So approximately 80 minutes later I finally got out and went for a run. I was literally running late. Since I was able to do about 6.5 miles last weekend with the Alzheimer’s Association runners’ group, I was ready to tackle 8 miles. Because there is still a lot of snow on the ground everywhere (see photo on right), I decided to run along the Minuteman Bikeway which is usually plowed right away after a snow storm. To my surprise, a lot of runners, walkers, and bicyclists were out and about despite the stiff winter wind. The first four miles were tough. Normally, it takes me about a mile to get warmed-up and into  a comfortable running speed. However, I didn’t expect the strong wind hitting my face so soon. My legs also felt as if they were complaining about having been forced to leave the bed too early. But once it was time to turn around, at mile 5, all of a sudden it felt easy.

Is this what people refer to as “Runners’ High”? I wondered. Somewhere I read that a cascade of chemical events happening at the cellular level in your brain when running has a very similar effect to SSRI‘s (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors), highly potent psychoactive drugs prescribed for depression. Good enough a reason for me to keep running despite the stiff winter wind. In animal experiments on the effects of running on the brain researchers have also found that  a chemical called “Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor” (short: “BDNF”) is upregulated at least transiently following aerobic exercise. This chemical has neuroprotective effects in the brain, especially in a brain region known as the hippocampus that is important for learning and memory. John Ratey, in his book “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain” calls BDNF “Miracle-Gro” of the brain. In the hippocampus of animals researchers have shown that BDNF can help grow new brain cells even in the adult brain.

Back to my run. I don’t know whether I was under the influence of SSRI-like brain chemicals or whether my brain was being “fertilized” by BDNF during my run, the second half of my run suddenly felt easy! I thought I could have gone for at least two additional miles. I am glad I didn’t, because when the “Runners’ High” or whatever it was that I was experiencing wore off, I felt exhausted and all I could think about was sitting down and resting my legs! The GPS application that I took with me on my run recorded I was running the 8 miles in 1 hour, 20 minutes and 41 seconds. Not surprisingly, I felt too tired to dedicate Sunday afternoon to strength training with Joe (see a previous post). So tomorrow morning, I have both a two-mile easy run and strength training focusing on legs, hips and core on my training plan. Let’s just hope that I won’t hit the snooze button again tomorrow morning or I will be literally running late once more.

This book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. It started off strong and rather compelling with a case study about innovative personal fitness (not PE) classes at a few high schools that were almost an experiment to see if exercise had any effect on students’ academic performance. Of course, it did.

From there, Ratey launches into a detailed explanation on the physical, functional, and chemical properties of the brain and how exercise influences each of these areas. This wasn’t what I would call light reading, but I think he did a nice job of taking very complex information and making it accessible to laypeople. I found this part of the book fascinating.

The remainder of the book is divided into sections such as stress, ADHD, hormonal shifts, aging, anxiety, depression, and addiction. This is where things started to get a little repetitive for me. Ratey did use some case studies in each of these sections to illustrate the impact of exercise on each of these troubles, but the brain science was much the same as was the message: exercise can improve or cure all of these conditions.

The author states it very plainly: if exercise could be put into pill form and bottled, it would be hailed as the miracle drug to end all miracle drugs.

Overall, Spark was a thought-provoking read that may just make you look at exercise in a whole different way. It may not make it any more fun, but you can take comfort in the fact that it has far more benefits that just physical health and best of all, it’s all-natural.

View all my reviews

About the Founder & Owner:

Cycling and science were his passion, and Michael was always interested in the body and health care.  After earning his Ph.D. in biology he went on to teach at Davidson College in North Carolina and later took a special interest in the mind-body connection and how aerobic exercise affects mental health and the brain. After reading Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey, M.D. of Harvard, Michael took a continuing education class from the author at Esalen, the famous spiritual retreat center in Big Sur, California. That life-changing experience at Esalen  inspired him to bring the newly understood body, mind and brain benefits of exercise to the public through a new indoor group cycling concept.” Revocycle was the resulting business venture, which opened in September 2012 in the Pearl District with a focus on mind, body and brain health. The name captures two concepts: the very recent revolution in neuroscience that shows how exercise can dramatically improve brain health and function, and the revolution of the wheels and pedals in the cycling motion.

