In the past few years that I've been studying Japanese, I've gone through a lot of changes. Japanese (as well as mathematics) has been kind of a background anchor behind it all while the rest of my life has been a constant whirlwind of evolution and revolution. As I go through new phases in life, I view my language learning hobby through different lenses and gain new insight into the whole thing. One of the changes I went through was I started working out at the gym. Pumping iron, running treadmill, jumping rope, crunches, pull-ups, everything. It was like night and day: one day, I was scrawny, I'd never lifted weights in my life, I could barely even lift the naked bar (the bar at the gym I go to weighs 45 lbs.) The only workout I had ever done was the stuff in Air Force Boot Camp, but that didn't include any weights or progressive training. And that was half a decade ago, with nothing in between. Suddenly, I went from that, to hitting the weights three days a week or more, a disciple (read: gymbitch) of my huge powerlifter friend.
I was surprised to find the benefits went far beyond just looking better and feeling better physically. I enjoyed holistic benefits of weight lifting, I found I was concentrating better and thinkin' better. As unrelated to weightlifting as they seemed, abstract mathematics and logic became slightly easier. And languages! I found I was learning Japanese far better when I was hitting the gym. I had an easier time memorizing and maintaining new vocabulary words and new kanji. I found myself more easily and effortlessly understanding spoken Japanese. Even my visual imagination seemed to improve (visual imagination is a key component of James Heisig's cutting edge kanji-learning strategy). It was like when Popeye whips open a can of spinach, I had whipped open a can of linguistic jujitsu (kanji: 充実), and that can was weightlifting.
Lately, I had started to neglect the gym for awhile. Short term, cutting the gym gave me more free time, but then I started feeling the long term effects. Back to the lowered energy, lowered thought processes, lowered emotional state of pre-gym. And back to the pre-gym un-enhanced language learning abilities! Lately, all the time I saved by avoiding the gym has come back to bite me in the ass in the form of terrible flash card performance. My spaced repetition program, Mnemosyne, hasn't been below 300 "unmemorized/forgotten" cards in weeks.
In the past few days, I've doubled down and given the gym a lot more priority. Already I'm starting to feel a little better and my language learning performance is going back up.
MORE TIME TO LEARN LANGUAGES: THE GYM TIME PARADOX
The truth is, we have a lot more free time than we really make use of. Lately, I've been neglecting the gym, and I've been frittering away my free time vegging out. These two circumstances are closely linked. Weakened by atrophy, my body has been getting exhausted by every little thing. And, I just moved into a house with my girlfriend, so there've been a lot of little things to ensure I'm always exhausted.
But when I go to the gym regularly, my body has an almost supernatural ability to take a licking and keep on kicking. I'm like the Terminator, except instead of zeroing in on mortal opponents, I'm zeroing in on projects and tasks. The annoying trivialities of life become minor speedbumps rather than head-on collisions.
The Gym Time Paradox is the fact that if you spend one hour in the gym early in the day, you'll recover far more than an hour because of all the extra energy you have which allows you to leap over all the hurdles people throw at you. "Early" is key, because the energy benefit starts when you go to the gym, it isn't retroactive; no matter how much energy you get, you can't time travel back to reclaim vegged-out time. By far the most productive time of my life so far was the couple months just after returning from Japan, when I was getting up by 8am every morning and immediately going to the gym.
FURTHER READING
You don't have to commit overnight to a permanent lifestyle change to working out. Just do a 30-day challenge. It's hard to make a permanent life change, but when it's just 30 days, it's easy to just push through one day at a time. Read about my first 30-day workout challenge.
If you work out regularly, you want to mix it up, you don't want to lift weights every day or you'll overtrain. In between lifting weights, you can do other things like running, biking, even jumping rope. Me, I do treadmill. Read my article, Running On The Treadmill.
Okay, I'll let you in on a little secret, I'm really not the first person to make resolutions related to working out. (/sarcasm) I did, however, write an article about keeping resolutions in general. How To Keep A New Year's Resolution.
