P90X and Cogmed Workouts, No Pain No Gain, No Magic Pill

Let me note that I am a Cogmed affiliated provider for Cogmed Working Memory TrainingTM. (See their site at www.cogmed.com) I am also a Beachody Coach with Beachbodycoach.com/drshinaver.  In preparation for going to get training with Cogmed I had to do the program myself.  Yes, I had to complete the brain training or mind exercises myself.  It is a challenge.

I only ask you to do what I am willing to do.

I do P90X for beachbody. It’s my beach body workout.  It’s baskically a 90 day workout.  Those of you familiar with Beachbody products, it is the next step up after Power 90 (Power90).  I’ve done 4 rounds of P90X.  Yes , P90X is demmanding, but it is doable. I only recommend them because I do them and they work. As a matter of fact I am about ready for another round.

Here are my thoughts from a few months ago when I was doing the workout:

“Today I did Legs and Back. Pushing new highs on pull ups, but I have a little assist with a huge rubber band type thing (saw it on youtube) under my posterior. However with that I am up to 20 pull ups. I started with truly not even one with no assistance. I will have to test myself and see what I can do without assistance soon to give you an idea (probably 10 or so).”

Anyway, in short, I do what I ask people to do. Integrity requires it. It also provids me more insight.  I can be a better coach and guide that way.  I’ve been there.  I know what’s like.

Now, I gave the disclaimers at the beginning because as an ethical profesisonal I am required to do so and as an ethical person I am compelled to do so.  Unlike many on the internet, I can’t rant with hype. I am required to state with objectivity and facts, however, I can be an enthusiastic guy so you will get some of that flavor too. The term ‘objectivity’ is open to a philosophical debate. I digress.

One major thing both P90X and Cogmed have in common is they both require effort and work.  That is how it should be. Those schemes which offer a new body in a week with no effort or better attention with no effort on your part be wary.  These programs require good down to earth hard work, but what is really cool is that they really work if you put in the effort and do the work.  Let me clarify that thought a little more.

Working the brain and working the body. I will skim along the surface and go deeper for one central insight.

Here is the insight related to physical health given by Tony Horton on the beachbody video P90X which is the workout I use myself: “make the last three hurt”. For anyone who has worked out this is not unusual. Of course, he does not mean cause yourself injury. What he does mean is that you make most of your progress when you are stretching yourself in your training and that happens particularly on your last three reps.

How does this relate to brain fitnes? Or should we even call it brain fitness. I will.

It relats in this way, a central insight that Cogmed has integrated into one of their most compelling studies (among quite solid data).

This inisght is that “training your brain” or in Cogmed language “training your working memory” requires that you work at your peak. You work from your highest level previously attained or close to it.

What is especially convincing about this insight is that in a study published in 2005 by in the Journal of American Academy of child and Adolescent Psychiatry (February) they actually used their own intervention as the control. Here is the language in the article itself:

“In the treatment program, the children practiced WM (working memory) tasks in which the difficult level was adjusted to closely match the WM capacity of the child. This procedure was hypothesized to optimize the training effects. In the comparison conditions, the same tasks were used, but the WM load (i.e. number of items to be remembered) was low, thus resulting in easy tasks that wer expected to result in only small training effects.” (Klingberg, M.D., Ph.D., Fernell, MD, Ph.D, Olesen, M. SC., Johnson, M.D. Pe Gustafsson, M.D., Ph.D., Dahlstrom, M. D., Gilberg, M. D., , Ph.D. Forssberg, M. D., Ph.D. Westerberg, Lp., Ph.D, 2005).

What does this mean?

Well, it means that you have to stretch to grow and improve. Whether it’s your brain or your body.

Whether you are talking about how many pull ups you can do or how many digits you can remember you have to train at your peak or you don’t get stronger.

Obviously there is a lot more in the details, but let’s start with getting that straight.

Dr. Charles Shinaver

Located in Carmel, Indiana near Indianapolis, Noblesville, Fishers, Zionsville, and Westfield.

Host of                                        And provider of

Clarity4Health.com Cogmed Working Memory Training^TM

Life coaching, BeachBody Coaching and ADHD coaching through web and phone:

No matter where you are.

371-641-7794, clarity4health@gmail.com

Tweet This Post