Disclaimer: By continuing to read this article you are agreeing that you understand that I am not a medical professional and that the information provided should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. This article is not intended or implied to be professional medical advice or a substitute for it. Anyone seeking medical advice should consult a licensed physician. Always consult a licensed physician before beginning any new exercise regimen. This article is not medical advice. This article is not an attempt to practice medicine.
Recently I was thrown off my routine by a year-long tour that put the benefit that exercise offers my creative work in pretty sharp focus. I decided to organize those thoughts with the aim of showing how exercise can support the creative process on multiple levels. Most of my recent writing describes experiments that I have conducted on myself over fairly long periods of time with this one reaching back to 2009 when, after a brief hiatus, I started training in combat sports again and added some running and weight training. Over the past year, with my routine disrupted, I really missed the way physical activity supports my creative work in all the ways I will describe in this article. Some of this information is well worn ground when it comes to the general benefits of exercise but less so when it come to how those benefits serve creative endeavors.
I played my first live show and took my first karate class in the same year. Though my musical style and combat sport of choice have changed a few times since the 4th grade, I have continued study in both. Over the years of training with different kinds of people in both disciplines, I often noticed overlap in methodologies of mastery and mindset among the adepts of their fields. I grew up naturally associating the dedication necessary to make a training session or workout happen with that of a practice session on an instrument.
There is a false dichotomy that creative work is abstract and mental, while physical training is fixed and corporeal. And it’s true that on the surface the two kinds of development appear very different from one another. Many of the arts deal in fine motor skills and sedentary practice, while most physical training is more physically active. But a close look reveals that they have a lot to offer each other. Any practice can become a process of personal refinement where discipline attunes the mind to focus, which in turn creates the will and confidence to create what you mean to of your life. There are also arts that involve intense physical exercise which combine the two already. In this article I will address the way physical training complements abstract creative conception.
What I mean by “exercise”
When I talk about physical exercise I am referring to physical training that raises your heart rate to 70 - 80% of its maximum for your age, height, and weight. Running will do this, but so will a lot of other activities like working large muscle groups, and you can easily accomplish this in a small space. The American Heart Association recommends 150 minutes of aerobic activity per week(1). This kind of exercise improves your cardiovascular health which has many benefits to longevity. At minimum, an activity should raise your heart rate and have you breaking a sweat to be considered exercise of this kind.
The benefit of physical health
The obvious benefit of this kind of exercise is improved lung health and blood oxygenation, which in turn improves cognitive function. The better your cognitive functioning, the stronger your mental engine is when it is set to a task. While this may seem obvious, the idea that exercise can help with things like writer’s block, memorization, effectively implementing feedback in collaborations, and finding new approaches might not be something we have considered – yet research shows that it does all of those things(2). The way this works is that exercise aids in the creation of a protein in the brain called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. This protein is associated with improved cognitive functioning. (Sleiman et al)
The benefit of mental health
For many creative individuals there may be extended periods of project development before anything fruitful is realized – and even then the work may not be well received, not received in the way the artists were hoping, or may never even be released to the world. This can feel isolating, especially after a creative process that was also very solitary. These feelings of isolation can have a negative impact on mental health, such as bouts of depression and anxiety. The risk of this is increased by the “highlight reel” nature of a social media feed where people share the result of successful work leading one to fruitless comparisons against others, amplifying the impression that they are alone in their struggle. Thankfully, endorphins released by physical exercise are also linked to lasting improvements in a sense of well being and ease, improved self-esteem, and reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety(3, 4). This is vital to a creative individual working in an abstract field where there are huge benefits to staying authentic and resisting the siren call of constant validation.
The benefit of discipline
We know that when we exercise we are working muscles and our general physicality, but what happens mentally when we show up for our workout instead of skipping it? One time I was in a small gym that had just opened and had no sound system yet. Since it was quiet I heard someone ask their personal trainer, “How do you get over putting off working out?” And the trainer answered, “Oh, I struggle to show up for my workout every single day”.
In that comment I learned a lot. First: you don’t wait for it to get easy. Second: this person had learned to overcome procrastination to the point of being able to do it every single day, or at least most days. Learning how to willingly do something that is challenging is a huge part of progress in almost anything, improvement almost always involves being at some kind of uncomfortable frontier and the skill is gained not in trying to make it easier but in showing up for the challenge. Watching the challenge evolve over time could be the topic for an entirely separate article. The simple act of showing up for a challenge teaches your brain how to respond to a difficult task: show up for it. You might not have the most revolutionary practice epiphany, your longest run, or your best session, but you showed up and logged, at least some, improvement and increased connection to your challenge. Exercise increases focus and general motivation so when you are in the studio you will benefit from more efficient use of your time.
The benefit of balance
As creative individuals we sit while we work, performing repetitive fine motor skills. When exercising we enjoy the benefits of more integrated, bilateral body movement. This also increases body awareness and will provide other functional benefits like improved posture and rebalancing the body after a practice session that may have consisted of a lot of asymmetrical movement. Some artists already have highly kinesthetic creative practices but choose other exercise routines as balancing practices, for example many dancers also like to take yoga or pilates.
One truly fun benefit to exercise is that you can watch your progress in something that you are not as attached to as your primary creative work. You may want to take some dance classes for fun and exercise. You can let go of any sense of trying to be a professional and just enjoy doing your personal best, whatever that is on a given day. There is no urgency to improve at a certain pace and that can really keep the fun in getting some activity into your weekly routine. But if you keep at it, you will undoubtedly see some progress. Goals do not have to be ambitious to be well-defined and monitoring your progress in your exercise routine will support the discipline it takes to keep track of your progress in your creative work. You might even try translating some of the methods from your workout to your creative work, like alternating the days you work at certain things, or if you work in time-based art forms you can find ways to work creatively in intervals.
In summary
Engaging in a physical activity not only offers physical and mental health benefits but provides an opportunity to create frameworks for creative development. The more practice we have at creating and adhering to frameworks for improvement, the better we get at setting and working towards attainable goals. Doing this with physical exercise has the added benefit of providing all the tools and skills we need to make our creative work function a little more efficiently.
Works cited:
Exercise promotes the expression of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) through the action of the ketone body β-hydroxybutyrate https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4915811/
https://health.gov/news/202112/physical-activity-good-mind-and-body
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470658/