Fitness
Fitness musts and myths: What exercise advice to follow – Vero News
To stretch or not to stretch? To ice or not to ice? To run or not to run?
Fitness culture is rife with new ideas and outmoded concepts and misconceptions, thanks to constantly evolving science and fitness websites and influencers who share tips based on anecdote, inconclusive evidence and “gym lore.”
So exactly what advice should you be following when it comes to basic exercise principles?
Concept 1: You need to stretch before you work out.
Harvard Medical School’s newsletter says it’s not just runners and gymnasts who need to stretch. Anyone who is exercising vigorously should stretch in order to protect mobility and prevent injury.
Danielle Kireczyk, personal training director at Vero Fitness, says, “Doing some stretching or warm-up before working out is better than getting right to it. Whether walking on the treadmill for a few minutes, working through a dynamic warm-up, or stretching, it’s important to prime your muscles and joints before the actual workout begins.”
Shanna Benson, an ACE-certified fitness instructor at Vero Fitness, explains that there is static stretching and dynamic stretching. A static stretch is held in one position for 17 seconds minimum while dynamic stretching is a moving stretch putting the body through a full range of motion in sequence as you warm up your core temperature.
Static stretching before your core temperature is heated can result in an increased risk of injury, but dynamic stretching before a workout is a good idea.
Benson says, “I think stretching after your workout is most important, not only to prevent injury but to speed up and enhance your workout results.
Concept 2: You need to lift heavy weights to build muscle.
A recent report in U.S. News & World Report says that lifting weights regularly builds strength and muscle. It doesn’t matter if those weights are heavy or light – the act itself, plus consistency, pays off.
Kireczyk says fitness isn’t one size fits all. Lifting weights is not going to sculpt your physique by itself – diet, nutrition and a complete fitness routine all work together to do that.
“In 40-plus years as a personal and group training instructor, I’ve learned that you don’t have to lift heavy weights to build muscle,” shares Benson. “I believe oxygen deprivation to specific muscles promotes hypertrophy, an increase in muscular size achieved through exercise.”
Concept 3: Running destroys your knees.
According to Cleveland Clinic, running doesn’t cause arthritis – it causes temporary changes to the cartilage and fluids in your knees. When you rest, they recover. Running may even lower your risk of arthritis because knees compress when you run, causing more fluid to travel to joints to keep them lubricated.
Benson says that impact can even reverse bone loss to some degree. But, she adds, overdoing it can break down joints. The key is moderation and sufficient recovery time.
Concept 4: Walking is enough to keep you fit as you age.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that adults 65 and older engage in moderate-intensity exercise at least 150 minutes a week. In addition, individuals should perform strength training and balance exercises at least twice weekly.
“Walking is an amazing form of exercise,” says Kireczyk. “It’s free, low-impact and can be done in various forms of intensity. But there is no single thing that keeps someone fit.
“Just lifting weights, just doing cardio, or just healthy eating has benefit, but the ultimate goal is for everyone to have a routine that involves all three.”
Benson adds, “Walking is a great place to start if you have been completely inactive, but more is needed to maintain your musculature. Muscle is the glue that helps maintain your skeletal structure and walking alone isn’t enough. Weight training is every bit as important as walking to keep you in condition to walk.”
Concept 5: Runners and cyclists don’t need to do additional strength training for the lower body.
An article published recently in Men’s Journal reported that a running or cycling program that lacks strength training for the legs can lead to injury.
Runners tend to develop tight calves and shin splints, while cyclists often have weak glutes and tight hip flexors and/or hamstrings. Mobility exercises, along with squat, deadlift and lunge variations can help prevent these imbalances.
Kireczyk concurs, adding you can’t get good at running by just running and you can’t get good at lifting weights by just lifting weights. Everything works hand in hand and its important blend all forms fitness for optimal wellbeing.
Concept 6: You need 10,000 steps a day to be healthy.
Fitness tracking devices encourage people to take 10,000 steps a day, but taking fewer steps still has many health benefits, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s I-Min Lee, an expert on step counts and health.
“You don’t need a certain number of anything to be healthy,” says Kireczyk, “but it’s good to have some sort of measurement and goal, especially if you have a sedentary lifestyle.”
Benson believes that if someone can get 1,000 more steps daily than what they are used to, regardless of the baseline number, their health will certainly benefit.
