[FRIAM] Another few ponderances

[uǝlƃ ☣]

It's interesting because I can't distinguish between a mental boost and a physical boost, from exercise, especially.  It's mostly true of other boosts (from drugs like caffeine, or the "adrenaline" surge of a good argument).  But mental/physical seem slightly more distinct under the influence of the other boosts.  Exercise boosts seem equally somatic and cognitive.  But this could easily be some sort of illusion where a physical boost swamps the mental, or vice versa (e.g. with alcohol on board, you *think* your body is doing what you told it to, but it's not).

Tiredness is, oddly to me, orthogonal to the physical boost.  The orthogonality doesn't show up in running because (I think) that's just a very repetitive action that decouples your conscious and autonomic awareness.  So, after *running* for an hour, tiredness = no physical boost.  But after an hour of good calisthenics, tiredness = physical boost.  It's unclear to me how "aerobic" calisthenics is, though.  Yeah, you breathe hard.  But it's very controlled breathing.  When running [†], I have some control over breathing.  But it's mostly just to breathe as much as possible without letting my body get into an "out of breath" state.  (I.e. breathe deep and paced to the speed of the run, jog, cross country, sprints).  With calisthenics, the breathing regimen changes depending on the thing you're trying to do.

I speculate that the physical boost has something to do with the stabilizer muscles, which are heavily used in calisthencs.  I sprint and jog on very uniform surfaces (track, street).  But I "cross country" on irregular surfaces, to whatever extent I can ... grass, parks, trails, etc.  So, my speculation might be testable.  Is a runner more "energized" after a cross country run than a street run?

[†] This is from memory.  I quit running a couple of years ago to focus on weights and calisthenics.

On 1/10/19 10:30 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I’d say the mental boost (from exercise) doesn’t kick-in until 45 minutes of sustained, reasonably-intense aerobic effort for me, and improves from there up until the point I get physically tired.  The mania passes in about an hour.   This is probably not just energy from the liver since I work out at night.   If for some reason I have to mental work all night, only a moderate amount of caffeine in addition will do that.   The combo is almost like a new day.

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