[HN Gopher] Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise in...
___________________________________________________________________
Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise in brain
plasticity: study
Author : prostoalex
Score : 271 points
Date : 2020-07-25 03:53 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.plos.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.plos.org)
| didibus wrote:
| Hum... Now this makes me wonder if VR games could achieve a
| similar effect, such as Beat Saber. Since VR games could combine
| physical and mental activity into one.
| Liuser wrote:
| Not VR, but "Just Dance", a video game series teaches actual
| dance moves.
| johnfn wrote:
| I do believe that VR absolutely has potential to shake this up.
| VR games have a physicality to them that is unmatched in any
| other sort of computer game.
|
| I played ping pong on VR the other day, and it was amazing!
| I've played a bunch of ping pong in real life, and the physics
| in VR - along with the feedback in the controller - felt almost
| exactly life-like. It was truly a mind-blowing experience. It
| made me realize though that we're really at the tip of the
| iceberg in terms of what kinds of things we could do with VR.
| Up until now, the games we could play had the limit of only
| taking a few key presses and mouse motion as input. Suddenly
| we're now afforded the entire realm of physical motion. Not to
| hype it up too much, but the possibilities feel practically
| endless.
| Johnjonjoan wrote:
| I'd be inclined to think beatsabre is repetitive. Dance often
| involves moving your body in ways you haven't before or rarely
| do whilst beatsabre is pretty much different variations of the
| same move.
|
| I believe activating a relatively new pathways is vastly
| different to activating a relatively old one in terms of brain
| plasticity; which is why I don't think there is much promise
| with this particular game.
|
| Edit: when I say new and old pathway I really mean one that has
| been activated relatively little versus one that has been
| activated considerably more.
| bradlys wrote:
| Well, to be fair, I've danced quite a bit. Unless you're
| actively trying, it's quite easy to fall into a groove where
| you're just doing the same things over and over again to
| every song.
|
| There's probably more variation with dancing (in general)
| than some dance games but I do want to say, it's possible to
| fall into a rut within dancing.
| didibus wrote:
| That's true, though they didn't simply have people dance.
| They had people learn different dance coreograhies and
| perform them.
| Johnjonjoan wrote:
| I can totally see your point. Which makes me wonder... Is
| dance superior to repetitive exercise for seasoned dancers,
| or are they actually the same thing?
| gnramires wrote:
| There are many kinds of dance and styles. I guess the
| main ways to divide could be a) Partner dance b) Group
| dance, and a') Choreography b') Improvisation.
|
| Even for seasoned dancers there is a lot to offer in all
| of those. In partner dance you have to watch and adapt to
| your partner all the time (no matter the skill level). In
| choreography you of course have to learn new programs and
| execute them well (displaying the desired artistic
| expression), in improvisation you have to come up with
| things on the fly.
|
| Unless you get stuck in an old routine (same old
| choreography, not doing anything new, etc.), there is
| almost endless variation and learning of new tricks and
| nuances.
| Johnjonjoan wrote:
| Thanks for the info. In that case I guess we can only
| infer that dance is better than repetitive exercise
| providing you are not banging out the same routines over
| and over. (In which case it is arguably repetitive
| exercise itself)
|
| This aligns much better with my view that creating and
| accessing relatively new/rarely used pathways is the
| mechanism that keeps our brains agile.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| You missed solo dance as c). Lots of hip hop is solo or
| semi solo, as are things like solo Charleston.
| didibus wrote:
| I'm not sure it's the repetitiveness of the physical activity
| that is the issue, though could be. The way I'm interpreting
| it, I read it as you need to combine physical activity with
| sensory and cognitive tasks. Which dance provides. Beat Saber
| is repetitive in the physical movement, but constantly
| challenges you in the sensory and cognitive department.
| Johnjonjoan wrote:
| I do think your point that the physical repetitiveness
| isn't the only factor is correct, however I believe it is
| the main driver.
|
| Almost all physically repetitive exercises combine sensory
| and cognitive tasks to varying extents.
|
| I would also argue that learning and implementing new
| movements is a much more diverse task cognitively than
| getting better at beatsabre.
| amelius wrote:
| How about DanceDanceRevolution?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_Dance_Revolution
| johnfn wrote:
| 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.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I _loved_ DDR but you're right it definitely gets stale
| once you've memorized all of the patterns. But I don't
| think it would be terribly difficult to alter DDR to
| "randomize" different sections of the dances. Maybe have
| three or four choreographed patterns possible for each
| section of the song and every time you play the song the
| dance is a randomized combination of those possible
| patterns.
| codr7 wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise me if some of the effect comes from two
| minds working together. Working with a computer
| is...different.
| Aerroon wrote:
| My guess is yes. The only issue right now is that sweating with
| a headset on doesn't feel great.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Just an anecdote, but I was at a wedding where I talked with a
| retirement age neurologist. He basically said the same thing. It
| didn't surprise me that later he and his wife were out on the
| dance floor start to finish, outlasting most of the 20 year olds,
| and dancing everything from tango to hip hop. Put a real smile on
| a lot of people's faces.
| aeturnum wrote:
| This feels like common sense to me.
|
| The dance they describe isn't just physical movement, it's also
| staying within a group movement which requires both reading where
| "the group" is and giving space to individual differences.
|
| Obviously the focus here is on exercise but I would be curious if
| a less physically demanding but similarly grouped activity would
| have similar effects on brain function. I suspect that linking
| physicality and social coordination is key. We are both brains
| and bodies and neglecting either is unhealthy in the long term.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I wonder if the same effect is even stronger for many
| competitive sports, where the brain-muscle loop includes a more
| complex modeling of competing agents vs cooperative ones as in
| dance. Something like basketball is anti-inductive; falling
| into an easy pattern will be immediately exploited by the other
| team in a way that isn't prevented in dance.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| Dancing is one activity I've always struggled with. I did musical
| theater all through school, have gone to dance parties, different
| music clubs all my life, and I have just always disliked dancing
| and found it to be tiresome and boring.
