Strong body, sharp mind: How to get the most out of resistance exercise

Both endurance and resistance training have much more to offer than merely being good for us. As I argued last week, endurance exercise makes us focused, calm and sharp. Similarly, resistance exercise has a lot in store when it comes to our productivity.

Defined as training that makes our muscles stronger, resistance training includes activities such as weight or bodyweight exercise. It takes some time, but just like endurance exercise, it makes the rest of our day significantly more productive.

First, resistance exercise improves our ability to focus. Working in bouts of intense concentration on cognitively demanding tasks is hard. It requires what scientists call top-down control: focusing on the stimuli and actions relevant to a specific task, rather than turning our focus elsewhere – or simply quitting. Following through with demanding resistance exercise is a great way to train that crucial ability.

Second, it makes us calm. Demanding resistance exercise occupies our body physically. And as it turns out, that physical stressors effectively crowd out things that bother us mentally.

Third, it structurally sets our body up for higher productivity. As an adaptation to resistance exercise, our muscle health increases. This yields many benefits, including improving our posture – which, in turn, has a significant, positive impact on our alertness levels during the day.

To get these benefits of focus and calm, making your resistance exercise demanding is key. So, train “to failure” 20% of the time. Then, whenever you feel the tendency to stop, an effective and proven, but somewhat counterintuitive remedy is at your fingertips: Speed up your workout by carefully doing those last repetitions faster.

Pro tip:
To structurally set your body and brain up for higher productivity, make it an effort to engage in resistance exercise regularly. Two to three bouts of some 30 minutes per week are entirely sufficient and – combined with the same amount of endurance exercise – get you up to those recommended 150 minutes of exercise per week.