Brain Exercise is Just As Important As Physical Exercise
You exercise your body to prevent illness, stay strong, and be able to keep up with your day-to-day life. In the same way, exercising your brain is a critical part of longevity and health at any age! Brain exercise can take a lot of different forms, but the important part is that you’re learning new things, trying things that are hard, and growing your own skills.
Why Exercise Your Brain?
For kids, keeping the brain active even outside the regular school time can:
- Prevent the “summer slide” where they lose knowledge between school years
- Set them up for greater academic success
- Improve basic executive functioning skills that are vital for “real life”
- Boost logic & reasoning, visual processing, and other higher-level skills
And this need doesn’t end when you’re an adult! Experts have found that you have something called “brain reserve”—your brain’s innate ability to change, adapt, and resist damage. This reserve begins building in childhood and continues through adulthood as long as you are exercising it.
Neurodegenerative diseases and age-related cognitive decline are difficult to endure, both for the individual and their family. While there is abundant research surfacing about other ways to keep your brain sharp, the pillar is always going to be keeping your brain active.
When you think about exercising your brain, approach it the same way you do physical exercise. It should be a natural part of your daily or weekly routine so that you can keep your mental sharpness, memory, focus, and learning skills sharp at any age!
Some of the Best Brain Exercises to Keep Your Mind Sharp
Here are some of the best ways you can exercise your brain (and these are easy to adapt for your kids, your grandparents, or anyone in between!)
Jigsaw Puzzles
These are tried-and-true tools you can use to improve visual and spatial processing, problem-solving, and other cognitive skill areas. The interplay between multiple skills is a sure sign that these are a great exercise tool for your brain!
Play Card Games
Whether it’s solitaire, crazy 8’s, gin rummy, or poker, research shows that card games increase brain volume in several key areas for adults.
For kids, card games are also a great tool for building attention, planning/problem solving skills, and memory.
Learn Something New!
Whether it’s building your vocabulary, trying your hand at a new language or a new skill, or learning a new dance move, learning new things goes a long way to protect your brain and keep it active.
Listen to Music
Engaging ALL your senses activates more areas of your brain. And in particular, listening to music boosts creative thinking, memory, and mood!
Break Out of Your Routines
Routines are healthy and good—most of the time. Occasionally, try taking a different route to your office. Or push your kids to think through an alternate way to do a task. These exercises in problem-solving are great for your brain to keep it stronger!
Read, Read, Read!
Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, reading is one of the biggest hallmarks of a healthy brain. Read to relax or to learn something new! Encourage your kids to develop habits of reading early so they continue to love it for life.
Reading opens the door to new experiences and knowledge, and it exercises your brain in a way that few other things can.
Your Brain Exercise Personal Trainers
When it comes to targeting weak muscle groups, you don’t just go into the gym and start trying out random equipment until you find one that “feels good.” Instead, the most efficient way to go is to ask the expert!
Personal trainers get to know your situation and goals so that they can prescribe exercises that will help you become the best version of yourself.
We work in the same way—but for your brain!
Our brain training centers see a wide variety of individuals age 5-95+ with a range of goals. For kids, it’s learning to read, or sit still in class, or actually be able to learn what the teacher is trying to teach.
For adults, often it’s to protect their memory, improve focus and productivity, and help prevent cognitive decline.
Whatever your goal is, we can completely personalize our brain training plans to meet your needs. The way to stay sharper for longer is to keep your brain active—and that’s exactly what we do! Our brain training sessions are intense, focused, and tracked to make sure you’re seeing the progress you want to see in your own cognitive abilities.
What About Brain Exercise Apps?
This is a question we get a lot. And yes, these brain training apps can be a fun tool to use to pass time and activate your brain. However, a brain training app won’t give you:
- Completely personalized, one-to-one approach to your unique situation
- Adaptations that will help you succeed, but still challenge you appropriately
- A focus on your attitude and mindset (and how that may be impacting your ability to learn, think, and remember)
Learn more about what makes one-on-one brain training so special here!
If you want to help your kids stay sharp this summer so they don’t get into the next school year already feeling behind…
Or if you’re starting to notice your own focus or memory slipping and you want to be proactive about protecting your cognitive abilities…
Or if you have an older adult in your life who struggles with memory loss, and you want to see if there’s anything you can try to give them some independence and confidence…
Give us a call! We’d love to share more about how our personalized approach to brain exercise can help people in all situations and walks of life.