|
| I even figured in my early 20s it was one of those things where I
| had to just keep trying more until I found the right style, but I
| took adult classes in swing, ballroom, disco, various fitness
| dance and modern dance and just universally hated it all. I am
| amazed and wowed by watching professional dancers, but I find the
| act of doing any kind of dancing for myself is just a deeply
| mentally disinteresting, grating, boring slog that I can't get
| into.
| mrfusion wrote:
| How about tennis or Pickleball?
| willdearden wrote:
| Do you have people saved in your phone with the last name
| "Pickleball" so your phone capitalizes pickleball?
| mrfusion wrote:
| Now that you mention it, yes I do. That explains it.
| werber wrote:
| This makes me wonder about getting "lost in the music" type
| dancing on your own where you connect your physical movement and
| it becomes intuitive. I've done lots of club kid to slam dancing
| on my own and formal dancing and the headspace is so different
| but the former was always more intellectually satisfying and
| aerobic for me
| mancerayder wrote:
| Is a complex, full-body coordinated accelerated movement like an
| olympic clean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_and_jerk)
| considered 'repetitive physical exercise'?
|
| People see a barbell and they think bodybuilding, but there's a
| minority of weightlifting that involves a degree of complexity
| that's qualitatively in a different league than, say, bicep
| curls. I'm curious how it pans out.
| analbumcover wrote:
| Snatches and clean and jerks are certainly more technically
| involved than any movement you'd see in bodybuilding or
| powerlifting. You train fewer motor patterns with much higher
| frequency than other strength sports. It lacks the variation in
| movement that you'd see in bodybuilding, let alone dance. It's
| also very rigid, there's no creative element to it. I'd hazard
| a guess that it's more similar, in terms of brain plasticity,
| to strength sports than dance.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Two anecdotes from 10+ years argentinian tango dancer.
|
| 1. I dance leading part, and I found myself more self-confident
| in my engineering leader and manager work. Giving team a
| direction became more organic and easy. I actually had to start
| restraining myself to motivate people's creativity. It is
| actually kind of dance move too: stand still and give my follower
| firm support to decorate her part with small movements with
| music.
|
| 2. One of my fellow partners is playing intellectual games (local
| franchise of "Jeopardy!" and several others). She says her
| performance degrades with her progress in tango, because the
| follower's part in tango is to listen and not to step by her own,
| but only when and where the leader leads.
|
| I also believe in neuroplasticity and overall positive impact of
| creating and cohesion of neural links.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I can definitely see this. I have very mild Cerebral Palsy. I can
| run and end up in the middle of the pack in most races and
| sometimes in the top 3 or four for my age group (pre-Covid). I
| even taught fitness classes about a decade ago.
|
| But trying to learn a dance move or take someone else's
| choreography heavy exercise class was like trying to understand a
| second language when you are first learning it. I had to
| translate it to my "native language" and it took much longer for
| it to click even when I could physically do it.
|
| It was more mentally taxing than studying for any test or
| anything I had to do as a developer.
| skookum wrote:
| If 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.
| corpMaverick wrote:
| For what is worth. Boxing (without actually being hit) and
| climbing is practiced as therapy for Parkinson's patients.
| Probably because they require a lot emphasis on coordination
| and body awareness in general.
| idclip wrote:
| 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 element, a tenderness, which i dont see
| sports really fulfilling.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > 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, for me, it's very focused and very "in the
| head" activity. No one could tell from outside, though.
| cutler wrote:
| I took-up Argentine Tango after several years of a
| debillitating back and neurological problem. I'd been going
| to physios, chiropracters and an Alexander therapist for a
| long time with no results but as soon as I began to learn
| tango, along with a regular exercise programme, the problem
| cleared-up. Even better, my new tango social scene soon
| became a major source of web dev clients.
| balfirevic wrote:
| I'm so glad every time I hear about someone discovering
| and enjoying tango!
|
| Nice to hear that tango helped your back, although I'm a
| bit surprised as I've found that I need a some back
| exercise to relieve the stiffness that I get from dancing
| (although this happens only when dancing for multiple
| hours a day for several days, as you do on festivals).
| wittyreference wrote:
| That's very poetic.
|
| And entirely ungrounded.
| pretendscholar wrote:
| The expression with respect to sports and thinking: "If
| you're thinking you're sinking." Has anyone on this site ever
| actually played a sport long enough to get good at it? Being
| good at most time sensitive tasks involves entering a flow
| state. You aren't thinking in the traditional sense.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Depends how you sport. In London, my daily 15km cycle to work
| would have me constantly starting and stopping, sprinting
| small hills, dodging tourists, racing fellow bikers, brushing
| cars, and basically being alert at all times for any and all
| dangers (this was before the mass cycle lanes). There was a
| weird adrenaline induced rhythm to it that would grant me
| both physical and mental relief everyday that I had somehow
| made it to work without dying.
|
| Since I've moved to the countryside; boring endless gentle
| hills, breathtakingly stunning scenery that offers no
| challenges, and my brain basically goes into autopilot. I get
| to work feeling physically fulfilled but mentally drained.
| thesz wrote:
| https://books.google.ru/books?id=V8_Saizq_88C&pg=PA119&lpg=P.
| ..
|
| "...Pele had scored an unbelievable six goals while in a kind
| of trance-like state..."
|
| Pele often played in trance-like state, feeling he can get
| through his opponents.
| stinos wrote:
| _Dance is a sort of trance, and requires alot of letting go_
|
| I know what you mean, also when you talk about that certain
| tenderness, I have experienced that, and I can get that same
| thing out of sports like climbing/bmx/snowboarding. Take
| climbing: slowly reaching for a difficult hold you've never
| touched before, where you carefully lay your fingers on it,
| just touching it at first to make sure it'll actually hold
| you - and if not a fall an injury is certainly in there -
| while the rest of your body is at one wth the rock. That's
| basically the same for me. Or take snowboarding, just surfing
| a gentle slope, all alone while a snow shower slowly becomes
| heavier. There's no real goal there, focus fades, it's just
| you going with the flow. And getting that trance-like feeling
| really only works if you let go of certain natural fears.
| screye wrote:
| A well executed boulder can often seem indistinguishable
| from dance. So many sports have a natural flow and tempo
| (the zone), that once you tap into, you really do feel one
| with the sport.
