MIT press overstating their work?
I don’t agree about bodybuilders being stupid, but going to the gym and being a bodybuilder are not one and the same. They just happen to occupy the same spaces.
And in bodybuilding, unless someone is specifically a natty/natural bodybuilding competitor the answer is pretty much “all of them have been on gear at some point in time”. For other gym-goers, the answer is, nobody knows unless they tell you and since steroids are very illegal, people don’t tend to shout it from the rooftops.
There’s this remarkably stupid stereotype that muscles equates to stupidity. If you look at some of the champions, they all have degrees in fields like Accounting (Ronnie Coleman, Phil Heath) or Chemistry (Frank Zane). Schwarzenegger famously did business school at night while a bodybuilder.
Careful, you'll get scorn from those who think you should be spending that time doing leetcode. How could you be any good at your job when you're flexing and sweating all the time?
I think it was already known that working out muscles increases the innervation (the resolution of how many neurons are attached to a muscle) of the muscles, which is the mechanism for increased motor control that eg pianists have. I think this study is shedding more light on process, and providing stronger empirical evidence for that exact mechanism. Very exciting that this might be used to help people recover from nerve damage/spinal cord injury!
reply