Ready for the Ivy League Challenge?

Transcript

SPEAKER A

Welcome to the Ivy League Prep Academy podcast, where we help you make a meaningful impact in your communities and get accepted to your dream university. Becoming the person that Ivy League schools recruit is more enjoyable and meaningful than you ever imagined. Come find out why. Welcome back to the Ivy League Prep Academy Podcast. We're really excited today because we're talking about something that is one of those common sense things. And one of the things that Nathaniel and I both learned from Brendan Berchard is this very helpful statement. He says that common sense is not common practice and we all know that we should exercise more, or at least we've heard about it. And it feels like one of those things that just is common sense. But today we're going to get into some research that really helps us understand why we should decide that we're going to make this common sense thing common practice in our own lives. And Nathaniel in particular has been diving deep into some research that Harvard University has recently published. Nathaniel, why don't you jump in and tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER B

Yeah. So this exercise in general is one of those topics that people typically hear and say, oh, my grandmother gave that advice when I was growing up or at any time of life. Exercise is exactly that. It's that common sense principle that we rarely put into common practice. There is an article in the Managing Yourself category in the Harvard Business Review called Exercise is Part of Your Job and it specifically targets the working class and describes how the workplace and their productivity and their ability to complete their job and their job tasks is improved with exercise. But it references some studies. And there's one in particular that I wanted to mention. It was a randomized controlled trial. It was a little bit unique because most of the studies that measure exercise and its effect on your cognition is typically geared at a certain or targeted at a certain age group. And this particular study actually had representatives between the ages of 19 and 93. So they took participants out of they were just community members. There were 144 participants, and they were randomly assigned one of two experimental conditions, the one to exercise and the other to go straight to completing a set of tests working memory, affect experience, just cognitive mental exercises. And the group that exercised took those same tests, but they did it after 15 minutes of moderate intensity cycling. Just very brief, get your blood pumping kind of exercise, nothing that's going to going to break a sweat. Just moderate cycling for 15 minutes.

SPEAKER A

Yeah.

SPEAKER B

They found, which I'm sure doesn't surprise any of us, that there was a dramatic increase in their cognitive ability with just 15 minutes. The effect was differing depending on the age of the participants. So younger people actually had a much clearer cognitive increase, while folks who were in their 90s increased, but not quite as dramatically.

SPEAKER A

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER B

And so it was kind of interesting how it affects different age groups, but across the board, cognitive ability improved just with that 15 minutes.

SPEAKER A

Wow, that really surprises me. I appreciate you mentioning that the different age groups respond differently, that the younger groups respond more dramatically, not less dramatically. Because I watch participants in our Ivy League challenge and work with high school students, and you feel like they can handle it. They've got so much endless energy that they could probably sit for an hour and a half or 2 hours and recover so much faster than I can if I sit for 2 hours. Right. I know for me personally, I have to get up after 50 minutes or else I'm not going to recover quickly enough. And by midday, I will be exhausted. I won't be able to go all day long with mental focus and be able to accomplish things. But I've kind of felt like maybe my high school students, they're able to handle it. Right. They're so resilient. Their bodies are so resilient. And that's fascinating to say. No, even the younger students, especially the younger students are actually they're more responsive to exercise. Just getting some blood flowing, get the body stretched. That's super helpful to know as a teacher.

SPEAKER B

Oh, absolutely. It's remarkable. You think of youth and vitality as that age group, that younger age group. And they need exercise not just as much as, but more if they want to see their, their highest potential levels of of mental firepower.

SPEAKER A

Yeah.

SPEAKER B

And so what this study has driven home is and this is not just an isolated study, this has happened in all kinds of studies.

SPEAKER A

Right. It's an aggregate study. Right. It's an aggregate of hundreds of studies. Yeah.

SPEAKER B

Many studies say the same thing, that our mental firepower is directly linked to our physical regimen.

SPEAKER A

Okay, go ahead. I was just going to say so you talked about improved concentration, sharper memory, mental stamina, and just cognitive ability. Are there other things that we can expect from moderate exercise, even just 15 minutes?

SPEAKER B

The kind of effect that this study talks about strictly measured memory, and those affect cognitive mental exercises. However, there are a multitude of studies that talk about decreased stress load, enhanced creativity, elevated mood, which leads to better interpersonal relationships, better concentration, faster learning. The benefits are almost endless. It seems that it affects almost every area of your life. And this is not kind of a new concept to us. We've talked about how there's sort of an overlap where if you're really excelling at something in one part of your life, it tends to seep into the other areas of your life, and you tend to do well in multitudes of areas. And this is no exception. If you exercise, it's going to affect your job performance, it's going to affect your studies, it's going to affect your relationships, it's going to affect how you interact with the world around you and it's going to improve your life and the length of your life at the same time.

SPEAKER A

Yeah. And it's so simple. It doesn't cost anything, it doesn't require any money, it doesn't require any special training. You can decide for these 15 minutes, I need to stretch out my body, I need to move my body just moderately. So high steps, instead of just walking a little bit, maybe pick your knee up a little higher, go up the stairs or not a couple of jumping jacks. There's a million different things you can do to get moderate exercise. And for 15 minutes, my goodness, anyone can take 15 minutes a few times out of the day and exercise. So why do you think we don't do this more often? Why is this one of those common sense but not common practice things?