About Revocycle

Types of classes offered: Revocycle offers daily morning and evening 50-minute indoor cycling classes. Our 30-minute Icebreaker classes are for those new to our studio – we personally fit you to the bike and teach you proper pedaling motion and form.

What makes Revocycle unique and why should someone try it? Revocycle is an absolutely new approach to indoor cycling that focuses on proper bike fit, proper pedaling form, mindful movement and the power of good music presented well. In many ways we approach indoor cycling like a good yoga studio approaches the asanas of yoga.

Our bikes are infinitely adjustable in saddle and seat height AND fore/aft positioning so that you are perfectly fit to your bike. We see no reason why if you are going to spend several hours a week riding with us you shouldn’t be personally fit to the bike just as you would be if you bought an outdoor bike from a bike shop.

Once you have the proper fit, we teach you the proper pedaling motion that utilizes all the muscles of the lower body. Our bikes have a unique freewheel attachment to the flywheel, which makes a huge difference in how you pedal. Every other type of indoor cycling bike has a fixed-gear attachment to the flywheel – the rotating mass of the flywheel actually pulls your leg around in a circle, cheating you of the calorie burning and toning benefits of actual cycling, and encouraging a ‘stomping’ style of pedaling that is the very opposite of mindful movement. With our bikes, you must mindfully pedal the full 360-degree pedal stroke, incorporating all the muscles of the lower body- the calves, hamstrings, the hip flexors, the glutes (especially the glutes!); if you don’t your feet stop! So as we learn to pedal the full circle, and work toward being smooth and supple, we actually engage many more muscles than on a standard indoor cycling bike, burn more calories as these muscles work, and tone more effectively. New students who take a class from us always comment on how they can actually feel their hamstrings, calves and glutes getting used in a way they never were in an indoor cycling class with fixed-gear bikes.

We have always been amazed that most indoor cycling classes have no way of actually measuring resistance and pedaling speed – the exact variables used to create the workout! Have you ever looked around a cycling class and noticed that everybody is pedaling at a different cadence? We are moving indoor cycling into the modern era by using bikes that have power meters (force applied to the pedals) and cadence meters. Our instructors precisely calibrate their various sections to the beat of the music and can tell students exactly the cadence to be at – everybody is on the same page! It’s a beautiful sight to see a room full of students climbing out of the saddle at the exact same rhythm!

Music is a huge part of indoor cycling. As a musician and music lover, I have noticed that the sound system is often just a second thought in gyms and indoor cycling studios. Sure, they go loud, but the quality of the sound is just poor – small speakers thrown into the corners of the room and then played with bad amplifiers so loud they distort. That distortion is not only painful; it harms your ears and triggers the body’s stress response. At Revocycle, we put in the world’s best speakers, positioned them properly in the room for great stereo sound, and then connected them to a state-of-the-art Allen and Heath mixing board. The result is music you that you feel emotionally, that inspires and motivates you. The engineers of the world’s best sound halls know all of this, of course, and we bring that knowledge to Revocycle.

Advice for first-timers? We always suggest that people sign up for the Icebreaker class first so we can spend a lot of personal time fitting them to the bike, talking about the mechanics of the pedal stroke, and showing them the proper positions for various types of efforts we do in regular classes. The Icebreaker class also allows new students to internally adjust their perceived exertion scale to the greater work load of full-circle pedaling. We go over the computer power and cadence metrics in the Icebreaker as well.

Favorite things to do in Portland: I love riding my bike in the West Hills, visiting the Japanese and Chinese Gardens (both of which are world-class examples), and sampling the vast number of coffees and beers available in this wonderful city. On weekends I’ll often stop by one of my favorite vinyl record shops to add some new music to my collection. If you are a music lover, I highly recommend going back to vinyl – the sound is warm and amazing, and there is an intentionality to record playing that is just missing from mp3s and cds!

Ready for a ride that will benefit your mind, body and brain health? Check out a class at Revocycle on GoRecess today! 

Creativity and physical health are intertwined

Fifteen minutes of productive writing time that is. Turns out our creativity is intimately intertwined with our physical health and well-being.