I was surprised to find the benefits went far beyond just looking better and feeling better physically. I enjoyed holistic benefits of weight lifting, I found I was concentrating better and thinkin' better. As unrelated to weightlifting as they seemed, abstract mathematics and logic became slightly easier. And languages! I found I was learning Japanese far better when I was hitting the gym. I had an easier time memorizing and maintaining new vocabulary words and new kanji. I found myself more easily and effortlessly understanding spoken Japanese. Even my visual imagination seemed to improve (visual imagination is a key component of James Heisig's cutting edge kanji-learning strategy). It was like when Popeye whips open a can of spinach, I had whipped open a can of linguistic jujitsu (kanji: 充実), and that can was weightlifting.
Lately, I had started to neglect the gym for awhile. Short term, cutting the gym gave me more free time, but then I started feeling the long term effects. Back to the lowered energy, lowered thought processes, lowered emotional state of pre-gym. And back to the pre-gym un-enhanced language learning abilities! Lately, all the time I saved by avoiding the gym has come back to bite me in the ass in the form of terrible flash card performance. My spaced repetition program, Mnemosyne, hasn't been below 300 "unmemorized/forgotten" cards in weeks.
In the past few days, I've doubled down and given the gym a lot more priority. Already I'm starting to feel a little better and my language learning performance is going back up.
MORE TIME TO LEARN LANGUAGES: THE GYM TIME PARADOX
The truth is, we have a lot more free time than we really make use of. Lately, I've been neglecting the gym, and I've been frittering away my free time vegging out. These two circumstances are closely linked. Weakened by atrophy, my body has been getting exhausted by every little thing. And, I just moved into a house with my girlfriend, so there've been a lot of little things to ensure I'm always exhausted.
But when I go to the gym regularly, my body has an almost supernatural ability to take a licking and keep on kicking. I'm like the Terminator, except instead of zeroing in on mortal opponents, I'm zeroing in on projects and tasks. The annoying trivialities of life become minor speedbumps rather than head-on collisions.
The Gym Time Paradox is the fact that if you spend one hour in the gym early in the day, you'll recover far more than an hour because of all the extra energy you have which allows you to leap over all the hurdles people throw at you. "Early" is key, because the energy benefit starts when you go to the gym, it isn't retroactive; no matter how much energy you get, you can't time travel back to reclaim vegged-out time. By far the most productive time of my life so far was the couple months just after returning from Japan, when I was getting up by 8am every morning and immediately going to the gym.
FURTHER READING
You don't have to commit overnight to a permanent lifestyle change to working out. Just do a 30-day challenge. It's hard to make a permanent life change, but when it's just 30 days, it's easy to just push through one day at a time. Read about my first 30-day workout challenge.
If you work out regularly, you want to mix it up, you don't want to lift weights every day or you'll overtrain. In between lifting weights, you can do other things like running, biking, even jumping rope. Me, I do treadmill. Read my article, Running On The Treadmill.
Okay, I'll let you in on a little secret, I'm really not the first person to make resolutions related to working out. (/sarcasm) I did, however, write an article about keeping resolutions in general. How To Keep A New Year's Resolution.
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3 comments:
What you say is absolutely true. Well, for me at least. Heck, during periods in which I'm not physically active, I sink into downright laziness and depression - my productivity TANKS.
The other day I was thinking to myself, "When was the last time I did ANY working out?" Well uh, probably two weeks ago, ya moron? That'd explain at least part of my dismal progress and lack of momentum, I imagine.
Perhaps some people are able to sit and focus on their work and projects without physical stimulation, but I can't say I'm one of them peoples. Now to do some situps and dumbbells before bed...
I completely agree with you since I've been doing weights and generally keeping fit etc, I feel a lot more energized and my Japanese seems to be improving quicker especially when it comes remembering new things plus there's not much that can beat the feeling after a good weight session.
Although recently I injured my shoulder while doing lots of shoulder work over a couple of weeks so I'm having to take a couple of weeks break which is pretty annoying but better than making it worse if I had carried on.
Great post! What I find more interesting is that I really see a relation between language learning and working out. Both are very practical activities, both need discipline and regularity, and both bring great benefits!
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