Sayco Williams used to live a sort of double life. He spent his days in New York City gyms telling personal training clients to “jump high!” and “squat low!” and his nights at an easel painting abstract art. The two worlds felt light years apart.
Not anymore. Today, Williams spends much of his time in city parks coaching clients on proper lunge form one minute and possible paintbrush stroke techniques the next. The two worlds, he finds, are a natural fit.
“Fitness improves the creative process by allowing you to put down those barriers,” says Williams, who launched an art-spiked fitness class dubbed high-intensity interval painting, or H.I.I.P. Hype, earlier this year. During a 75- to 90-minute class, participants alternate between performing body-weight exercises and painting. On a recent Wednesday evening in Central Park, for example, Williams ordered class-goers to “Put the brushes down!” after one minute at their easels. Then, they dropped to their yoga mats for one minute of pushups. The cycle repeated for about an hour until sundown, when participants took pride in the workouts under their belts — and their works of art.
“The entire program is just focused on really getting a good workout, expressing your creative side and just really having fun,” says Williams, who begins classes with a warmup and words of wisdom — “However you want to express yourself today, that’s your canvas”– and ends them with a mock art gallery showing, in which (still sweaty) participants share what inspired their paintings — flutes of water in hand.
[See: 10 Fun Kid Activities for Adult Bodies and Minds.]
H.I.I.P. Hype may be on to something. While exercise has long been appreciated as a way to strengthen muscles, trim fat and boost heart health, it’s increasingly being lauded as a critical way to also elevate brain health — creativity not excluded. One experiment, for instance, found that people come up with twice as many creative ideas while walking than people who are sitting down. Other research showed that adults who ran on a treadmill for 45 minutes three times a week performed better on a memory task four months later than those who simply walked. More research still has demonstrated that exercise can spur the growth of new brain cells, boost their ability to talk to one another and even influence their shape and size, says Henriette van Praag, an investigator in the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging, whose early research showed that aerobic exercise itself — and not some other factor like maze learning — was responsible for the growth of brain cells in mice who had access to running wheels.
“There are so many things that change in the brain as a result of exercise,” she says.
In everyday life, those changes can translate to effects such as remembering something more easily and having a sharper eye for detail, van Praag says. For H.I.I.P. Hype participants, a boosted heart rate equates to elevated art. Ashrant Bhartia, an entrepreneur who founded the program with Williams, for one, says the classes have awakened an artistic side he never knew he had. During Wednesday’s class, he coated his canvas with yellow, purple and orange cloud-like figures to illustrate the ups and downs of his career in New York. “After the first class, I was like, ‘Wow’ — it just broke down all my barriers [as a painter],” Bhartia says. “I was like, ‘If I can get someone else to kind of feel what I felt, then mission accomplished.'”
But until programs like H.I.I.P. launch in every city and brain-training courses are as popular as spin, take these expert tips on how to optimize your workout for brain health:
1. Engage your brain.
Sure, running is good for your brain — even if you zone out — because it’s aerobic exercise. But might running while, say, solving a riddle or quizzing yourself on state capitals be even better? “If you think the whole system is optimized by exercise, any higher cognitive ability would likely reap some benefits,” van Praag says. That doesn’t have to mean bringing a dictionary to the gym; you could also try types of exercise like dance that demand your attention. One study even found that older adults who danced regularly had a lower risk of dementia than their peers who swam, cycled or engaged in some other type of leisure activity. As Sonja Johansson, a Feldenkrais practioner — a type of movement specialist — in New York City, puts it, “It comes down to that idea of ‘use it or lose it.'”
[See: Easy Ways to Protect Your Aging Brain.]
2. Try something new.
If you know the barre routine so well you could teach the class, you may feel like a star, but you’re not necessarily doing your brain any extra favors, says Johansson, who teaches Pilates and leads Nordic walking classes. “Novelty and variety are really key” to boosting brain function, she says, pointing out that you wouldn’t solve the same crossword puzzle every day and expect continuous mental improvements. Even switching up the way you do everyday tasks — say, by using your non-dominant hand to brush your teeth or by moving your computer mouse to the other side of your computer — can awaken underused parts of the body and brain, Johansson says. “Immediately, your brain goes, ‘What the huh?'” she says.
3. Just move.
Williams got the idea to create H.I.I.P. Hype after hearing far too many people complain about fitness. “I came across a lot of clients who just genuinely did not enjoy exercise,” he remembers. “They hated everything about it.” He and Bhartia hope H.I.I.P. Hype can help change that. “When I’m painting and exercising, I’m just thinking about the painting component,” not the burning quads or shaky arms, Bhartia says.
[See: 12 Psychological Tricks to Get You Through a Workout or Race.]
Whether you paint between squat sets or simply tune in to music while taking a walk, finding a type of physical activity you enjoy — and sticking with it– matters most for body and brain, van Praag says. “Make the experience as pleasant and as low-stress as possible,” she says.
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How to Hack Your Workout for Brain Health originally appeared on usnews.com