Concept 7: Taking an ice bath after a tough workout improves recovery.
An article in Business Insider discussed pros and cons of ice baths, concluding that although an ice bath is not an everyday necessity, it might be beneficial after an intense workout, helping muscles recover and reducing soreness.
Besides ice baths and cold plunges, Kireczyk believes that rest days, saunas, red light therapy, yoga and stretching are other good exercise recovery aids.
Benson adds that cold plunging is not for everyone. There are health and autoimmune conditions that can be aggravated by total water immersion. Research on this subject is just beginning.
Shanna Benson is certified as an Advanced Physical Fitness Specialist by the Kenneth Cooper Institute of Aerobic Research and by the American Council on Exercise as a Group Exercise Instructor. She is group fitness manager at Vero Fitness. Danielle Kireczyk is an Athletics and Fitness Association of America Certified personal fitness trainer and an AFAA Certified Primary Group exercise instructor who is personal training director at Vero Fitness, which is located at 1060 6th Ave., Vero Beach. The phone number is 772-567-1400.
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While exercise is known to improve memory, scientists have mostly studied this effect by using behavioral tests or brain imaging methods like MRIs, says Michelle Voss, PhD, one of the study’s authors, a professor, and the director of the Health, Brain, and Cognitive Lab at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
But she says these approaches can’t precisely identify where “ripples” originate, particularly in the deep brain structures like the hippocampus, a part of the brain strongly connected to memory and learning, she says.
The current study, published in Brain Communications, recorded electrical activity directly, using surgically implanted (intracranial) electrodes. “This allowed us to observe how exercise changes the brain’s memory circuits in real time,” Dr. Voss says.
20-Minute Bursts of Exercise Increase Brain Ripples
The participants performed a 5-minute warm-up and then rode a stationary bike for 20 minutes at a pace they could maintain. Researchers recorded their brain activity before and after the biking session.
The electrodes showed an increased rate of so-called sharp-wave ripples from the hippocampus and connections with cortical regions of the brain, which are involved in learning and memory.
“Sharp-wave ripples have long been known from animal studies to play a central role in memory,” Voss says, adding that recent studies using intracranial recordings in humans also support the importance of ripples for human memory.
“Our findings are the first to show that exercise can modulate these ripple signals in the human brain,” she says.
Researchers also observed that larger increases in heart rate during exercise were associated with larger changes in ripple activity in cortical networks, Voss adds.
What’s Already Known About Exercise, Memory, and Learning
Exercise helps build connections between neurons, which deepens and strengthens brain networks, Franssen says.
Physical activity also improves metabolism, which improves insulin sensitivity, helping blood sugar regulation and giving the brain a “more stable and reliable supply of fuel,” Dr. Perlmutter says.
“This is critically important because the brain is an energy-intensive organ, consuming roughly 20 percent of the body’s energy despite representing only a small fraction of body weight,” he adds.
The Research Has Limitations
Voss says researchers were careful to “exclude signals that contained epileptic activity. However, of course, we can’t statistically control for the accumulated effects of having epilepsy on the brain.”
The exercise-brain ripple patterns observed in the current study also closely match those observed in healthy adults using noninvasive brain imaging, such as MRI, she added.
“That convergence across very different methods is one of the strongest indicators that the effects are not specific to epilepsy, but reflect a more general human brain response to exercise,” Voss said.
Researchers also didn’t directly test memory performance, Voss notes. “While hippocampal ripples are strongly linked to memory processing in decades of neuroscience research, the next step will be to measure how exercise-related changes in ripples relate to memory performance in the same individuals.”
Future studies should also compare exercise with other everyday activities, such as sitting quietly or light movement, to determine how specific these effects are to aerobic exercise at the intensity that was studied, she says.
Satisfy Your Brain’s Exercise Craving
It’s never too early or too late to start exercising for brain health, Franssen says.
People of any age, from grade-school children to people in their nineties, can benefit from increased physical activity, Perlmutter says. “My recommendation is to consider taking advantage of the connection between physical activity and brain health across the entire range of human aging.”
Any type of exercise is great, Franssen says, but especially “repetitive behaviors,” like swimming, jogging, and walking.
