Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
In short: Your brain stays fit by being challenged. It thrives on new impressions and it switches off when everything runs on routine. Mental fitness comes from several things working together: movement, a balanced diet, memory training and time with other people. The four short coordination exercises below ask each hand to do something different, and that small confusion is exactly what wakes your brain up.
You walk into a room and stop. What did you come in for? Or you meet someone in the street, you know their face perfectly well, and the name simply won’t come. It happens to all of us, and more often when we’re tired or when every day looks like the one before.
What you can do is give your brain what it needs to stay lively: something new, every day. It doesn’t have to be a language course or a crossword championship. You can start with your two hands and a few minutes of your time.
Why is routine poison for your brain?
Your brain needs impulses. Every impression that reaches you through your senses, something you see, hear, touch, smell or taste, switches on a great many nerve cells in your head, and these cells are linked to one another.
How well your mind works doesn’t depend on how many nerve cells you have. It comes from the connections between them. Each cell can link up with thousands of others, and this network is never finished. New connections are built all the time, and those that are no longer used are taken down again. Thanks to this flexibility, you can learn new things, call up old ones, or forget them.
And this is where routine comes in. When you do the same things in the same way every day, your brain can run on what it already knows. Nothing new has to be built. Just like your muscles, your memory needs to be trained, and it needs fresh impulses to do so. Mental stimulation and mental training keep your brain performing well, and can even improve it.
How does your memory work?
Your brain stores an enormous amount. You could think of it as a system that takes in everything around you, filters out what matters and links it to what you already know.
Several kinds of memory work together to do this. The first holds what your senses pick up, for a moment only. The second, your working memory, keeps hold of what you need right now, such as a phone number while you dial it. The third is your long-term memory, where things stay for years. The more often you ask these three to work together on something new, the better they do it.
What keeps your brain fit as you get older?
Mental fitness comes from several things working together:
Movement. What’s good for your heart and your muscles is good for your head. A daily walk already counts, and you’ll find more ideas in gentle ways to move every day. Dancing is a wonderful choice, because you have to remember steps and coordinate your whole body at once. I wrote about it in Is dance the new yoga?
A balanced diet. Your brain is fed by what you eat: plenty of vegetables, healthy fats, enough water. If you’d like to know more, read about what omega-3 fatty acids do for the brain.
Memory training. Anything that makes you think in a new way: learning a poem, a few words of another language, a new recipe without looking at the page, or reading a little every day.
Social contact. A conversation is a workout in itself. You listen, remember, answer and read someone’s face, all at once. Seeing your friends is good for your head as well as your heart.
The exercises below belong to the third group, with a little of the first. They can help you build healthy new connections in your brain.
A short brain workout: four coordination exercises
All you need is yourself and a few minutes. Sit or stand comfortably, start slowly and expect to get muddled. Little effort, and a real effect.
1. Triangle and square
Draw large triangles in the air with your right hand. When that runs smoothly, add your left hand and use it to draw squares in the air at the same time. Then swap: squares with the right, triangles with the left.
2. Thumbs up
Sit down and make two fists in front of you. On one hand, stick your thumb up. On the other, tuck your thumb inside your fist. Now switch: the first thumb goes in, the other comes up. Keep switching back and forth several times, a little faster each time.
3. Zero and eight
Draw a zero in the air with your right hand and an eight with your left, both at once. When you can do it, change sides, then change the direction in which you draw the figures.
4. Phone and pistol
Your hands take turns forming a “telephone” and a “pistol”. For the telephone, stretch out the thumb and little finger of one hand and fold the other fingers in. For the pistol, stretch out the index and middle fingers and fold the others in. Start with one hand, then the other. Extra tip: do both at the same time, one hand as the telephone and the other as the pistol, and keep swapping.
I made a short video about this, you can watch it below.
How do you fit this into your day?
These exercises work best when they’re short and frequent. Here are a few moments that are already waiting for them:
while the kettle boils or the coffee runs through,
between two tasks at your desk, to clear your head,
during the adverts, or while you wait for someone,
with your children or grandchildren, who usually find them hilarious and are often better at them than we are.
And once an exercise feels easy, change it. Go faster, swap hands, reverse the direction. The moment it runs by itself, it has become a routine, and you know what your brain thinks of routines.
You can bring the same idea into the rest of your day. Brush your teeth with the other hand. Take a different way to the shops. Lay the table the other way round. Small changes like these keep your brain awake without costing you any time at all.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I do these brain exercises?
A few minutes most days is plenty. Short and regular works better than long and rare. Tie them to a moment that already exists, such as waiting for the kettle, and they will soon become part of your day.
I keep getting them wrong. Am I doing something wrong?
No, that is exactly how they are meant to feel. The moment when your hands get muddled is the moment your brain is working on something new. Slow down, laugh about it and try again.
What do I do once the exercises feel easy?
Change something. Swap hands, change direction, go faster, do them standing on one leg or while counting backwards. As soon as an exercise runs by itself, it has become a routine, and your brain needs a new challenge.
Are coordination exercises enough to keep my brain fit?
They are one part of it. Your brain also needs movement, good food, enough sleep, new things to learn and the company of other people. Think of these exercises as a playful extra, not as the whole answer.
When should I talk to my doctor?
Forgetting a name or where you left your keys happens to everyone. If you or the people close to you notice that your memory, your concentration or your sense of direction is clearly changing, or if daily tasks are becoming difficult, make an appointment with your doctor.
Would you like some help?
Looking after your brain through what you eat, how you move and how you spend your days is one of the things we work on in my group programmes in nutrition and health, such as Six Tuesdays in Montignac. If you’d like to be told when the next group opens, write to me at hello@catherinepolet.coach.
Would you rather work one to one? I also coach online. Book a free 20-minute call, and we’ll look at which small daily habits would do your head and your energy the most good.
About Catherine
I’m Catherine Polet, a holistic nutrition health coach, yoga and autogenic training teacher for more than 30 years, author and speaker. I help people find a way of eating and living that suits their own body, online in English, French, Spanish and German, and in person in Southwest France.
