How Lifting Weights Affects Your Brain | Science

The physical benefits of weightlifting and other forms of resistance training are not only undeniable, but chances are they collectively represent all of the reasons that you were initially incentivized to pump iron. 

Notwithstanding the fact that resistance training can reshape your body, upgrade your aesthetic attractiveness, and make your body more powerful and durable in the process, there are several benefits to lifting weights that are imperceptible to the naked eye.

While it is seldom the case that someone will begin a resistance training regimen solely for what it can do for the health of their brain, there are several tangible and observable benefits that your brain will probably experience once your regular struggles against resistance commence. 

Presented below is a list of five ways that your brain is positively affected by lifting weights, so that you can be aware of the totality of what resistance training is doing for both your body and your mind.

1. Enhances Cognitive Function

In most instances of the term being used, cognitive function refers to your brain’s ability to acquire knowledge, process information, and engage in logical reasoning. Several studies have proven the ability of resistance training to initiate structural changes to the frontal lobe of the brain, thereby making it thicker, which is itself a marker of your brain’s potential to perform cognitive processes at a high level.

During studies, these increases in brain thickness were accompanied by improved performances in executive functioning — like planning, focusing, and organizing tasks — and more rapid and correct responses during cognitive challenges. 

The biggest surprise to most people will be that the deliberate act of trying to make your muscles bigger, stronger, and more efficient actually has an identical effect on your brain, right down to the literal increase in its size. 

2. Improves Memory

If you suffer from memory problems, lifting weights may provide the key to expanding the areas of your brain where memories are stored, providing you with more reliable recall of key facts and events when you need it. 

The mechanism by which this happens is a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. When you indulge in resistance training, your body is compelled to produce greater quantities of BDNF. This immediately prompts your body to create brand new brain cells through neurogenesis, while strengthening the synaptic plasticity — or connections between your brain cells — throughout the entirety of your brain.

The outcome is a brain with a more efficient capacity to learn, and a better memory. These effects were more pronounced when subjects were able to train with weights 3-4 times per week. Moreover, when compared with aerobic exercise, resistance training generated BDNF levels that were one-and-a-half times higher, meaning lifting weights is superior to cardiovascular training for memory improvement. 

3. Protects Against Mental Decline

Unfortunately, the integrity of both your body and brain will decline gradually as you age. Weight training is often prescribed as a means of protecting and preserving muscle mass against this unavoidable outcome, but studies show that it is similarly effective at protecting brain matter as well. 

Several studies of aging adults have shown that the act of lifting weights as little as twice per week was able to reduce the rate of atrophy in the brain’s white matter over a 6-12 month period. Weight training was also helpful for decreasing the size of brain lesions, which disrupt its electrical and chemical signaling processes.

Therefore, if you want to sustain the smooth functioning of your brain throughout your lifespan, resistance training is more reliable than mental acuity drills at keeping you mentally sharp, because it physically preserves your brain matter and lessens the obstructions within it rather than attempting to train you to fight through them.

4. Reduces Depression and Anxiety

A wide range of studies have revealed how resistance training can reduce both your depression and your anxiety levels, regardless of your age or training status, and even if you were to achieve no accompanying physical strength gains from your training.

There are several factors that contribute to these favorable outcomes, because lifting weights promotes a series of physical changes that can ultimately lead to a reduction in depression and anxiety. This includes the release of chemicals that reduce inflammation in your brain, the psychological benefits of achieving self-mastery through training, the improvement of sleep quality, and a boost to endorphin quantity and dopamine signaling.

These positive effects are likely to be even more pronounced if creatine is one of your go-to training supplements; studies have demonstrated creatine’s ability to provide additional energy to the brain, helping to attenuate depressive symptoms in the process.

5. Contributes to daily improvements in mind-body connection

Each resistance training session you engage in generates a fresh round of chemicals and signals that act to keep your brain running smoothly. Along the way, weight training also improves your brain’s awareness of your body’s physical processes, and enhances its ability to connect with the different muscles of your body in ways that are measurably healthy.  

During physical testing, people who trained consistently were able to use the heightened “internal focus” they acquired by lifting weights to gain twice as much muscle as groups that were simply told to “move the weight.” 

Aside from this, resistance training even upgrades your body’s management of unconscious processes. One of the best examples of this is sensitizing the baroreflex through strength training. This grants your brain even greater ability to independently regulate processes like bloodflow, which often leaves your brain better able to cue your body to lower its own blood pressure if you train with weights regularly.

A brain-boosting bonanza 

A mountain of evidence has emerged that proves how lifting weights not only makes you bigger and stronger, but it also amplifies the functionality of your brain in many ways that can help you become smarter. No, weight training can’t act as a direct substitute for reading, writing, and careful study. However, it will absolutely prepare your mind to absorb whatever information it is presented with, and to act on it in the most efficient manner possible.

Summary

1. Lifting weights triggers several physiological changes that ultimately result in upgrades to the brain.

2. Training with resistance results in a thickening of the brain’s frontal lobe, which leads to improvements across several measures of cognitive performance.

3. Weight training has also been shown to produce hormones that prompt the creation of new brain cells capable of efficiently preserving memories.

4. In studies involving aging adults, resistance training helped to preserve white matter and reduce the size and intrusiveness of brain legions, thereby helping to maintain brain health.

5. Through multiple methods, weight training helps to lessen depressive feelings, including through increases in endorphins and dopamine.

6. Weight training sensitizes the brain to the body’s needs, and makes it more efficient at managing the body’s unconscious processes.

7. By participating in regular resistance training, you will augment your brain’s health on several fronts, leaving it less susceptible to decline, and making it better prepared to act on whatever scenarios it is presented with.