How running helps you get through your working day

How does it work?

As soon as you start exercising, your heart starts beating faster and the blood circulation in your body improves. As a result, more oxygen-rich blood is pumped to your brain, ensuring that your brain functions optimally. In addition, new brain tissue and nerve connections can be formed, which will improve your cognitive functions (all processes involved in absorbing and processing information).

Fresh air, calm mind

The improved activity in your brain after running improves your performance at work. Running activates the production of various neurotransmitters such as dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin and endorphins. These substances improve mood, self-confidence and productivity, while reducing stress and negative thoughts. Your memory improves, your ability to concentrate increases and you become better at taking difficult decisions, planning and organising. Research shows that you are as much as 23 percent more productive after your body has been active. In addition, running stimulates the hippocampus in the brain, which plays an important role in learning processes and information processing.

Immediate effect

Being able to work more effectively and think more clearly are effects that occur mainly after physical exertion. But even while running, you can often notice what movement does to your brain. Think, for example, of the enlightening insights you come home with after a run. This has to do with the way the left and right hemispheres of your brain work together. The left hemisphere is responsible for logic, analytical skills and the ability to understand. The right hemisphere is the creative part of your brain and is used, among other things, to see connections.

During your working day, the left hemisphere of the brain is under particular strain. Exercise makes the right hemisphere of the brain more active and both hemispheres work better together. When the right hemisphere of the brain is stimulated, you act more intuitively and think more creatively. That explains why you suddenly get good ideas and innovative insights while running. A bit of running during your lunch break will get you back to work with a fresh mind.

Recharging your brain

Although it may seem tempting to curl up on the sofa after a long day at work, in the end, it will not make you feel better. The fatigue you are feeling is probably mental and sitting still is not going to help you with that. Mental fatigue actually dissipates through physical strain. Running therefore provides new energy and is the ideal way to recharge yourself at the end of your working day.

20 to 30 minutes of running is enough to experience the positive mental effects, exercising too often and with too much intensity is counterproductive. So when fatigue sets in, it’s better to reach for your running shoes than for that umpteenth cup of coffee.