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Working Out: For Gains or Brains | Dennis Zhu | TEDxYouth@RHHS


[Applause]
hi guys
so a famous Roman poet once said mens
sana in corpore Sano and what this
translates into is it’s a healthy mind
within a healthy body okay so nowadays
everybody thinks that you can choose one
pathway in life whether to be a smart
person or a strong person and so back in
ancient Rome it wasn’t like this in
ancient Rome people believed that if you
had a strong and a fit body you would
also have a strong and smart mind and so
this gets me to my presentation working
out is it for games or is it for brains
and so we have a comic here and this guy
over here
Maggie’s jacked and this guy over here
um he’s pretty smart but he’s small so
where do you work out at the library and
this kind of shows what people think
nowadays that um you can choose one way
of life when you start high school are
you gonna join all the sporting events
and focus on honing your body to be a
crazy with Jen athlete or are you going
to be a nerd and do calculus homework
every day and do like math homework and
um chemistry homework everyday and be
the smartest you can and then your body
goes to waste
um so what I’m getting is that there’s a
lot of scientific reasoning to why I’m
getting gangs also gives you brains and
I’m here to talk about that so let me
tell you a little bit about a story of
mine so I started off in elementary
school as a very overweight child now
you see I didn’t win the genetic lottery
I wasn’t smart and I wasn’t strong and
so that’s kind of unfortunate however I
grew a lot and now I’m standing here and
I think I’m sort of strong and slightly
strong which is a huge
prove it and let me tell you about how I
became this way so starting around in
grade five my parents are really tired
of me I’m sitting at home getting a
seventy five percent average that’s an
Asian fail and not going to any sporting
events and so eventually they send me to
camp but it wasn’t any ordinary regular
camp it was on Russian camp so what they
did there is actually a boot camp and
I’m the emini exercise every single day
every single day I’d be running around
the forest the shirtless Russian chasing
me and telling you how to go faster
because I was lagging behind during
their crazy hiking trips which are by
the way off the trail and on private
property I’m not gonna get this close to
namely Kent because you know they might
get sued um but anyways um I was working
out every day and I wasn’t going in on
top of that the food was also really bad
I remember seeing bugs my food all the
time and my Russian friends have tricked
me and just saying more in Russian but I
didn’t want anymore and so to give you
an idea on how that camp was I gave
Cooper week and this basically goes at
any pad because I was at a great caloric
deficit and I lost a lot of weight but
after that my experience my experience
is like that I grew as like a smarter
person starting in grade eight I really
woke up I hate a mental spurt and all of
a sudden I jump from a 75 average to
high eighty average and now all you guys
know that it doesn’t happen overnight it
was kind of like a gradual change I kind
of realized the world around me and I
kind of started working harder at my
studies and everything became more clear
to me after that whole Russian camp
experience and so now let’s talk about
it scientifically what actually happened
to me during Russian camp so yes okay so
your party’s response to exercise so
your body is a machine a living machine
that’s constantly in a sort of balance
and we call this balanced equilibrium or
in biological terms homeostasis what
homeostasis is it’s your body’s way of
balancing all its
reactions to make sure that you’re
standing here and alive and operating as
you would normally do and so when you
start to exercise you disrupt this
equilibrium all of a sudden your muscles
need to work a lot harder all of a
sudden or your Scelzi more oxygen and
all of a sudden yourselves all need more
um more calories which is energy and so
short-term they’re gonna feel like Shane
so by this like the people who started
working out just recently I know this
there’s a bunch of you guys match Robbie
I don’t yeah so – oh you too – good job
um so you’re gonna feel like and
this is because your body can’t
compensate with all its new needs your
body doesn’t realize that it needs to
repair its muscles all the way and it
doesn’t realize that it needs to produce
more energy more red blood cells to
circulate oxygen through your body and
you start to feel really bad however
your body always reaches equilibrium it
always reaches a state of homeostasis
that makes sure that you operate the way
you are without dying
and so things that can happen from this
is B D and F and what this is is
brain-derived neurotropic factor and wow
it’s a really long word but essentially
what it does is it allows you to produce
more neurons within your brain and your
muscles and neurons ourselves are not
only storing information but they also a
get that transfer of information and the
production of these neurons actually
make you a smarter person and you’re
able to recall more memories from the
past and problem-solve and the increased
red blood cells you get from working out
actually increases your body’s
consumption of oxygen more oxygen in
your body to the cells means that
yourselves can work so much harder as
they have more energy and eventually
you’ll become a smarter person and so
new blood vessels will also develop
within your body and this also aids in
an awesome transfer and capacity and all
in all it’s all about neuro stimulation
when somebody is working out they’re
just not – Lee lived in ways harmed any
jab right what they’re doing
really focusing on the mind and muscle
connection how muscles work is we have
something called a motor unit and what a
motor unit is it’s a single neuron that
connects through multiple muscle fibers
whenever your brain sends a signal or
fire in this case that motor unit
contracts and that’s how you contract
your muscles when you’re lifting weights
this motor unit kind of idea um comes in
plain because you really have to focus
on how many motor units you contract at
a time it’s almost like playing an
instrument and all these factors
actually improve on your capacity of not
only memory I’m also learning I’m since
the help you you are the more
information you’re able to take and
process and so physiologically I’ve
explained what happens let’s talk about
your behavior in response to exercise
um this repeated studies that I’ve shown
in an increase in not only your ability
to focus on work but also your
productivity when you start working out
and I’m doing exercise and how this