How wrong we were when we believed in the separation of body and brain. When I was a kid, the prevailing view was that not only were intelligence and physical prowess separate, they were mutually exclusive. Men could have brains or brawn, but not both. A woman could be beautiful or she could be smart.

I was a competitive kid, but I was also slightly overweight and on the uncoordinated side. My physical inadequacies were heightened in contrast with my best friend, Shirley, who was blonde, slender and athletic. She looked good in a swimsuit; I looked dumpy. So I decided to be the brains of the outfit. Not that Shirley was dumb, I was just smarter (even when I wasn’t). Is it any surprise that when we were in our twenties, I was a computer programmer and Shirley was a ski instructor in Veil?

Say It Isn’t So

Most of my life, I’ve invested my self-worth in being smart and creative. So you can imagine how disillusioned I was to discover (from reading some of those wonderful, brain-enhancing books I love so much) that my intelligence, memory, mental agility and creativity all depend on my body being healthy and fit!

The bad news is we can’t just content ourselves with being smart and creative; we have to be healthy, too. Trust me on this; I was disinclined to believe it, so I checked the research closely.

The good news is that healthy doesn’t depend on the kinds of things we did in gym class (a big relief to those of us who squeaked through gym on attendance, in other words. by being willing to show up for regular humiliation).

The Research Says…

According to John J. Ratey, author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, the point of exercise is not to improve your body (although that’s a nice side effect), the point is to improve the brain.

The brain is a glutton for oxygen and glucose. While accounting for only 3% of the body’s mass, the brain consumes up to 20% of the body’s energy. Exercise improves blood flow, which carries oxygen, throughout the entire body. The better the blood flow, the better your brain functions.

Exercise also triggers the release of BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor), which Ratey calls “Miracle-Gro for the brain” because it significantly increases the growth of new neurons and denser, more complex neural pathways.

We evolved to engage our brains when we move. (When our ancestors weren’t moving, they wouldn’t encounter either threats or food and other resources, so they didn’t need their brain to be operating at peak efficiency. The brain is a glutton, but it’s a smart glutton that knows when to power-down.) If you’re not moving regularly, your brain gets sluggish.

Get Moving!

Writers need to make time for regular exercise. The more healthy, strong and flexible your body is, the more innovative, focused and agile your brain is.

Research suggests that 30 minutes of aerobic exercise as little as 2 or 3 times a week is beneficial. Five or 6 times a week is even more so. Combining aerobic workouts with strength-training and activities that require complex motor skills (e.g. martial arts, rock-climbing, dog agility, mountain biking) will maximize both the body and brain benefits. Consult with a personal trainer or Ratey’s Spark for more info.

The next time you feel stuck or can’t figure out where to go next with your writing, move! Take a walk or do something else active; your brain will get into gear when your feet do.

Recognize the thought “I don’t have time to take a walk” for the fallacy it is. If you have time to sit there agonizing over what to do next, you have time to walk. And the sooner you get up and move, the sooner you’ll get your next great idea.

If you’d rather, you can, in the words of the gym teachers we used to dread, “Drop and give me 15 push-ups.” Whatever you choose – push-ups, treadmill, walk around the lake, yoga, Pilates, weight training or something else – the time you invest in physical activity will improve the quality of – and put the magic in – your 15 Magic Minutes of writing.

One in particular: that ADHD only shows up in countries with compulsory education, because in other countries, young people work hard and work off their excess energies.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t educate our kids, of course. But it does indicate that sitting still and quiet most of the day doesn’t meet the natural requirements of growing kids.

We humans need movement, activity!

This all speaks to arts integration, to me. The arts get us up and moving and participating.

It also speaks to rigorous PE every day. If you need convincing, you should buy and read  Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J. Ratey and Eric Hagerman.

Indeed, I wish every public educator could read this book. It demonstrates an easy, straightforward way to raise test scores, one you may not have thought of. Every student, every day, gets rigorous exercise. Without further academics or tutoring, students in two kinds of schools (low-income and high-income) achieved dramatically higher standardized test scores, when they participated in vigorous PE every day.

What better elements for growing up happy: arts and PE?