3 ms·

a series of online tasks for a minimum of ten minutes a day, three times a week, for six weeks. How much benefit can one expect from three hours of investment?

a series of online tasks for a minimum of ten minutes a day, three times a week, for six weeks. How much benefit can one expect from three hours of investment? If this were about, say, weight resistance training, would you expect to have bigger muscles after this program?

jules 17y ago
> If this were about, say, weight resistance training, would you expect to have bigger muscles after this program? Yes, absolutely, and you will have better muscles. You can have big changes in performance in a few days if you spend more time per day (but whether your muscles look bigger maybe not).
- gaius 17y ago
  Most of the initial quick gains in weight training are related to gaining the skill needed to coordinate your muscles correctly to do say a bench press. Adding muscle requires patience - gaining 10-15lbs of muscle per year is about as good as it gets without steroids, and that's with training hard and eating right all year too.
  - jules 17y ago
    Sure that is part of it but that isn't the only thing that happens. For example: when I cycled 4 days about 60 km/day at age ~10 I was completely amazed how much easier & faster it was when I cycled to school after this vacation. This is not due to better coordination, as I had cycled every day for many years. I'm not saying that you get significantly bigger muscles quickly, but you can get better muscles quickly (or perhaps it's due to the lungs/heart?). BTW 10 lbs per year is a lot. It's more than 12 grams per day which is about 12 cm^3 per day. This is definitely noticeable. Where do you have this information from? Do you have other information like this? I'd be interested to know what exactly makes muscle tissue grow.
    - gaius 17y ago
      Loads of great info on www.crossfit.com www.t-nation.com www.gymjones.com
Matti 17y ago
An investment of fourteen hours of training over five weeks does result in some changes: Changes in Cortical Dopamine D1 Receptor Binding Associated with Cognitive Training McNab et al. Science 6 February 2009: 800-802 Working memory is a key function for human cognition, dependent on adequate dopamine neurotransmission. Here we show that the training of working memory, which improves working memory capacity, is associated with changes in the density of cortical dopamine D1 receptors. Fourteen hours of training over 5 weeks was associated with changes in both prefrontal and parietal D1 binding potential. This plasticity of the dopamine D1 receptor system demonstrates a reciprocal interplay between mental activity and brain biochemistry in vivo. http://www.klingberglab.se/pub/McNab2009.pdf http://www.klingberglab.se/pub/McNab2009.pdf
_delirium 17y ago
In the weight-training case, you'd probably see some difference between the group that did 10 mins of lifting 3x a week for 6 weeks, and the group that did none at all, wouldn't you? It sounds like they were hoping to find a smallish but measurable increase which they could then use to speculate on what would happen over a longer period.

jules 17y ago

> If this were about, say, weight resistance training, would you expect to have bigger muscles after this program? Yes, absolutely, and you will have better muscles. You can have big changes in performance in a few days if you spend more time per day (but whether your muscles look bigger maybe not).

gaius 17y ago
Most of the initial quick gains in weight training are related to gaining the skill needed to coordinate your muscles correctly to do say a bench press. Adding muscle requires patience - gaining 10-15lbs of muscle per year is about as good as it gets without steroids, and that's with training hard and eating right all year too.
- jules 17y ago
  Sure that is part of it but that isn't the only thing that happens. For example: when I cycled 4 days about 60 km/day at age ~10 I was completely amazed how much easier & faster it was when I cycled to school after this vacation. This is not due to better coordination, as I had cycled every day for many years. I'm not saying that you get significantly bigger muscles quickly, but you can get better muscles quickly (or perhaps it's due to the lungs/heart?). BTW 10 lbs per year is a lot. It's more than 12 grams per day which is about 12 cm^3 per day. This is definitely noticeable. Where do you have this information from? Do you have other information like this? I'd be interested to know what exactly makes muscle tissue grow.
  - gaius 17y ago
    Loads of great info on www.crossfit.com www.t-nation.com www.gymjones.com

Matti 17y ago

An investment of fourteen hours of training over five weeks does result in some changes: Changes in Cortical Dopamine D1 Receptor Binding Associated with Cognitive Training McNab et al. Science 6 February 2009: 800-802 Working memory is a key function for human cognition, dependent on adequate dopamine neurotransmission. Here we show that the training of working memory, which improves working memory capacity, is associated with changes in the density of cortical dopamine D1 receptors. Fourteen hours of training over 5 weeks was associated with changes in both prefrontal and parietal D1 binding potential. This plasticity of the dopamine D1 receptor system demonstrates a reciprocal interplay between mental activity and brain biochemistry in vivo. http://www.klingberglab.se/pub/McNab2009.pdf http://www.klingberglab.se/pub/McNab2009.pdf

_delirium 17y ago

In the weight-training case, you'd probably see some difference between the group that did 10 mins of lifting 3x a week for 6 weeks, and the group that did none at all, wouldn't you? It sounds like they were hoping to find a smallish but measurable increase which they could then use to speculate on what would happen over a longer period.