Rhian Stephenson, CEO of Psycle - the London based tune-blasting, cheer-inducing, mood-boosting spinning experience – has collated new research showing how aerobic exercise continues to positively impact your body* and* your mood for long after you’ve kicked off your trainers.
Sure, happy workers are better, more engaged workers, but this research has found that aerobic exercise can even make you think faster, too; specialist Steven Kolter explains, ‘It can positively impact our ability to learn new skills, and research has shown that individuals who regularly experience flow state (eg, exercise) can often become more driven, focused and confident in their everyday life. This confidence encourages them to seek new challenges and information in order to satisfy their enhanced mental state, which in turn continues to enhance our ability to learn new skills’. Sina Aslan, PhD, founder and president of Advance MRI, adds, ‘one key region where we saw increase in brain blood flow was the anterior cingulate which has been linked to superior cognition’. Clever, huh?
How about that elated feeling you experience post pounding a treadmill or spinning bike? Kolter attributes this to the, ‘negative and stress-causing hormones being flushed out of body when it's in flow’. But the endorphin mood-boost from a high-intensity workout doesn't end there; regular exercise also helps to nourish the size and function of the hippocampus (the region of the brain used for memory and learning and one of the first places to be hit by depression).
So, upping our cardio is sound to make us more confident, driven and all-round happier beings, but it can also increase our brain capacity too. Dr. Scott McGinnis, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School, says ‘even more exciting is the finding that engaging in a program of regular exercise of moderate intensity over six months or a year is associated with an increase in the volume of selected brain regions’.
Thinking faster, learning quicker and a bigger grin on your face? Time to get on your bike!
Psycle has two locations, Canary Wharf and Soho. For more information visit their website.