Brain coach Jim Kwik shows Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos three exercises to test your brain function at home: a cross-crawl while counting backwards, a ruler-drop reaction test, and a rhythmic clapping game. Each one trains a different part of how your brain and body work together.
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That's right, it's Test Yourself Week, and our next guest has a big job. He's here to test our brain function. Heaven help us. Please welcome the author of Limitless: The Expanded Edition, Jim Kwik.
Hey, Jim.
Welcome back to the show. Hi.
Great to be back.
Thank you for having me. OK, so what's the first test called?
Well, yeah, I know you had a late night, so today is about waking up our brain again.
OK.
And so we're going to do 3 quick tests. And we can have fun with it. Sure.
Okay.
So the first one is, we're gonna do this exercise, and people can do it at home. Either take your hand or your elbow and just raise and touch your opposite knee. This is out of a science called educational kinesiology. It helps to communicate your left and right brain.
Look at all the kids doing it too. I love it.
You can smile too. It's all good. But now while we're doing this, I wanna do a cognitive challenge.
Okay.
I'm gonna ask you to count backwards from the number 50, but in increments of 3.
Something everyone could do is, uh, 60 seconds when you first wake up to do these what they call cross crawls. It's a wonderful way to focus your mind.
Okay, and count backwards.
And you can count backwards also as well. What's our next test? So the second one is, uh, we have a ruler here and we're gonna do a reaction test. So last couple times I was here, we were doing memory training. This is on reaction speed. So maybe you could hold this, and what we're gonna do— some of you might have done this with like a dollar bill or a piece of paper— you're gonna hold it on the top, and then Mark's gonna put his fingers kind of here but not touch them, and then without notifying him you're going to let go and he's going to catch it.
Wow.
That's what he did. That's so good.
It's fantastic. And the idea here— sometimes, as we grow older, our reaction time slows down. And so you want to be able to shorten that time from when you see it to when you activate your muscles to do something around it. All right.
I watched him.
Yeah, yeah.
I didn't even watch your hand. Your face told me everything I needed to know.
Something super simple everyone could do to build their reaction time is just tennis ball hitting it against the wall and just doing it faster and faster.
What if you have a fake tennis ball?
That works, that works too. All right, what's our last exercise? The third one, this is a fun one. You're gonna get it, you're gonna face each other, okay? And people can do this at home. And we're gonna play an exercise where we're gonna do, we're gonna count. You're gonna count 1, 2, 3, and then do another round, 1, 2, 3. So do it, do it first.
1, 2, 3.
1, 2, 3. Now, perfect. And now what we're going to do is I'm going to challenge you. I want you to replace the 1 with a clap.
OK.
All right, so—
Sorry.
2. 3. 2.
3.
Perfect. Now we're going to take the level up. Number 2, you're going to replace with like a jig.
OK.
Kind of like a little shake. So one person starts.
3.
3. Perfect. And finally, the third one, you're going to— We all love dogs. Maybe we make a barking sound or a woof.
For?
For the 3, number 3. OK. So you're going to do—
Woof!
Go, go, go. Go ahead, you go.
It's my turn now?
No, no, no, you.
I woofed!
Meow!
Perfect.
Our reaction times were a little slow.
That was absolutely fantastic. Pick up a copy of Jim's book, Limitless: The Expanded Edition, everywhere books are sold.