|
| Sadly, the feeling can be fickle mistress and hard to tap
| into.
| screye wrote:
| Yeah, I wonder if they compared dancing to highly dynamic (non
| repetitive) sports, then would the results be different.
|
| Soccer for instance, demands continuous concentration and is as
| taxing mentally as it is physically, esp. in certain positions.
| This seems to be similarly true with sports like hockey,
| basketball, tennis, etc. Not sure how much of it applies to
| stop-start sports like baseball, cricket and american football.
|
| Climbing requires deliberate control over muscles, breathing,
| coordination and concentration, in manner that I haven't seen
| in any physical activity.
|
| That being said, looking at some of the dancers I know, dancing
| can be incredibly physically taxing on its own.
| d_silin wrote:
| I love indoor climbing, really makes physical exercize the
| opposite of boring.
| lowestprimate wrote:
| Same here. I tell friends climbing is a bit like random yoga
| with a bunch of problem solving thrown it. Plus it literally
| self selects for people who you would put your life into
| their hands.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| One benefit dance has is being low risk, especially for someone
| that might be in a partially compromised state.
| pizza234 wrote:
| I'd qualify using "lower" rather than "low". There's actually
| plenty of injury also in dancing, in particular, to knees and
| backs.
| codr7 wrote:
| 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.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Absolutely agree. Before everything shut down I used to
| practice yoga at a school here in Brooklyn that was very
| physically demanding and attracted a lot of more advanced
| practitioners. Most of the advanced students had long
| histories with dance or martial arts (or both). All of these
| arts teach increased awareness both physically and mentally,
| challenges your proprioception, and surprises the body with
| creative movement.
|
| I personally had been looking for a place to practice a
| martial art to add to my yoga practice, but then covid hit
| and the city shut down. Hopefully after all this is over
| though.
| codr7 wrote:
| I'm far from objective, having practiced and taught Wing
| Chun for more than 25 years; but from the martial arts I've
| been in contact with, WC excels at teaching physical and
| emotional awareness.
|
| Cuts both ways, I've been looking for oppurtunities to
| teach but people are so nervous and spinning now that it's
| mostly impossible to reach through.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Well if you know anyone in New York I'd be happy to take
| a recommendation for a WC teacher. I tested positive for
| the sars-cov-2 antibodies already, so I'm not as worried
| about being around people at this point of the pandemic
| (within reason).
| nickjj wrote:
| I didn't read the paper in depth. Is the benefit of
| dancing from having to remember a series of steps in
| addition to being physically active?
|
| Just asking because a lot of martial arts forms require
| remembering dozens or even hundreds of specific movements
| in a specific order.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I was thinking dodgeball, too.
| clairity wrote:
| basketball, in normal times. it's easily as engaging and much
| more accessible relative to those activities, which all require
| specialized equipment and significant travel for most people.
|
| (as the lakers-magic scrimmage game is on in the background...
| thank goodness the nba is back at least)
| Priem19 wrote:
| "In our view, the more pronounced effects of dancing on the
| human brain can be explained by the fact that dancing promotes
| a large number of processes at the same time: spatial
| orientation, movement coordination, balance, endurance,
| interaction and communication."
|
| That means I'm golden with skateboarding as well; fantastic.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cjbenedikt wrote:
| How about gymnastics?
| dbcurtis wrote:
| absolutely. Physical therapists often prescribe gymnastics
| for kids after they "graduate" from more intense PT.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Sound like soccer and other teams sports are also perfect.
| Sucks that I'm terrible at pretty much all of them...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| If we are looking at brain effects, the advantages must
| outweigh the risk of brain injury inherent to the activity.
| Playing football might help brain plasticity but at
| considerable risk of brain injuries. Most all the team
| sports (soccer, lacrosse, hockey etc) have varying degrees
| of associated brain injury risks, but not dance or other
| non-competitive sports. At lease when dance (or rock
| climbing) is competitive the competitors do not share a
| movement space and so don't knock heads.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| There's always volleyball, where competitors don't share
| the playing space.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Really cool. Would love to see this done with Beat Saber or some
| similar game (e.g. DDR).
| belorn wrote:
| Did both group contain similar amount of people who genuinely
| enjoyed the activity? An pretty old finding with physical
| exercise is that health benefits primarily only comes into effect
| in people who actually enjoy the activity. Two people doing the
| same mechanical physical motion get different health benefit if
| one enjoy it and the other disliked it (can't cite the exact
| study but remember findings in both human as well as animal
| studies, and the implied cause is that one trigger stress
| hormones while the other trigger growth).
|
| It would not surprise me if the dance group did better than the
| fitness training simply because the dance members enjoyed dancing
| more than the fitness members enjoyed fitness training, through I
| might be biased as I am not one who enjoy fitness training at
| all.
| wittyreference wrote:
| Sorry to be a wet blanket, but:
|
| When looking at studies, there are two types of validity to pay
| attention to, "external" and "internal." Internal is the sort
| that says: does this study actually test what it claims to? If a
| study looks in a black box, sees there's no elephant inside, and
| says "there's no elephant in there! Huzzah, we've proven it's a
| tiger!", that's an internally invalid study. External validity is
| about applicability: if I give a dose of abx to a bunch of people
| with advanced AIDS to treat an infection, and find it doesn't
| work, it doesn't mean "this abx doesn't work." It means "this abx
| doesn't work /in this population/. Don't extrapolate it to an
| immune-competent population."
|
| 1. The study begins with what they describe in their registration
| documents as "healthy elderly." That's a bit kind: "Sixty-two
| normal volunteers, who responded to a local advertisement, were
| screened. Subjects with any neurological condition, metallic
| implants, claustrophobia, tinnitus, BMI <=30, high blood pressure
| (systolic<=140 mmHg), diabetes mellitus, intensive physical
| engagement (more than 1 hour/week) and abnormal performance in a
| cognitive screening test (MMSE < 27)[32] and a test devoted to
| depressive symptoms (BDI-II > 13) [33] were excluded." In short,
| they started with an _anomalously_ healthy population, who likely
| have a lifetime of exposure to exercise and physical activity. Do
| the results here extrapolate to the general population? Do they
| extrapolate to the same degree? It 's a decent question mark,
| considering their results are non-significant in everything
| except their "looks like false positives" brain volume measures
| to begin with - even a little bit of "ehh... maybe not so much"
| takes them into the realm of "no effects", alongside every other
| measure in the paper. External validity is doubtful here.