SPEAKER B

Well, the excuse that I hear and the excuse that I've used has been I just don't have time. So the no time excuse is the most common reason that we give for ourselves or for other to others, for us not exercising. And really what we're saying when we say that we don't have time is we're saying that we're prioritizing exercise after all of the other things that we need to get done. And so having the urgency and priority on exercise is really what causes us to take action and actually get it done. It's not that we don't have time, it's that we haven't prioritized it. And that's why we don't exercise well.

SPEAKER A

And just think about that for a second. If you exercise for a few minutes, you can learn faster, you can remember better and concentrate more sharply. Right? You can remember things that you otherwise can't remember. So if your job is to learn, which that's not just for high school students, but certainly all high school students fit that category and a lot of adults as well. If your job is to learn, then it's really counterintuitive to prioritize learning above exercise when all you need is 15 minutes. And then you can improve the other hours that you're spending learning.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, take some time, fill your tank, sharpen your saw, whatever analogy works best for you, but take the time to make it so that every other activity that you're working on throughout the day is more effective. Because you took that brief moment of the day to prepare well by exercising, sharpening your mind, improving your concentration and just overall enhancing the way that you're going to tackle that day's activities, right?

SPEAKER A

The tools that you need to be successful need to be sharp and so sharpening the saw, if you're cutting down trees, sharpening your mind through exercise, well, I think that's fantastic. So that changes from a prioritization issue to an understanding issue if you know that this isn't just something that you need to schedule because you're supposed to do the right thing, because you're supposed to because other people say to do it. When you realize that the exercise is going to actually enhance every other element of your job, then now it just becomes, oh, now I understand. I can prioritize that differently.

SPEAKER B

Yes. And if it helps to think of it this way, this is something that helped me. I would think, okay, if I'm spending an hour, and of course you don't have to spend even an hour to get some benefit. But in my case, I really wanted to exercise, and I felt like working out for an hour to an hour and 15 minutes is what I needed to feel fulfilled. But it was really challenging for me to sacrifice an hour or an hour, 15 minutes to exercise thinking that's going to take away from my day. And then after I had done some research, I realized not only am I gaining that time back because my life is longer, but I'm also having a more fulfilling life and more effective life as I'm living it. And so it's not that I'm losing that hour and 15 minutes or hour of my time. I'm actually gaining it back, and then it's paying dividends all throughout the path.

SPEAKER A

Yeah. All right, well, you've sold me. Let's start exercising. Everyone who's listening absolutely put this into your priority for each day. What would you say are some recommendations we could give to everyone listening about how to turn this into just a habit? So we don't even have to think about it, we don't even have to schedule it.

SPEAKER B

Most people have certain things that are going to work well for them and certain things that are not going to work well for them in exercise. There are a few things that are outlined in that article. The exercise is part of your job article in the Harvard Business Review. It describes a few different ways to make exercise habitual. And so one of the things it talks about is rather than simply exercising, you've got to create goals that lead you to a destination for your exercise. I found that to be true about a year ago. I decided my exercise was kind of growing a little bit, stalled, plateaued. I wasn't making any progress. So I decided I wanted to run a triathlon. And I guess I shouldn't say run a triathlon. You actually swim, bike, and run a triathlon.

SPEAKER A

Right.

SPEAKER B

But that helped me focus my exercise and create a destination to work toward. And so that's something you can do. Another thing that works for other people is sports. Getting into a team sport where you're not just relying on yourself, but you're also relied upon to be a member of a team. And so if you find a sport that you can get into or even hiking, where it can be a social activity, where you're relying on someone else and they're relying on you to make that exercise happen, that can be an effective way to create a lasting habit. The important thing is you've got to find something that works for you. And if the thing you're doing is not working, then try something else, because there is something that will work for you. You just have to commit to figuring out what that is.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, there's a hundred different ways to move your body and get the blood flowing, get oxygen into your blood. Fantastic. So what should we leave the listeners with today? What recommendations do we have to create this lifestyle that's far more healthy and far more effective when we want to use our brains to make a difference in the world?

SPEAKER B

My recommendation is set aside some time to create an exercise plan today. It should include when, it should include how. It should have some starting goals, even if the goal is to create the goal. Just saying. Okay, I'm going to set a goal that by the end of this week, I will have some kind of end destination in mind for my exercise. Whether it's okay, I'm going to research what marathons are happening near me or five k's, or I'm going to create a schedule before class to exercise. For five minutes between classes, you're setting a specific exercise plan. And then once you have some skeleton of a plan together, find whatever tools are going to support your plan. Whether it's an app, whether it's a printed out regimen or a journal system or other method, you've got to find a way to track your progress and something that will support your new exercise plan.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, so some people might get a watch or a fitbit, something that helps them track what's happening. Others, an exercise partner or a buddy. And still others maybe sign up for a competition or join a team. But however we do it, find a way to add 15 minutes periodically throughout the day to move blood and oxygen through your body and get you at your optimal performing mental cognitive state.

SPEAKER B

That's it. You summed it up perfectly.