Mind body dialectic

To maintain a physical body in 'good shape,' I believe that it takes as little as 6-10 hours per week. A more modest estimate - or a more relaxed definition of good shape - might result in a smaller lower bound of, say, 4-8 hours. For our purposes, good shape implies moderately high levels of athleticism, physical health, and success in some sport-like endeavor. Naturally, I do not mean to be overly rigorous or exclusive here: a person who does zero targeted exercise (and, instead, lives an active regularity), can be both healthy and relatively athletic. But, I am referring to developed muscle and endurance, and honed athletic prowess. I will self-indulgently assume that I have all these characteristics in order to use myself as experimental subject:

I have come to conclusion range after observing my own weekly exercise formula. My range for targeted exercise is, on average, between 4 and 10 hours per week. The disparity between minimum and maximum hours is indicative of my mercurial schedule and way of life: I have no typical weekly exercise regimen, only regular activities: running, rock climbing, lifting weights, jumping rope, and stretching. I also have irregular activities: hiking, kayaking, skiing.

This week (Sunday March 14 - Saturday March 20) is characterized by consecutive days of rock climbing and running. I run for about one hour every other day and climb for about two hours every other day, resulting in an alternating sequence. With the aim of engaging in full-body workouts as much as possible, I always combine auxiliary kinds of exercises (e.g. stretching, push-ups, sit-ups, jump roping)with the primary activity. For instance, today I ran 4 miles in the succulent sunshine and also jumped rope, did pull-ups, and stretched. This week, my allotment of time to exercise is some 9 hours.

The argument that physical good shape exists and is something one achieve's through laborious and strenuous exercise is essentially intuitive and not controversial. My range of hours is both wide and relatively modest, and should, I think, be highly acceptable.

I follow this inductive, intuitive argument up with a question, whose answer is not as obvious:

How many hours must one dedicate to targeted cognitive exercise in order to be in good shape mentally?
My supposition that mental faculties can be exercised is basic, but the view that there exists such a thing as 'mental good shape' is not overly common. We are accustomed to thinking of people (including ourselves) as possessing some endowment of intelligence. Hence, we refer to people as smart, genius, eggheaded, inane, remedial, 'retarded.' We are also concerned with long-term accumulations of purposive knowledge (e.g. for a job). However, we seem to be less concerned with mental spryness and less likely to consider it feasible that our cognitive endowment might be optimized by regular exercise.

This is to some extent a cultural problem of social awareness: physical exercise for sexiness is common, mental exercise to for mental acuity is rather rare and unrecognized. It must also be based on the fact that the effects of physical exercise are immediately and universally perceptible whereas developed cleverness is invisible to everyone but one's acquaintances and conversational partners and would seem to be both difficult to develop and a long time coming.

Although we exercise our minds and bodies daily and inevitably and incidentally, we might be undervaluing the worth of cognitive exercise, and hence the time we spend on that activity. If anything, I would wager that mental power is more valuable than physical power in the modern and globalized economy and society.

This problem deserves some more concerted thought - I am more speculation than answer. I might also be overestimating the problem. I have said that physical good shape is measured by athleticism, health, and success in a sport-like activity. Mental good shape must have the same criteria. Most people pass the sufficiency test on health and success in a mental activity (e.g. their job). The area of most potential improvement might be that of mental athleticism - the condition of cognitive prowess, vigor, and intense energetic output. Naturally, improving this criterion implies concomitant improvement in the other two.

Questions which remain: What constitutes targeted mental exercise? Sudokus, word games, math and math games, concerted rumination? Do the most clever engage in more mental exercise than the most mentally lethargic? How? Does it require more or less weekly effort to maintain spry brains than bodies?

What I am sure of is that if there is cognitive exercise leading to mental good shape, then I am almost definitely under-muscled and flabtastic. Like everybody else, I would like to be maximized. It would be well worth the effort. Imagine the self-actualization, the contentment, the jump in productivity, the power!