|
| 2. Internal validity is a bit doubtful too, first for reasons of
| selection bias. They recruited 62 healthy volunteers; they had 14
| dropouts. A 22% dropout rate isn't atrocious, but it's more than
| enough - if it's not random - to skew a study. Their enrollment
| figure describes the dropouts as almost entirely pre-
| randomisation (10/14), but the study description notes that 6
| drop-outs were due to failure to achieve frequency of adherence,
| which clearly had to occur post-randomization, and 2 due to
| dissatisfaction with group assignment (obviously post-
| randomization). 6 got seriously ill - I'd love to know _in which
| group_ , and with what.
|
| 3. Their way of controlling for equivalent physical load was to
| measure heart rate twice. On the one hand, not crazy. On the
| other hand, if you've ever seen your HR during a workout session,
| you'll see how noisy that is - and with a sample of a whole 38
| pairs, that's a relatively huge amount of noise. Moreover, it
| doesn't appear that they used that to guide intensity of
| intervention, just "to control" (which I take to mean, to plug
| into a multivariate model at some point - except they don't, as
| they describe the covariates they plug into their model to be
| age, sex, and intracranial volume for brain volume t-tests) I'm
| skeptical this is an adequate control - I'd at least have wanted
| a time-weighted average HR.
|
| 3.b. The sports intervention had one effort-controllable
| component (sport bike), but had 3 different components. It's not
| at all clear they could capture the effort under the regimen
| above, especially as the relatively light strength exercise that
| the elderly tend to tolerate is the place where I'm most
| suspicious of them failing to capture an effort delta.
|
| 4. The differences in brain volume swung in different directions
| in each group, without making an awful lot of sense (more right
| cerebellar development in standard exercise group?? So,
| asymmetrically, the less-coordination-demanding intervention
| showed more development of the primary coordination center of the
| brain?). But more generally, looking at supplementary table S3,
| note that dancing showed improvements in anterior and posterior
| white matter, and standard exercise in temporal and occipital.
| The brain isn't that cleanly delineated - to find such
| statistically strong effects in such broad brushstrokes sets off
| a red flag for me.
|
| The fact that there was scattered growth *in both groups suggests
| we're looking at false positives. Not precisely a new problem for
| this study methodology. Their p-threshold of .001 is considered
| best-practices (aka, the bare minimum) for cluster-based
| adjustment of multiple testing in neuroimaging: so that's good.
| They don't report the p-values on their brain volume testing;
| table S3 simply notes "p<.001". An actual effect size would be
| better, but hard to get with cluster-based thresholds - they're
| sensitive to "any signal, at all, is it there?" but they're
| shitty at locking down precise volumes.
|
| 5. Dance group had lower BDNF plasma at baseline vs. standard
| exercise (1500 vs. 2100) (p .14), and equal at post (2200 to
| 2100, p .6). In short, they showed regression to the mean in the
| dance group. They report this as "the dance group had an increase
| in plasma BDNF from baseline." Serum levels likewise were not
| significantly difference pre and post between the two groups
| (dance went from 35K to 36K, sport went from 30K to 29K). In
| short, nothing happened. But they hid the "fucking nothing
| happened" in supplementary table 4, and dressed it up real pretty
| in the included figure 4.
|
| 6. Cognitive outcomes, the only thing that actually matters here:
| no differences.
|
| 7. At least some physical fitness differences? No, none there
| either.
|
| TL;DR they found nothing, made some misleading figures out of it.
| There are no perfect studies, but this one just boils down to
| "found nothing, needed publication."
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Obligatory favorite obscure book that everyone should at least
| have read a Medium summary of citation:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Together-Time-Dance-History/d...
|
| Super-tiny summary: humans have used coordinated rhythmic
| movement and the feelings it evokes as an aid to build
| communities and create efficient synchronized behavior. This
| behavior may even predated the human separation from other apes,
| and there is some evidence that certain other modern apes may use
| this too, though to a more limited degree.
|
| If this is truly such an ancient mechanism (the author's case is
| not ironclad, but good), it wouldn't be surprising to find
| connections between "coordinated rhythmic movement" and brain
| function.
| hannob wrote:
| Looking 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 indicate that cognitive benefits may develop
| later and after structural brain changes have taken place."
|
| May I translate: They saw improvements in things they could
| easily measure. They hope this translate into improved cognitive
| ability. But it actually didn't. But they still hope it'll do
| that later.
|
| (FWIW: I'm an active Lindy Hop dancer - ok, I have been before
| covid... - I love dancing and I am really looking forward to when
| I can visit dance festivals again.)
| MagnumPIG wrote:
| No wonder science journalism has a hard time keeping to the
| facts, even with direct access to the paper we're upvoting and
| misunderstanding a paper of trivial significance...
| dnquark wrote:
| My first dance teacher used to refer to a similar study from 10
| years ago in NEJM
| (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa022252); his
| commentary is at
| https://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm
|
| But yeah, getting into lindy hop 15 years ago was literally the
| best thing that ever happened to me. It's incredible, being
| able to go to any major city on the planet and instantly
| finding a community.
| dmd wrote:
| Similarly, contradance (though that's much more limited to
| the US).
| cosmojg wrote:
| Whereabouts are you? Are there any festivals you'd recommend in
| particular?
| virtue3 wrote:
| Lindy Hop?
|
| In the states the biggies are: Camp Hollywood (lotta pool
| time, lotta drinking) Lindy Focus (christmas -> new years,
| it's nuts) Nevermore (my personal favorite) Camp Jitterbug
| (used to be super relevent as the contest weekend event,
| sorta on the decline/ not sure) Lindyfest has some nice peeps
| at it Camp
|
| the biggest is Herrang in sweden, it's the lindy hop mecca
| trip.
