▶ “A green environment expands the benefits of exercise” research results
▶ “Less demanding” increase concentration, strengthen motivation, walk in the forest, etc… Outdoors, avoid the concrete jungle
If you want to clear your mind and sharpen your attention, go for a 15 minute walk in the park. Moving the exercise space outside increases the benefits not only for thinking, but also for health, happiness, fitness and motivation, a new study has found A short walk on a wooded path has been found to improve memory and concentration in significantly more than the same length of the indoor walk. These days, as the weather warms, trees sprout and flowers bloom, and the sun gets longer, making it a good season for outdoor activities.
A walk in the forest
“It all started with our walking group,” says Catherine Bohr, a neuroscience doctoral candidate at the University of Victoria who led the neurological study of green locomotion. She and her neuroscientific colleagues often walked and talked together and were well aware of how strenuous such movement can be, she explains.
Bohr believes that going for a walk in the woods is more productive than staying indoors, but he wanted to check this. He confirms that studies have shown that walking, whether indoors or outdoors, generally increases blood flow to the brain and clears people’s minds.
However, many previous studies showed that walks lasted more than 30 minutes, while the Boer group’s walks lasted only half that amount.
Outdoor exercise versus indoor exercise
For the new study, she and colleagues gathered 30 college students and tested their working memory and ability to concentrate, walking for about 15 minutes inside a building or along a leafy path every other day, and then repeating the cognitive test.
On most measures, those who walked outside easily outperformed those who walked inside. Those who walked outside were more focused and more responsive, Bohr said, consistent with scientific ideas about how nature affects our minds. According to one widespread theory, he added, nature can help even the most impatient to relax, slow down raging internal conflicts about all pressing matters, and calm even a buzzing brain.
The natural world offers what scientists call ‘soft fascination’, he explained. Nature can hold our attention without requiring constant intellectual activity. Our overactive attention is reset, and then we can focus and reason more easily.
Noting that this process occurs in addition to the physiological effects of walking on thinking, Bohr titled their new study, “Exercise is good for the brain but outdoor exercise may be better.”
Nature makes hard exercise easy
Other studies show that the effects of outdoor exercise go beyond improving concentration, increasing motivation, and making exercise feel less demanding. A study published in China last year found that young, inactive, obese people who started walking in a park or gym every other day felt much less stressed and enjoyed the exercise more when they walked outdoors.
Similar results were found in previous studies of older men and women. After informing the researchers of where they usually walk, they wore an activity tracker and walked for a week. The outdoor walkers exercised for about 30 minutes longer than the indoor walkers.
Even if the exercise is difficult, if the environment is sunny, the exercise feels easier and more enjoyable. In a 2017 study from Innsbruck, a group of healthy, lucky volunteers agreed to a leisurely three-hour walk in the high mountains above the town. And the other day they repeated the same exercise on a treadmill in the gym set up to mimic the incline of a walk.
Heart rate monitors showed that outdoor walks required more effort than treadmill lifts. The hikers reported that their heart rate increased and stayed high when going up and down the hillside, but they said that hiking felt better and less strenuous than working out in the gym.
Avoid the concrete jungle
However, there are also caveats to exercising in nature. Even outdoors, if surrounded by buildings and concrete, being outside is not enough.
In a review of previous research published last year, the researchers found that exercise in urban outdoor environments with few natural elements, such as business areas, town centers and trees, was less likely to be associated with mental health than exercise. in green, unrestricted environments such as parks and forests, they were found to be beneficial.
The duration and intensity of green exercises is also important. In the same review, people said they felt much calmer after walking or jogging lightly for around 15 minutes in a park or similar place, but the effect was less pronounced if the exercise lasted more than 40 minutes or when they were exhausted.
In one study cited in the review, women who ran four miles in a park were calmer, but not as much when the distance was doubled to about nine miles.
Overall, 15 minutes of green exercise “appeared to be most beneficial” for people’s mental health, said Claire Wicks, a senior research assistant at the University of Essex in the UK who led the new review. But even less than that calms our nerves, he adds, according to a recent study not included in the review, “even five minutes of green exercise can help.”
Still, if weather, schedules, reluctance, or other obstacles force you to stay indoors, don’t worry too much. Whether indoors or outdoors, in a green space or a gray space, under sunlight or fluorescent light, exercising within the limits of what you can do is still good for us.
“You may experience more benefits if you can be active outside in natural environments, but physical activity is so important to our physical and mental health no matter what you do or where you are will do it, so keep active,” Wicks emphasized.
By Gretchen Reynolds>
