The Healthy Programmer

Chapter 8Making Exercise Pragmatic

Natsuki Terada, an elite Japanese marathon runner, was finishing a race near Tokyo in January 2011 when he made a mistake. With 300 meters to go, Natsuki surged to the front in a move that appeared to secure him the victory, but moments later he made a wrong turn on the course. The rest of the field blew past him and he had to claw his way back just to finish in third place.

Natsuki’s mistake may seem dimwitted, but he has a good excuse. Studies have shown that high-intensity exercise (seventy to eighty percent of HR_max) can reduce cognitive functions by shunting blood away from the prefrontal cortex. A marathon runner who is in the final throes of a race is operating at an intensity that’s more than ninety ...