|
| Also check out: https://www.swingplanit.com/
| acituan wrote:
| > May I translate: They saw improvements in things they could
| easily measure. They hope this translate into improved
| cognitive ability. But it actually didn't. But they still hope
| it'll do that later.
|
| I find your translation misleading. They did see improved
| cognitive ability, just not superior to the conventional
| fitness program _at the time of measuring_. Increased BDNF,
| which stands for brain-derived neurotrophic factor, is actually
| pretty significant so they are not pulling potential future
| development from thin air.
|
| Mind you the sample population is the elderly, for which the
| prospect of neural growth/protection is pretty important, and
| this might have further applications to other populations such
| as recovering alcoholics, methamphetamine users, and even
| depression/anxiety sufferers where hippocampal volume decrease
| is indicated.
| dumb1224 wrote:
| Fellow lindy hopper here too. Yes the communities around the
| world have been hit hard. Social dancing is unfortunately an
| ideal setup for the virus to spread. I share your hope and look
| forward to dancing again.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| > The latter finding may indicate that cognitive benefits may
| develop later and after structural brain changes have taken
| place."
|
| I'm confused by this part. How does the "latter finding"
| indicate that benefits may develop later? The "latter finding"
| is that there hasn't been any benefits yet. Does that suggest
| anything whatsoever about what will happen later?
| sacred_numbers wrote:
| If something hasn't happened yet it indicates that if it does
| happen it will happen later. For example, since pigs haven't
| flown yet, if they do fly, it will have to be later.
|
| Seriously, though, I think the researchers were trying to put
| a positive spin on a negative result but went too far.
| paulcole wrote:
| Funny how HN eats up an n=38 study when it confirms their biases
| as opposed to when it doesn't.
| xnkap wrote:
| If something is published, even in the soft sciences, it is
| always an uphill struggle on HN to criticize the paper.
|
| At the same time one can quote Feynman on social sciences or
| link to the relevant xkcd. Independent minds ...
| secant wrote:
| Ah yes, dance being the superior exercise, I have to admit my
| father engrained it into me as a child.
| paulcole wrote:
| I meant HN's irresistible catnip being anything that
| contradicts mainstream conventional wisdom -- not dance
| specifically.
| networkimprov wrote:
| I've been a dancer for 30 years, of many forms.
|
| The best way I can describe dancing to non-practitioners is that
| it's like playing a silent, wearable musical instrument that
| demands attention from your entire body.
|
| It is not like playing a sport, except perhaps if you do it
| competitively :-)
| tjoff wrote:
| So, you need to be a competitive dancer then? ;)
|
| To get that good you need discipline and dance for years (or
| just be a natural), so don't seem that far fetched to be at a
| similar difficulty level as sports in this regard.
| networkimprov wrote:
| Well I'd guess stress is inherent to most competition,
| because of the win/lose outcome.
|
| I'm sure that's not always a net negative, but I can say it
| hurt my dancing during the few times I've tried it
| competitively.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| You can be a competent partner/social dancer (swing, salsa,
| tango, waltz) in a few months of weekly instruction and
| practice (eg, attending dances).
| klipt wrote:
| I think followers can learn a lot faster because they're
| exposed to new moves all the time from leaders.
|
| For leaders to build up a good vocabulary of moves requires
| a lot more than weekly practice though.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| It depends (also I switch roles but primarily lead),
| vocabulary takes time, but you can have really, really
| good dances with limited vocabulary and good
| fundamentals, and often people focus on moves over
| fundamentals.
|
| And fundamentals as a lead can be learned by dancing with
| intention.
| AareyBaba wrote:
| 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.
| pizza234 wrote:
| It's unclear what the parent intends with "competent",
| and also not clear what "weekly" means (once a week?
| three times? daily?).
|
| I've been an amateur dancer for years, and definitely,
| for what I personally intend for "competent", it takes
| 2/3 years at least, with multiple times per week of
| practice, a few workshops every year etc.etc.
|
| There's certainly some people who dance pretty much daily
| and gets good in less than an year, some people with
| background in physical activities (sports or arts) who
| also get good quickly... but they're exceptions.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's too bad most people who try partner dancing don't
| stick it out long enough to break through the awkward stage
| to where it gets to be a lot of fun.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I think that's true for most hobbies, though. It's easy
| to bounce off anything that takes a bit of skill, because
| it can be a fairly large time commitment for an unknown
| payoff.
| pizza234 wrote:
| I've done lots of activies, including sports and dance,
| and some activities simply have a higher barrier than
| others.
|
| Partner dancing - at least leading - is definitely on the
| higher side :-)
|
| There are several factors. Leaders must endure months
| where they can do little or nothing, and they have to do
| it among people who always look great - if they social
| dance; if they don't, their learning time increases.
|
| Then there's a lot of pressure of performing with and for
| somebody who's usually of the opposite sex (this applies
| also to follows).
|
| It takes a lot (internally) before feeling comfortable
| enough to "simply enjoy".
|
| Playing an instrument or practicing an individual sport
| doesn't have such pressures.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The dance coach I knew refused to video his students
| until they had reached a certain level of competence,
| because if it was too soon they'd be horrified at how
| they looked dancing and would quit.
|
| Video is a brutal but effective teacher for those who are
| not easily discouraged.
| CalChris wrote:
| Dance certainly helped my basketball (when I played) but
| basketball did not help my dance.
| pizza234 wrote:
| 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.
| ak39 wrote:
| This is a profound comment. Thank you.
| cik2e wrote:
| Here are just a few examples of sports that require continuous
| attention from your entire body in response to an external
| stimulus:
|
| Snowboarding, downhill skiing, mountain biking, and any martial
| art. These are from personal experience, I'm sure there are
| plenty of other examples.
|
| Even weight training, which is an experimental group in this
| article, when done properly, requires high levels of neuro-
| muscular coordination and development. I am always weary of
| studies that evaluate "strength training" because there are so
| many different approaches with wildly different outcomes. Let's
| just say that a max effort squat by an athlete with around two
| years of proper training emphasizing technique requires a hell
| of a lot more coordination than busting a move on the dance
| floor. I've been weight training for 15 years and I still feel
| like I am learning something new every time I get under the bar
| with the right mindset. The mindset part is key, because if you
| are just going through the motions then you're not developing
| new skills. But I would bet a lot of money that top level
| strength athletes would say that their form is far from
| "perfect" and that this the area that affords the biggest
| opportunity for improvement.
