I've been looking for a way to combine an hour of light exercise with studying in order to break up the sedentary nature of studying with something healthier.

I've setting my laptop up to a treadmill and spent an hour walking and srs repping. But it was kind of awkward to hit the rep buttons while moving.

I've tried walking with audio (Pimsleur, Japanese audio, mp3's of TV shows, and music). This is nice because you can walk anywhere since all you need is a little ipod. The disadvantage for me is that it didn't seem that productive as far as studying goes.

Some other ideas include Japanese exercise videos, but I think that the language would be too limited (一, ニ, 三...)

Another idea would be walking and talking with someone in Japanese, but I'm nowhere near conversational level yet so this won't work. I think this would be perfect once you get to that level, though.

What I've liked the best was simply watching shows in Japanese with Japanese subtitles (or no subs at all) on a laptop while walking on the treadmill. Watching the show was passive enough not to be draining in combination with the exercise, yet also entertaining. Anyone tried this or something similar as an alternative to sedentary studying? Or do you have any other ideas?

He does move!
and his tones are moving, too.

buonaparte Wrote:

He does move!
and his tones are moving, too.

Thanks! Do you practice shadowing? Or incorporate walking/jogging or some form of movement with other study methods?


I haven't heard of shadowing before, but it looks like his daily practice includes jogging for one hour while listening to audiobooks in his target language, as well another session of walking briskly while "shadowing". Now I'm kind of intrigued with this technique.

If you wanna do your reviews, you could try setting up some voice recognition software to control anki while you are on the treadmill.

Somewhere on this foru there was a discussion about using a gane controller to control anki. I don't think you'd have any trouble using doing that while walking.

Somebody could basically also make anki audial.

Turn on your ipod and put it in your pocket and put your headphones with a mic on.

Get some text to speech software to read
the question and multiple choice answers (1,2,3,4,5,6).
And then say 1, 2, 3, 4,5 or 6 to the mic and the voice recognition soft would answer the question.

If you're wrong, you could let it read the right answer.

And you could also make it let you rate the difficulty too.

Brain Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power. (from the Brain Rules book)
Can't argue with it - it's proven through research. Meaning someone repeated an experiment and got similar results.

ARS Technica ran an article on indie game developer offices.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/...made.ars/3
One developer walks on a treadmill while working. He seemed to like it. (it's just an anecdote). It was suggested as a path for exploratory research in the Brain Rules book (effect of a treadmill desk on performance).

jcdietz03 Wrote:Brain Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power. (from the Brain Rules book)
Can't argue with it - it's proven through research. Meaning someone repeated an experiment and got similar results.

ARS Technica ran an article on indie game developer offices.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/...made.ars/3
One developer walks on a treadmill while working. He seemed to like it. (it's just an anecdote). It was suggested as a path for exploratory research in the Brain Rules book (effect of a treadmill desk on performance).

I was going to mention that. It gets mentioned in just about every brain-related book, and there's even an entire book dedicated to the topic. Because of the benefits, you could say that exercise itself should be part of any studying strategy, so I don't think the OP needs to worry too much about what kind of studying he does during the exercise, as long as he does it. Using it as an opportunity for exposure doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.

I used to do Anki reviews during breaks in between weightlifting sets.

Worst idea ever.

I'm also of the camp that if you're exercising and you can watch TV or read a magazine simultaneously, you're not really exercising.

(I think a few studies in the Brain Rule book were conducted with exercise as a new lifestyle choice; not necessarily exercise while studying, but add exercise to your life and study. I think it also mentioned brain power being boosted after exercise, not necessarily during exercise.)

I am currently learning the Halpern dictionary. I print pages from it (because when you print them, you get larger characters), which I put on the treadmill stand. Each time I workout I just review these. In a 30-minutes power walk, I can go through about 5-6 pages, so about 150-200 words, taking my time.

You may want to try this if you study from a source that can easily be printed. The main drawback is that sometimes the vibrations of the machine can make characters hard to read.

foodcubes Wrote:I've setting my laptop up to a treadmill and spent an hour walking and srs repping. But it was kind of awkward to hit the rep buttons while moving.

　You could try using a wireless numeric keypad, or a wireless mouse and an Autohotkey script to redirect the buttons into the keys "1", "2", "3", "4", and the spacebar.

For a better experience, you could connect the computer to a tv too.

If you consider that listening to mp3's is not productive, you may not feel like my suggestion is productive either, but I think it would be: self-talk.

You are doing SRS already but you say you aren't able to hold a conversation yet. So obviously, you have acquired a lot of knowledge but aren't ready to use it in a live situation. Self-talk is the perfect way for you to take the time you need to create sentences, which become stories or conversations, allowing you to repeat over and over, as many times as you need, until you produce sentences that flow. This can be anywhere, anytime, without anything, except perhaps pen and paper to write down words to look up later.

Here is a formal example of a self-talk exercice, but you can adapt it to your needs: