Successful, Wealthy People Jog More Than the Non-Rich

According to my Rich Habits research data, the rich exercise much more than the poor.

Now, my youthful indoctrination taught me that rich people didn’t work nearly as hard as the poor and that they indulged in all of the pleasures that life could afford them.

So, I just assumed all rich people were fat and lazy.

Either this exercise statistic was wrong, or my rich vs. poor programming was wrong.

It took about a year for me to realize that the rich vs. poor programming I had received as a child was the opposite of reality. The 233 rich people in my Rich Habits Study shared nothing in common with the evil, greedy, fat and lazy rich people that existed in my indoctrinated mind.

Let me get back to the exercise data I gathered on the rich and poor. One data point I uncovered indicated that 76% of the rich ran or jogged 30 minutes a day at least 4 days a week, while only 23% of the poor had this habit.

This exercise Rich Habit became a rabbit hole for me. Here’s what I found with respect to the habit of running or jogging:

The brain uses 20% of your oxygen reserves. Running or jogging increases oxygen flow into the brain. This nourishes brain cells and acts like a janitorial crew, soaking up the waste (fee radicals) inside each brain cell. This additional oxygen from running and jogging helps make the brain cleaner and healthier.

Various brain-related rabbit hole studies I fell into indicated that 20-30 minutes of daily aerobic exercise stimulated the growth of the axon branches on each brain cell.

The number of axon branches you have is directly correlated to how intelligent you are.

Those with more axon branches on their brain cells are more intelligent than those with less.

Aerobic exercise also increases blood flow into the Dentrate Gyrus. The Dentrate Gyrus is part of the brain’s Hippocampus, a region involved in memory formation and neurogenisis (birth of new brain cells). 

Running and jogging, it turns out, also stimulates the production of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDFN). BDFN is miracle grow for brain cells, which keeps brain cells growing and expanding.

In a study published in the February, 2016 edition of the Journal of Physiology, researchers at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland compared, head-to-head, the impacts of running, weight training and high-impact intensity interval training on the brain. Here’s what they found:

Running or jogging increases brain volume more than any other exercise. When we run or jog, we actually create more new brain cells at a rate that is double or even triple that of other types of exercise.

It’s now very clear why rich people had developed this habit of running or jogging – running and jogging improves brain performance. It makes you smarter.

But what’s more interesting is the fact that the rich had forged this running or jogging habit long before they made their first million. They had been doing it for years. They were fine tuning their brains their entire lives, making them smarter. Their brains, because of this lifelong habit, were superior to the brains of those who did not run or jog.

And when you have a superior brain, especially in the fast-paced world in which we live, you have a significant advantage when it comes to making money. Plus running or jogging requires discipline in the early going (until it becomes a habit, which takes about two months), which increases your self-control or discipline muscles.

Not only are rich people smarter because they run or jog, they’re more disciplined, because they run or jog.

Now, I’ll concede that running and jogging are not the only reason the rich get rich. But it is one of the reasons. Running or jogging are another piece of the success puzzle – a very important one, it turns out.

Intelligence and discipline are formidable success weapons for those in pursuit of success/wealth and aerobic exercise gives you both.