|
| This is the part where I'm going to be brash. Unless you tell
| me exactly what defines a strength training regimen in your
| study, I will assume it's something along the lines of curls
| and lunges done with tiny dumbbells over a large amount of
| reps. Especially if your study calls it "repetitive". There's
| nothing repetitive about proper strength training. Every rep
| that's done mindfully affords a unique learning opportunity.
|
| Sports simply too complex to categorize in simple terms like
| "dancing" or "resistance training". In the context of
| experimental design, our definitions have to be much more
| precise.
|
| Having said all that, this is how I interpret this article:
| "Learning complex motor skills that require high levels of
| attention is better for the brain than doing 100 curls with 3
| lb dumbbells." And my response to that is "no shit".
| lrmunoz wrote:
| I don't know why this comment got downvoted. I personally
| thing there is so much truth in it.
|
| I practice Olympic lifting (total beginner) and I have to
| concentrate so much during exercises. Take for instance the
| snatch movement [1] which is my personal favorite and one of
| the hardest (in my opinion)
|
| Also I find weightlifting very addictive: when you do the
| movement successfully is very rewarding. When you get it
| wrong you can't wait to try again next time
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqWYvGDIRwE
| eigenhombre wrote:
| > Every rep that's done mindfully affords a unique learning
| opportunity.
|
| Could you suggest a source on this? One that presents this
| sort of approach to resistance training, ideally for relative
| newcomers?
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| That is an excellent analogy, it is similar to martial arts and
| Tai Chi.
|
| That said, professional athletes I've known pay a lot of
| attention to their specific form when doing actions to minimize
| energy and maximize power.
|
| It appears to me to be the difference between actively managing
| how your body moves versus just letting it do what ever to get
| the action done.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I would guess Yoga is good for this too then. And I imagine
| if this this the case "drunken night club dancing" might not
| count - you would need to deliberately practice dancing?
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I would guess that a good follow on paper would be to look
| at any activity which involved active kinematic management
| of the body to see if it had similar markers.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I don't dance, but (when fencing) I've been told that fencing
| scratches a similar itch to some forms of dancing (apparently).
| You are also acting for the referee too, thinking about it.
| [deleted]
| corpMaverick wrote:
| Thanks for the analogy. I feel that dance would be a great form
| of exercise for my kids(6m and 4f). Additionally gaining a lot
| of body awareness that can be useful through many areas in
| life. But I don't like how much emphasis is there on pointe (in
| ballet). It seems counter productive.
| ninjaturtlez wrote:
| Do you seriously not think that playing a sport requires
| control of your entire body? Have you ever tried to actively
| improve at a sport? Everything from basketball to golf is fine
| muscle control from the lowest to highest levels.
|
| Some people cant see their own bias I guess. :)
| cactus2093 wrote:
| Looks like you're just as caught up in your own bias as
| everyone else though :)
|
| Not sure why you jumped to the conclusion that someone saying
| "X is not like playing a sport" is a claim that "sports are
| trivially easy compared to X". I don't think the parent
| comment was claiming that at all, just that they're
| different, namely that dance is not inherently competitive.
| cik2e wrote:
| It's pretty obvious that the parent post isn't saying that
| dance is different in that it's not inherently competitive,
| but rather that sports have to be done at a competitive
| level to match the physical requirements of dance. And I
| strongly disagree with that sentiment. My claim is that
| sports done with deliberate practice aimed at improving
| technique are just like dance done with deliberate practice
| aimed at improving technique.
| cooliosis wrote:
| I think it's easier to be less aware of your entire body
| while practicing for other sports.
|
| As someone who plays basketball and tennis, it takes a lot of
| focus to pay attention to my whole body for an entire
| practice session (vs. just a single part that I'm trying to
| improve). Most of the time, if I don't explicitly try to pay
| attention, I just use muscle memory and try to get into "the
| zone".
|
| In tennis for example, I only need to pay maximal attention
| when learning a stroke (although of course it's beneficial to
| pay attention to every body part when just regularly playing
| - it's not necessary, and certainly something that a lot of
| recreational players don't do). Whereas with dance, it's
| required that you pay attention to your entire body for the
| entire practice session to memorize a choreography.
|
| I think that's the difference that's important for this
| paper. If my elderly dad were to play basketball, he might
| rely on muscle memory. Whereas, if his nursing home taught
| dance classes, he would definitively have to pay attention to
| all of his body parts.
| [deleted]
| pizza234 wrote:
| My experience is different. In both sports and dances, I've
| always been asked/required to pay attention to the entire
| body. For example, in climbing, it's a mechanical
| necessity, while in table tennis, it's required for
| efficiency and power.
| networkimprov wrote:
| it == dancing && it != sport
| dancing.entails(entire_body)
| sport.entails(entire_body)
|
| Clearer now?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rdp3453 wrote:
| PR comments: - is this some kind of Shrodinger's "it", the
| second check is irrelevant - Needs indentation
| reificator wrote:
| > _Do you seriously not think that playing a sport requires
| control of your entire body? Have you ever tried to actively
| improve at a sport? Everything from basketball to golf is
| fine muscle control from the lowest to highest levels._
|
| I want you to read this entire sentence, _including the part
| after "except"_. I want you to tell me what you think that
| last clause means.
|
| > _It is not like playing a sport, except perhaps if you do
| it competitively_
|
| Do you think there is perhaps the slightest chance that they
| did not intend to say that "playing a sport does not require
| control of your entire body"?
|
| Is there even a tiny possibility that they said that dancing
| non-competitively is not like playing a sport, perhaps
| because they are including _competition_ in the definition of
| _sport_?
|
| > _Some people cant see their own bias I guess. :)_
|
| Agreed.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| He's describing it as a musical instrument. I think that's a
| very good comparison, and is indeed not related to other
| sports.
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| 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 years of martial arts and
| meditation practice) which for sure would not be good for my
| health.
|
| It is also a great emotional outlet for me as most of my day I
| am dealing with machines and logic.
|
| And the best part is that I dance with my other half - we spend
| a lot of time together, travel together and get all our
| arguments done on the dance floor and not at home! :)
|
| I definitely recommend dancing, any kind, to anyone and
| everyone.
| stevehiehn wrote:
| Nice, been 'raving' for years ;)
| louwrentius wrote:
| Offsets the damage of XTC usage a bit ;-)
| afterwalk wrote:
| Does anyone have suggestions on how to learn dancing during a
| time of social distancing? (i.e any good mooc or video courses?)
| jbroman wrote:
| Kinda specific, but breakdancing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIDaadRNPpg
| dokem wrote:
| Weight lifting is better for making you more attractive and
| confident. If you are in good shape men and women will both take
| notice. Not everything's about squeezing out that last IQ point.
| I enjoy dancing, don't get me wrong, but weightlifting is the
| obvious choose when it comes to quality of life improvement. I
| used to run a lot too, no one gives a shit about your 5 minute
| mile and no one is impressed by your skinny body. Weightlifting;
| dudes figured it out 80 years ago.
| thesz wrote:
| It's interesting how they matched the intensity.
|
| Because, in my opinion, dance is a sorta-kinda-like strength
| endurance training when you exert a modest loaded movement (say,
| 40%-50% of your bench press' 1RM) for 2-4 repetition and there
| are tens of these bouts.
|
| In calories spent such resistance exercise may match some
| endurance exercise but other effects can be dramatically
| different.
|
| Including, but not limited to, levels and utilization of brain-
| derived neurotophic factor. While endurance training increase
| BDNF level long term and modestly, the resistance exercise can
| effect a sharp 60%-90% increase at the end of training session,
| then drop to 40% of normal (to the person) level and slow
| recovery. This indicates overproduction of BDNF and its complete
| utilization of the body to build neurons everywhere.
| anonu wrote:
| The HN headline should match the article's. It's missing "in the
| elderly"
| netcan wrote:
| There is parsimony between recent interest in fasting for health
| and the fact that so many cultures & religions prescribe ritual
| fasts. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism...
|
| That doesn't mean traditions and beliefs are necessarily true,
| but they didn't evolve randomly either. Successful memes serve a
| purpose, and that _can_ be rational outside of cultural
| rationality.
|
| Dance seems similar. It's something most cultures do...
| especially when they're being especially cultural. It may even go
| deeper. Dancing and music are kind of wired into us, possibly
| adjacent to speech. Babies will dance to music.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if science confirms that dance is good.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| TL;DR: it seems trivially true that non-scientific, traditional
| knowledge can be a powerful source of understanding, especially
| when combined judiciously with science.
|
| > That doesn't mean traditions and beliefs are necessarily
| true, but they didn't evolve randomly either. Successful memes
| serve a purpose, and that can be rational outside of cultural
| rationality.
|
| The belief that no knowledge exists outside of the scientific
| establishment is one of the biggest weaknesses of the center-
| left technocratic memeplex (of which I'm proudly a part). It
| leads not only to the myopia of believing that your opponents
| don't deserve a hearing because they're "anti-science" (for
| ever more creative interpretations of science..), but also to
| unforced errors from the ability to reason about uncertainty,
| like <everything our public health authorities have done during
| the pandemic>.
|
| I believe that the scientific method is the greatest engine for
| rapid, high-quality knowledge generation in human history, and
| consider its manifestation in the scientific establishment to
| be one of the crowning achievements of humanity. But this
| doesn't make its manifestation perfect: as with all human
| systems, it's composed of people who are not immune to
| pettiness, narrow-minded, selfishness, and even occasionally
| stupidity. And as with all institutions, the human flaws of its
| constituents are magnified 1000-fold due to the challenges of
| incentive design and modeling large systems. Please note, this
| is decidedly _not_ a criticism of scientists beyond "they're
| human"; I wouldn't be surprised if the average scientist was
| well below the median for all of the negative qualities I
| described. It's just an acknowledgement that they're human,
| they have flaws, and those flaws affect how science is
| produced.
|
| Proper science is vastly superior in efficiency and confidence
| to many other forms of epistemology, but the imperfection of
| the scientific establishment means that it occasionally
| mishandles or abdicates responsibility for certain whole
| sections of knowledge-space. In these situations, reasoning
| under uncertainty requires cautiously looking at other sources
| of knowledge; they may be "lower-quality" in many ways than the
| scientific method, but they're better than simply assuming that
| absence of evidence = evidence of absence.
|
| When I was younger, I had this insight in the context of
| ayahuasca rituals while in Peru (I had the insight _before_ the
| ritual, to be clear haha). The scientific community had
| abdicated its responsibility to study the potential of
| psychedelics for improving mental health; how else to interpret
| shaman guiding an ayahuasca ritual than as an analogue of a
| therapist[1] trained in psychedelic therapy, whose expertise is
| shaped not through RCTs but centuries of trial and error? The
| fact that the West is taking slow, halting steps towards
| studying psychedelic therapy 70 years after its popularization
| here is pretty damning, IMO: as somebody who treated science as
| a valuable but flawed source of knowledge, I've been a happy
| user of LSD for years, and consider it an immensely helpful
| tool for mental health.
|
| There are a million examples of this if you stop and think
| about it. Fifty years ago, yoga and meditation made you a kook;
| the scientific establishment started studying it and now, it's
| weird among some circles not to regularly do yoga and meditate.
| This is again something you can learn easily through examining
| "unscientific" tradition + self-experimentation, with an
| appropriate model of the downside risks.
|
| [1] I'm using intentionally clinical language here to make the
| comparison clear, though I'm aware that it's a little reductive
| to ignore the spiritual dimension most shamans would describe
| their work as having.
| wittyreference wrote:
| Samzdat has an absolutely excellent article on the
| distinctions between state-level (often technocratic)
| knowledge and on-the-ground knowledge, and the difficulties
| of communicating between the two and acting on them. It's
| part of a discussion of the book Seeing Like A State. I think
| you'd find it stimulating.
