What about juggling a soccer ball?
Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)
191–200 of 224 posts
Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would disagree, dance requires an intimate letting go, while sports is a more mechanical shutting down. Dance is a sort of trance, and requires alot of letting go. Sports has a goal, has focus, its very “in the head” (exceptions do exist ala japanese arts, martial arts comes close but not as it is largely implemented in the west.) Not saying no brain plasticity work takes place, but dance has an active emotional el…
> I would disagree, dance requires an intimate letting go, while sports is a more mechanical shutting down. Dance is a sort of trance, and requires alot of letting go. This is very dance specific (almost anything you can say about dancing will be - since different dances can be as different from each other as curling is from powerlifting). I've been dancing Argentine tango for many years (have also taught it) and, fo…
Like you, my judgement was very subjective .. the dancing i had in mind was “for fun”, rather than a performance.
How do you feel about the difference between dancing to have fun and dancing to preform or teach? How big is that difference would you say?
Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can be a competent partner/social dancer (swing, salsa, tango, waltz) in a few months of weekly instruction and practice (eg, attending dances).
Swing/lindy, west coast swing, waltz maybe. But it takes at least a year to become a good salsa dancer and Argentine tango even longer. The difference in these dances is the level of coupling (no pun intended) between the lead and follower. In Argentine tango both dancers meld into one moving unit and the brain has to learn how to do that.
It depends on what you consider good, but generally it is possible to become a a proficient enough salsa dancer in maybe 2 or 3 month, if you are keen and work on it. Importantly, many (most) salsa courses focus too much on moves and not enough on musicality and the basics (also due to student demand). I would argue you can have great fun with the basic food work and 2-3 moves, and I know that most followers really enjoy the dance even if the vocabulary is limited, as long as there is rhythm. This applies to Salsa in general, but LA/linear is more focused on moves and Cuban more on musicality I would say.
Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dance certainly helped my basketball (when I played) but basketball did not help my dance.
I've attended a workshop of a world-known dancer. They were saying that some dancers who got good quickly, were sports people prior to dancing. I personally support this theory; ultimately, in a very basic form, both dance and sport are grounded on physical coordination.
I think there are several aspects to this. First good athletes often have very good body awareness, but also and this is quite important as well, they are used to working and practicing with only seeing small immediate gains. In my experience many people who take up dancing see very experienced dancers and expect they will be able to do this after one or two courses. They then get frustrated, when they discover it's difficult and simply give up.
Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)
#195If the postulated basis is correct and acts on a continuum, it wouldn't be a huge leap to think that doing physically challenging outdoor sports that require a high degree of reaction to constantly-changing surroundings would be even better than dancing. Sounds like a case for skiing, mountain biking, climbing, surfing, whitewater kayaking, etc.
Don't forget martial arts. I've had good experiences from teaching Wing Chun to students who practiced dancing and/or (somewhat surprisingly in this context) Yoga before. What dancing and martial arts have in common more than the rest of your list is creativity and two minds working together.
I agree with you, in my experience teaching salsa students who had martial arts experience had very good body control and often did much better than others.
However one aspect that is missing in martial arts or yoga is musicality, i.e. in addition to synchronising with your own body and a partner you also need to synchronise to the music. This is one aspect that some of the aforementioned students struggled with, if they did not have previous other experience with music.
Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)
#196I wonder if this would work for Martial Arts too (apologies if someone asked this already).
Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about DanceDanceRevolution? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_Dance_Revolution
As a guy who's played way way too much DDR, it's a fantastic workout but it also gets very monotonous once you've figured out all the tricks and patterns. (Monotonous in terms of novelty, mind you - it's still fun!) The difference from _real_ dance is that you're dancing with a partner who is continually thinking of new moves.
I am planning a 1 on 1 battle mode in VRWorkout [1] where players have to challenge each other with exercises.
I am still in the design phase but it should be a way to get a competitve fitness challenge.
Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)
#198Looking at this: "Dancing compared to conventional fitness activity led to larger volume increases in more brain areas, including the cingulate cortex, insula, corpus callosum and sensorimotor cortex. Only dancing was associated with an increase in plasma BDNF levels. Regarding cognition, both groups improved in attention and spatial memory, but no significant group differences emerged. The latter finding may indicat…
I danced latin and ballroom during my masters and first two years of PhD. I never knew i would have that level of coordination.
Then I danced salsa and butchata when I moved university and it made me much more sociable. Whether or not its translated to cognitive ability, I'll never know. But it has translated to confidence and sociability, and it's a great way to get out if my own head and have fun.
Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m an (international level) competitive ballroom dancer and a martial artist of 15 years and there’s a lot of overlap between the two. And it’s really valuable to me as a software engineer - at the very least it forces me out of my chair at 6.30pm 5 days a week to go to the studio, when otherwise I could easily find myself working 12-14 hours days because I am “in the zone” (which is easy for me to do because of the…
Why ballroom and not Tango? I find Tango pairs much more naturally to martial arts.
Ballroom is 10 dances which means 10 times the variety of music to dance to. Also our outfits are way fancier. :-p
Re: Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018)
#200Looking at this: "Dancing compared to conventional fitness activity led to larger volume increases in more brain areas, including the cingulate cortex, insula, corpus callosum and sensorimotor cortex. Only dancing was associated with an increase in plasma BDNF levels. Regarding cognition, both groups improved in attention and spatial memory, but no significant group differences emerged. The latter finding may indicat…
Someone else already pointed out that this is actually quite significant, just the time might have been too short but there is clear indication something is there. For me the key question is: what is the key ingredient (or the right mix of ingredients)? E.g. is it having a programme to follow (having aims/duties is known to increase longevity, see the famous 'plant study')? Or rhythmic fluid movements (so like tai ch…
I would guess the main driver for brain stimulation is the coordinative aspect of dealing with many motor skills over different body parts doing different things, while also coordinating the rhythms and cadence of music in your mind. So the more coordinated the movement (ballet, flamenco), the more stimulated. There's also the component of memorizing sequences. In this respect, yoga is also very fruitful. Many traditional yoga teachers say that yoga makes you more intelligent.
As a personal experience with ballet for over 5 years (starting in mid-twenties with no prior dance experience, and taking up other modalities later), it has completely reorganized my mind; now I have a strong and reliable memory for body movement, now I have a durable sense of sequentiality that I apply to everything I do (the gains are most apparent when doing many chores, cooking, getting ready for an overseas trip, etc), so that my consciousness is well ordered and doesn't get confused with simultaneity of inputs, but knows how to prioritize easily and without my ostensive effort. It's a bit like having trained a highly capable assistant that now takes over for many tasks that would previously leave my head dizzy with an influx of urgent demands.
Some of this applies to music and learning an instrument, especially not a woodwind, melody-only on, but a coordinating instrument like piano or other strings, especially if you are singing on top of the harmonny. Both dance and music are fundamentally about harmony, in dance you harmonize your body parts relative to each other and to the dance, and in choreographies like ballet, even more so to the other dancers, requiring exacting precision and balance.
Yoga and the classic dances are hard stuff, taxing the mental faculties. It may only not seems so outwardly because so many natural dancers start from early ages, and like learning a language, any mildly talented person starting so early will achieve ease eventually. But building that ease for late starters is much tougher than, say, programming a single page app, if I may be so bold.