works
is this a stress hormone called cortisol
cortisol is highly catabolic meaning it
destroys things within your body and in
particular um you can see like right
here the red stuff that’s your
hippocampus and its function is for a
lot of memory and different like
abilities to learn within your brain and
so cortisol actually destroys that and
cortisol is what makes you feel
depressed makes you feel like oh I hate
my life and such and exercising has
actually shown to decrease levels of
cortisol and when cortisol decreases
your focus also increases and it
preserves your hippocampus right here
and all in all like the third point is
it boosts self-esteem that doesn’t
really tie in with intelligence but I
kind of feel like if you’re happy with
the way you look that’s one thing out of
your life that you’re worried about and
you can focus on different things like I
always had um kind of like an anxiety of
like taking my shirt off in public
because I would think man I have like no
arms
small and I kind of have like man boots
so that was not worth but now like even
though I still have man boobs and I
don’t think I’ve changed much I’m
confident that I’ve been like working
out and I made progress and I don’t mind
like taking off my shirt but I will not
do it in front of you guys okay so I’m
your future to response like to exercise
and so it’s also shown that exercise
decreases your risk for dementia
Alzheimer’s and reduces your risk for
stroke diabetes and heart diseases and
so how this works again placing with
cortisol exercise it reduces cortisol
levels that does tend to destroy your
brain neurons and also increases that
protein that stimulates growth of
neurons and all of this actually on
protects your brain from different
degenerative narottam’s and allows you
to live a longer life now the thing is
with learning things is that time is
kind of like the limiting factor on how
much you can learn if you had infinite
time you can learn everything right and
you see it’s kind of hard to believe
that a lot of people they forget about
their health because they want to learn
everything at once however if you were
to maintain your health you’d have so
many more years on life to learn more
things and this is a given fact I
believe I’m working out and just
exercising adds another 10 to 15 years
to your life and that’s a lot how can
you get gains who can wants to get games
all the guys should have the cancer who
wants to be swole
what’s it look like Aziz guys no Aziz I
picture them later
anyways so ah girls you want to be doing
moderate on exercises aerobics or you
can wait live and so what this does is
increases your body’s ability to process
oxygen and also to hold oxygen and these
also allow you to be a smarter person
over time working out increases your
metabolic rates so you also lose fat in
the process
a lot of guys like to do a lot of
weightlifting and that’s also really
good in building muscle any time you’re
at the gym breaking down your muscles
your body will be shifting its
equilibrium in order to build those
muscles back and doing so getting a gym
membership is very very important if you
want to start working out and then also
sports um and this is limited to a few
sports that pertain to my presentation
not all sports gives you games and gives
you brains many high risk sports such as
wrestling football rugby actually does
the opposite it makes you lose brains
and by this I mean because of the fact
that they’re so dangerous you can get
hit in the head and get concussion and
even though your body is producing more
of the protein that builds neurons I’m
getting concussion can seriously impact
your intelligence it’s been
scientifically proving but lower sports
such as basketball swimming all all
great for um exercise but then again
depending on what you do you have to do
research specifically on the exercise
you want to achieve and so if I can give
you three very important facts on how to
get Barre gains and so by the way this
is a picture of Aziz famous bodybuilder
but he took steroids okay so number one
diet is a secret to success I would
rather skip a workout then skip a diet
right and what this means is again your
body is a living machine what you put in
your machine is how your machine will
function you want to put good stuff into
your machine for your machine to
function properly you can’t build muscle
if you don’t eat enough protein proteins
are the building blocks of muscles you
need to make sure you eat enough protein
you can’t gain mass about eating
calories you can’t be healthy eating at
a caloric deficit your body’s gonna be
taking your treats it needs from your
own body you need to make sure that you
put your diet as your number one
priority skip a workout be a good
that’s my number one tip number two do
not over train over training is the most
common mistake beginners make at the gym
they think oh my god I’m gonna get so
smug and get so Jack and me run in and
they do like seven to eight sets for
like 20 reps of an exercise and then
they wake up in the morning and they’re
like oh crap
I’m dead and then they don’t go to gym
for a month and then they repeat that
process and he looks skinny and so you
want your body to gradually change again
your body’s out of equilibrium that
makes sure that everything is
functioning properly you want to slowly
disrupt this equilibrium so you’re
blocking slowly change if all of a
sudden you just tell your body all right
I’m gonna be Olympic weightlifter your
body’s obviously gonna get injured and
this injury will really tax your ability
to gain muscle or even fitness and so
third is train consistently and I should
have gone highlighted the word
consistently there’s many people who are
not consistent with working out and this
is the number one important method of
working out it’s not about working to
your max working to like fatigue it’s
about consistency there’s many people
who they’ve been going to the gym longer
than me and I can lift more than them
and why is that it’s because I’ve been
consistent with my workouts I go three
to four times a week
I don’t overtrain myself I just train
until I’m sort of tired and I get out of
the gym and this consistency kind of
tells your body all right this is my new
lifestyle I need to adjust to it any
further
it would disrupt the equilibrium too
much and you really wouldn’t give your
body a set message on what to do so I
hope you guys enjoyed my presentation if
you have any questions you can always
ask me and remember everyone here should
aspire to go into fitness but don’t
overdo it what we’re doing anything is
bad and a good balance between studying
fitness while aiding the best
per se Thanks
[Applause]
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