How to boost creativity with endurance sports

Summary

Engaging in endurance sports, such as jogging, enhances creativity by improving the brain's energy supply and efficiency.

Abstract

The article discusses the connection between endurance sports and increased creativity, emphasizing that activities like jogging can significantly boost cognitive performance. It explains that the brain, a complex and energy-intensive organ, requires substantial amounts of glucose and oxygen, which are more efficiently provided through the capillarization effect induced by endurance training. This process enhances blood circulation, delivering more oxygen and glucose to both muscles and the brain, allowing for sustained mental and physical performance. The article argues that while creativity techniques are beneficial, the physiological improvements from endurance sports can amplify the brain's potential, thereby enhancing creative thinking.

Opinions

The article challenges the stereotype of creatives being disconnected from physical activity, advocating for the integration of endurance sports into their routines.
It suggests that the brain's demand for energy is high, consuming 20% of the body's total energy and 40% of its oxygen, which can be more effectively met through regular endurance exercise.

How endurance sports increase creativity and why it works — Jogging as a brainbooster

The cliché of the mentally working human being cannot be eradicated: Creatives are spiritualized, worldly and little body-conscious. Unfortunately, the last point is often correct. Writers, artists, programmers, and representatives of other creative professions usually prefer to sit at their desks rather than do physical work.

Physical activity does not mean an inspiring walk in the woods, but real sport and especially endurance sports. These people, who are primarily dependent on their cognitive abilities, particularly benefit from the positive effects of endurance sports, of which jogging is undoubtedly the most effective.

What the brain needs — glucose and oxygen are fuel for the brain

Our brain makes us who we are. Evolution has produced the human brain, one of the most complex structures in the universe. Each of us has an organ with his brain that is many times more powerful than the most modern supercomputer.

Such a miracle needs energy, of course. Given its small size in relation to body weight (approx. 2%), it sounds incredible at first that it consumes no less than 20% of the total available energy. The brain derives this energy primarily from glucose. To convert glucose into energy, oxygen is again necessary.

Did you find that 20% of the available energy is already very much? Then it will amaze you that our brain consumes even 40% of the available oxygen! To make it clear:, 4 out of 10 breaths are only there to keep your brain functioning.

What Endurance Sports Do — The Secret of Capillarization

What actually happens in the body when you start doing endurance sports? What changes are going on that will allow us to keep running longer and longer the better we train?

Actually, it’s straightforward: The body adapts. But what does it adapt to? Well, if you’ve ever run out of breath during a race, you can basically imagine that. The body adjusts to the increased oxygen demand under stress. The pure absorption of oxygen is not a problem. We breathe all the time, and if we exert ourselves, we breathe faster.

But no matter how fast we breathe: from a certain level of stress we reach our limits, and these limits cannot be compensated by an increased breathing rate.

Why is that? The problem is not to get enough oxygen into the body from outside, but to distribute the inhaled oxygen efficiently. The oxygen is distributed through the bloodstream, and this is precisely where the effect of endurance sports begins.

To supply the muscles with sufficient oxygen and to keep them functioning longer, the body increasingly forms tiny veins (capillaries) in the muscles. This provides for a stronger blood circulation of the stressed muscles and thus for better oxygen supply.

Of course, the brain must now be supplied with blood better and more effectively, as more oxygen and glucose are required by the muscles during heavy physical exertion. This has the same effect on the brain as it does on the muscles — it does not tire as quickly and remains efficient for longer.

How does this increase creativity?

Creativity is a specifically human brain performance. The definition of creativity should not be our topic here. The ability to use existing information by recombination to solve new problems and the like is interesting and worthy of consideration elsewhere. But the most important insight is that creativity is a brain achievement.

As we have shown above, endurance sports increase and optimize the brain’s energy supply and thus its potential performance in all areas. Of course, this also influences our ability to think creatively.

It is often assumed that creativity can be improved primarily through the application of various creativity techniques and methods of thinking. Of course, these methods have their justification, but let us ask ourselves the question: Who profits more from such techniques? Someone with an average brain or someone who has a more powerful brain due to endurance sports?

You see? Let’s go: Running shoes on and out in the fresh air!