It's why I started exercising about 18 months ago, because I realized my ability to concentrate had faded as my fitness had decreased. I couldn't stand it any more and had to fix it.
I am not the post to whom you replied, but to share my own routine (similar thing, started seriously pursuing fitness over the past 8 months or so and have noticed a lot of cognitive reward):
- Every morning except Sunday I'll do some form of cardio; first I did C25K, then random biking, now I'm doing a sprint regimen (from half-awake to dead legs in like eight minutes; talk about bang for your buck)
- Lift every other day doing a simple weights program (started off doing Starting Strength, moved to bodyweight stuff, now back on Starting Strength)
- On weekends I do something fun: co-ed frisbee/soccer leagues are a dime a dozen and will give you quite the workout. The past few weekends I've been going to a climbing gym, which has been awesome.
I had this idea in my head that improving my level of fitness was this Herculean task that would take hours a day, but it's really not. I spend roughly thirty minutes a day working out.
I've found starting strength to be a lot of fun and very beginner friendly (apart from the overhead press anyway). I'd suggest anyone who wants to get into lifting follow it, nothing feels better than going from squatting 0 to 200 lbs in the course of a few months.
Ditto for SS, I have no idea how well it compares to other programs but for the sense of progress (weight increases every time) it cannot be beaten.
Good if you have tried and then quit the gym before. I also recommend fitocracy.com (or any other sites of that ilk) to "game-ify" exercise a bit and keep you motivated.
I do mostly cardio. 45 minutes walking 3 miles in the morning, 45 minutes on a stationary bike at night. I do pushups as well, but that's it for anything resembling strength training.
I was completely sedentary before that, and I've lost about 100 pounds since Jan 1 of this year. Eat less, exercise some. Made a big cognitive difference.
cool, this is more my speed. I don't really want to join a gym cause I get bored in them but I live in a city where I can walk or bike to work (by subway it's 30min) and I'll probably try and do stuff like that more often. I also take the stairs to my office 4 flights up instead of the elevator
It's why I started exercising about 18 months ago, because I realized my ability to concentrate had faded as my fitness had decreased. I couldn't stand it any more and had to fix it.
It's made a huge difference.