|
| https://samzdat.com/2017/05/22/man-as-a-rationalist-animal/
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I've read this post, and Seeing Like a State after SSC's
| review of it (thank you for the reference though!). Both of
| these came after my Peruvian epiphany, but they really
| helped sharpen my understanding of epistemology. Though my
| focus here is a little different: instead of focusing on
| how top-down policy privileges techne over metis due to its
| legibility[1], I'm primarily interested in how the
| individual can make better use of metis from outside his
| bubble. This is the main thing I look for when I travel,
| and a nine-month, and a 6-continent backpacking trip I took
| in my early 20s was a really transformative experience for
| exactly that reason.
|
| [1] The reason I don't focus too much on this aspect is
| because I've already found it productive to model politics
| and policy as a natural disasters, or millions of monkeys
| banging on typewriters: I don't think most humans are
| capable of what I'd consider critical thinking, and they're
| certainly not capable of exercising it in large, complex
| systems. I get that this is a little nihilistic, but in
| practice it just means being selective about how you choose
| to spend your time with and not getting too drawn into
| cases where you can't control it, like politics.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I consider dance the intersection of balance, efficiency / energy
| conservation and probably the abstract root of a lot of
| activities in life. Anything can be a chore, or an effort, but if
| you make it into a dance like action.. it becomes both easy and
| joyful. And it's also reaching social boundaries.. if you think
| work as a set of concurrent changes driven by agents.. dancing is
| basically the lowest energy level for that. Everything flows,
| momentum conserved, impedance free.. and surprisingly people are
| very happy seeing and living that way.
|
| All that said... i'm not surprised it has a lot of leverage in
| our brain.
| sova wrote:
| There was a strong article in an Australian magazine claiming
| that ballet was one of the strongest preventative measures
| against dementia, and this lines up with that.
| evo_9 wrote:
| This is interesting; for the past 4 years as part of my workout I
| hop in VR for around 60 minutes. I typically play a mix of music
| while I play games like Space Pirate Trainer (highly movement
| oriented, my heat-rate stays at workout levels while playing). So
| I'm basically dancing around to music, dodging incoming fire,
| returning fire, etc... quite stimulating + athletic with eye/hand
| tracking etc. Perhaps this is doing more than a fun extra bit
| that's essentially my cool-down.
| topkai22 wrote:
| The key here is "repetitive". It sounds like the repetitive
| exercise was the exact same cardio + weights routine every day,
| excluding any coordinative active, while the dance routines were
| explicitly varied and sound far more interactive.
|
| I don't know enough about the underlying science to really
| understand the paper at a glance, but it's not surprising that
| learning a new skill provides beneficial effects. A neat follow
| up would be to look at what learning a musical instrument with a
| lower physical fitness requirement than dance does is
| relationship to a dance routine. Or even something like birding,
| that requires a moderate amount of walking with increased skills
| observing the physical environment.
|
| I think this probably (with low confidence, because of the low N
| and a high dropout rate) answers the question "is dance better
| for neuroplasticity than walking on a treadmill and stationary
| bike + repetitive and uncoordinated floor exercises" with a yes,
| but I'll bet plenty of other activities surpass the repetitive
| control group as well.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Dance (at least dancing with a partner) is also very much a
| social activity, and social activity has very good effects on
| cognition.
| WmyEE0UsWAwC2i wrote:
| As a data analyst, I once took an introductory class to modern
| dance. 5 sessions during one week. I though I was trained, I did
| calystecnics and yoga.
|
| The class included "floor work" similar but no limited to [1].
|
| It was hard. I received a lot of feed back from the instructor,
| but of course I didn't achieve that amount of grace.
|
| Very worth trying if you want to experience learning something
| new and challenging.
|
| Incidentally, this is one area where there are many more females
| than males. 2C/.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jHrR8vy3OM
| com2kid wrote:
| I wonder how kickboxing fairs, done properly it is mentally
| taxing and one of the highest calorie burning exercises out there
| (up to 500 calories/30 minutes as measured by HR strap).
|
| The mentally taxing part comes from the complex weight shifting
| and footwork that is constantly needed, complex combos require
| sophisticated manipulations of body weight positioning and
| constant shifting of stances and physical location around the
| bag.
|
| It is the only cardio-like activity I can stand, except it is way
| above the cardio zone, HR when active is above 150 (or even 160)
| and stays there for an entire 3 minute round.
| Klinky wrote:
| So long as you're not knocking your noggin around. Any contact
| sport involving blows to the head (even padded blows) is
| probably more detrimental than any benefit gained.
| whatnidnogg wrote:
| hell yeah!
| acd wrote:
| This probably also translates to martial arts as that is also
| moving in complex patterns.
| whatnidnogg wrote:
| hell yeah! dancing is kick ass.
| ak39 wrote:
| Dancing isn't easy for folks who are rhythm-challenged like me.
|
| Try the Jerusamela on for size. Warning: make sure the vase, and
| precious items in the living room are packed away before you
| practise.
|
| Some attempts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePuGjRRin3c
|
| Official video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZVL_8D048
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I know it's off-topic but Tik-tok is really refreshing as a
| social network/entertainment thing to me. Lots of honest (even
| though the app encourages use of video effects) stuff on it,
| especially if you upvote things from time to time. User-
| generated content but haven't yet seen facebook outrage porn or
| twitter feud war ; lots of good vibe.
|
| edit: my feed is filled with people with goth make up mimicking
| lyrics or movie dialogues, skate boarding tricks, contemporary
| dancers and weird jokers.
| haram_masala wrote:
| And all data funneled to the CCP.
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| > An extensive pre/post-assessment was performed on the 38
| participants (63-80 y)
|
| Mind the n = 38. People already taking the title at face value in
| this thread.
| smabie wrote:
| Sample size is pretty irrelevant on its own.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I thought the "low sample size, checkmate!" without any other
| analysis was limited to Reddit dilettantes.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| It's here too, along with betteridge's law and references to
| the dunning-kruger effect.
|
| Maybe the frequency of these things can be explained by the
| 80/20 rule, ha.
| paulcole wrote:
| Canceled out by the blind acceptance of the headline without
| reading the article here on HN.
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