Day 13 - Constantly varied exercise = Brain Health?

Yesterday I posted about ways to increase your cognitive reserves (the brains way of creating muliple neural pathways to accomplish a task)  After I posted I found a 3D puzzle to play with (pics above).

I also started to wonder if the workouts we do in Crossfit could help in the same way as other brain training exercises.

Before anyone starts on about how they hate crossfit or how bad or dangerous it is, hear me out.

Crossfit by its definition is "constantly varied functional movements done at a high intensity" - Crossit.com

So if you are always varying your workout, whether it be duration, weight, or the movements themselves, you are forcing your body to adapt to something new.  Based on the theory of building cognitive reserves, should increase the reserves.

I did some searches and came across an article published in 2010 on the Frontiers is Neuroscience website that supports this theory.

Adult hippocampal neurogenesis is an unusual case of brain plasticity, since new neurons (and not just neurites and synapses) are added to the network in an activity-dependent way. At the behavioral level the plasticity-inducing stimuli include both physical and cognitive activity. In reductionistic animal studies these types of activity can be studied separately in paradigms like voluntary wheel running and environmental enrichment. In both of these, adult neurogenesis is increased but the net effect is primarily due to different mechanisms at the cellular level. Locomotion appears to stimulate the precursor cells, from which adult neurogenesis originates, to increased proliferation and maintenance over time, whereas environmental enrichment, as well as learning, predominantly promotes survival of immature neurons, that is the progeny of the proliferating precursor cells. Surprisingly, these effects are additive: boosting the potential for adult neurogenesis by physical activity increases the recruitment of cells following cognitive stimulation in an enriched environment. Why is that? We argue that locomotion actually serves as an intrinsic feedback mechanism, signaling to the brain, including its neural precursor cells, increasing the likelihood of cognitive challenges. In the wild (other than in front of a TV), no separation of physical and cognitive activity occurs. Physical activity might thus be much more than a generally healthy garnish to leading “an active life” but an evolutionarily fundamental aspect of “activity,” which is needed to provide the brain and its systems of plastic adaptation with the appropriate regulatory input and feedback.
http://www.frontiersin.org/neuroscience/10.3389/fnins.2010.00189/abstract 

The study found that animals that did exercise prior to a brain injury do far better in recovery compared to sedentary cage-mates.

Today's workout 

We did another hero wod today.  Honoring U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Edwardo Loredo, 34, of Houston, Texas.  He was killed on June 24, 2010 in Jelewar, Afghanistan, when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. He is survived by his wife, First Sergeant Jennifer Loredo; his daughter, Laura Isabelle; his stepdaughter, Alexis; and his son, Eduardo Enrique.

"Loredo"
6 Rounds of:
24x Squats
24x Push-ups
24x Walking lunge steps
Run 400 meters
Time 38:25

Squat - 210x1