Warming Up Body And Mind

Picture from Healthywomen.org

All of us are familar with warm ups. Before you run, exercise and especially before a race. You are trying to increase your core temperature, send more blood flow to the limbs and 'wake' the muscles up. Before a running race you may even try some race pace striding so the actual start of the race does not feel like a shock.

So I was surprised to read that combining mental and physical warm ups can improve running times. Curious? Please read on to find out more.

Researchers in that study investigated whether combining cognitive tasks with a standard physical warm up could improve 1-mile performance in runners. 25 runners (11 male, 14 females) with an average weekly mileage of 20 miles (32 km) and 5km personal best timing of 23:31 min were recruited for the study. Each runner completed 3 separate testing sessions.

First was with only a physical warm up which included a 1200m easy jog, 800m alternating 100m jogs and 100m strides and 3 minutes of active stretching drills. 

Next was the same physical warm up plus a low load cognitive task and finally same physical warm up with a high load cognitive task.

In the cognitive warm up conditions, the runners completed four 3-minute cognitive tasks before and between the physical components.These tasks targeted mental functions like switching between tasks, decision making, inhibiting responses to stimuli and memory. They were doing short bursts of focused mental work designed to activate the brain without exhausting it.

 

After that all the runners ran 4 laps of a 400m track with their watch face covered so that they could only rely on feel rather than constant pace feedback.

Ready for the results? The runners were faster after both cognitive plus physical warm ups compared to only doing the physical warm up. The  low load cognitive task improved 1-mile timing by about 8 seconds (2.3%),  while the high load cognitive task improved performance by about 11 seconds (2.8%).

The runners did not appear to muscle their way to faster timings since their perceived effort was lower after the combined warm ups and their average heart rate during the time 1-mile run was also lower. Their readiness to perform was higher, meaning the runners felt more prepared to run hard.

Stride length and cadence did not change meaningfully suggesting that performance boost was not explained by obvious mechanical changes.

Take home message? No, you do not need to download an app to challenge your cognitve skills before every workout or race. However, this study does suggest that the best warm up should prepare both mind and body.

Before you do your track interval sessions, time trials or short, hard and fast sessions or even up to a 5 km race, it may be useful to add a small cognitive task that perhaps include coordination games, quick reaction tasks, fast feet with visual cues to make you engage attention before you start running hard.

The important thing to note is dose. A few short mental tasks coupled with jogging, drills and race pace striding may help you feel sharper and more ready for your workout. A long, draining task may do the opposite.

This sharpens the nervous system rather than stressing your brain. Keep it brief and engaging and please try it in your training first before trying it on race day.

Reference 

Mortimer, H Dallaway N, Diaz-Garcia J et al (2026). Warming Up The Body And Mind: Bombined Cognitive And Exercise Priming Improves 1-Mile Time Trial Performance In Recreational Runners. Eur J Sp Sci. 26(5): e70163. DOI: 10.1002/ejsc.70163

How Much Exercise Is Good For Your Brain?

I rode 105 km before work this morning. No prizes for guessing I was thirsty, hungry (despite eating before I started work) and needless to say, tired. 

There are days when after a run or ride I feel alive, my mind is laser clear, and all my synapses are firing. Today's ride was definitely not a ride where I felt clarity afterwards. 

There's plenty of evidence that short bouts of moderate exercise improves your performance in the ability to perceive, react, process and understand, store and retrieve information, or do cognitive tasks afterwards. You may not feel it, but the finding is highly repeatable.

However, we do not know how much exercise is enough to trigger this effect. Or whether how fit you are or what type of cognitive task you're doing matters.

I found an article where researchers in Australia tested 21 trained cyclists and triathletes (11 male, 10 female). These athletes did 15 minutes of moderate cycling followed by a pair of cognitive tests lasting 4 minutes. They rode another 30 minutes moderately before repeating the same cognitive tests. This was followed by an incremental ride to exhaustion (taking about 11 to 12 minutes on average) before doing a final round of cognitive tests (McCartney et al, 2021). Three different timepoints were measured, after 15 minutes, 45 minutes and exhaustion.

Moderate cycling was done at 50 to 55 percent of peak power from a previous test and this got them to average 75 percent of max heart rate (HR) after 15 minutes and 80 percent of max HR after 45 minutes.

Results showed that 45 minutes of exercise trumped 15 minutes. For these trained endurance subjects, their cognitive performance decline definitely did not happen after 45 minutes of moderate exercise.

Contrary to what the researchers expected, the decline did not happen after complete exhaustion as well, being better than after 15 minutes. Note that there was a 2 minute delay from the moment of exhaustion until the start of the cognitive tests so this delay may just be enough to recover.

Bear in mind that exercising for longer does not always mean better since there will be a point for everyone where if you exercise long enough your cognitive performance will start to drop. 

These subjects were also not allowed to drink during the testing. Male subjects lost 2.3 percent of their starting weight while the females lost 1.7 percent. This is well above the threshold suggested to cause cognitive impairment. 

The subjects repeated the testing twice. In one testing, they were given 2 capsules and told that the capsules were "designed to enhance cognitive function" during exercise. 

The capsules were just placebos, as the researchers wanted to test whether the subjects were influenced by this. The placebos did not have any significant effect which supports the case that this is a physiological effect - a result of enhanced blood flow to the brain or elevated levels of neurotransmitters.

There was another study done in 2015 where researchers from Taiwan found that 20 minutes of moderate exercise produced the biggest cognitive boost, compared to 45 minutes. The biggest difference between the two studies is that this Taiwanese study used healthy but non athletic university students (Chang et al, 2015).

Since the 2021 study used trained endurance athletes, it makes sense that they will probably benefit from a longer exercise duration compared to the university students.

There you have it, exercise does makes you improve your brain function. However, we cannot always go out for a run or ride before an important meeting, deadline or decision. It can also be shooting hoops or lifting some weights or any other exercise if running or cycling ain't your thing. Just do it when you have the opportunity.

References

Chang YK, Chu CH, Wang CC et al (2015). Dose-Response Relation Between Exercise Duration And Cognition. Med Sci Sp Ex. 47(1): 159-165. DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000000383

McCartney D, Desbrow B and Irwin C (2021). Cognitive Effects Of Acute Aerobic Exercise: Exploring The Influence Of Exercise Duration, Exhaustion, Task Complexity And Expectancies In Endurance-Trained Individuals. J Sp Sci. 29(2): 183-191. DOI: 10.1080/02640414.2020.1809976.

Our Sat ride before Covid-19