“Sometimes we let the hugeness of putting in a huge fitness routine get in our way,” she says. “Having a little exercise snack every so often is also very important to improving cognition.”
Increasing our level of physical fitness leads to a bigger release of brain-boosting proteins following one session of exercise, a new study led by a UCL researcher has found.
The study, published in Brain Research, took a group of inactive unfit participants through a 12-week training programme of cycling three times per week and made them fitter. Researchers found as their fitness increased, so did the amount of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) released following exercise, resulting in improved brain function.
Just 15 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise releases BDNF, a brain protein which is known to support the formation of new neurons and new synapses (connections between brain cells), and maintains the health of existing neurons. This is the first study to show that for unfit people, just 12 weeks of consistent training can boost the brain’s response to a single 15-minute workout.
The study, led by Dr Flaminia Ronca (UCL Surgery & Interventional Science, and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health), involved 30 participants – 23 male and seven female – taking part in the 12-week programme. To assess fitness levels throughout the programme, participants completed VO2max tests every six weeks, which measures the maximum rate of oxygen your body can consume and use during intense exercise.
BDNF levels were measured pre- and post-VO2max testing, alongside a series of cognitive and memory tests, while also measuring changes in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex – where executive functions such as decision-making, emotion regulation, attention and impulsivity are controlled.
By the final week of the trial, results showed that baseline levels of BDNF did not change, but participants did show a larger spike of BDNF following intense exercise, compared to how their brains responded to intense exercise before the 12-week programme. This was linked to improvements in VO2max (aerobic fitness).
Higher overall BDNF levels and stronger exercise-induced increases were also associated with changes in activity across key areas of the prefrontal cortex during attention and inhibition tasks, though not during memory tasks.
Overall, the results showed that increasing physical fitness can enhance the brain’s ability to produce BDNF in response to acute bouts of exercise, which can have a strong positive influence on neural activity.
Lead author Dr Flaminia Ronca said: “We’ve known for a while that exercise is good for our brain, but the mechanisms through which this occurs are still being disentangled. The most exciting finding from our study is that if we become fitter, our brains benefit even more from a single session of exercise, and this can change in only six weeks.”
Notes to editors:
For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact: Tom Cramp, UCL Media Relations , T: +447586 711698, E: [email protected]
The research paper: ‘BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise’, Flaminia Ronca, Cian Xu, Ellen Kong, Dennis Chan, Antonia Hamilton, Giampietro Schiavo, Ilias Tachtsidis, Paola Pinti, Benjamin Tari, Tom Gurney, Paul W. Burgess, is published in Brain Research, March 2026,
About UCL (University College London)
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Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world’s best minds. Our community of more than 50,000 students from 150 countries and over 16,000 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.
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We have a progressive and integrated approach to our teaching and research – championing innovation, creativity and cross-disciplinary working. We teach our students how to think, not what to think, and see them as partners, collaborators and contributors.
For 200 years, we are proud to have opened higher education to students from a wide range of backgrounds and to change the way we create and share knowledge.
We were the first in England to welcome women to university education and that courageous attitude and disruptive spirit is still alive today. We are UCL.
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Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Media Contact
Tom Cramp
University College London
[email protected]
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Tags
/Health and medicine/Human health/Physical exercise
bu içeriği en az 2000 kelime olacak şekilde ve alt başlıklar ve madde içermiyecek şekilde ünlü bir science magazine için İngilizce olarak yeniden yaz. Teknik açıklamalar içersin ve viral olacak şekilde İngilizce yaz. Haber dışında başka bir şey içermesin. Haber içerisinde en az 12 paragraf ve her bir paragrafta da en az 50 kelime olsun. Cevapta sadece haber olsun. Ayrıca haberi yazdıktan sonra içerikten yararlanarak aşağıdaki başlıkların bilgisi var ise haberin altında doldur. Eğer yoksa bilgisi ilgili kısmı yazma.:
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Article Title:
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Keywords
Tags: 12-week cycling training program benefitsbrain plasticity and physical fitnessbrain-derived neurotrophic factor after exerciseeffects of aerobic exercise on BDNFexercise and neuron healthexercise-induced neurogenesisfitness level impact on brain proteinsfitness training for cognitive improvementimproving brain function through fitnessmoderate to vigorous aerobic exercise effectsphysical fitness and brain healthVO2max and brain function correlation
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