Does Brawnier Make You Brainier?

Chances are you’ve seen the stereotypical high school movie with dumb jocks and scrawny geeks tormenting or exacting revenge on each other.

It usually goes something like this: Dumb jock tries to intimidate geek into helping them cheat on the next big exam. Geek refuses and gets stuffed into their locker. Next scene: Geek exacts some sort of revenge on jock. Play end credits.

For the most part people assume that athletes are not academically minded and conversely, that the honour roll is filled with phys ed-avoiding nerds, but is this true?

If you take a look at the PN staff we’re a bunch of geek jocks (or is that jock geeks?). When people meet us, they aren’t sure whether to ask for help with the Sunday crossword or which way to the gun show. That combo of “letters after our names” and “varsity letters” seems rarer than a truly healthy fat-free cookie… at least in theory.

Maybe these formulaic movies are wrong! Gee, next thing you’ll tell me is that two people who hate each other will not fall in love after bickering non-stop for 90 minutes on screen.

Physical education versus “academic”  subjects

What’s the first thing that schools do when their funding gets cut? They sack physical education and pretty much every other extra-curricular activity, which is nearly entirely athletic teams.

What do they do if they need to improve academic performance? Replace phys ed classes with other more “academic” classes like math, science or English. Some zealous schools may even ditch recess. After all, they reason, playing dodgeball isn’t going to help the little darlings get their MBAs, right?

You’d think there must be some sort of research to support this idea that cutting physical education improves academic performance, right? Well actually, no. If anything, it’s the opposite.

Let’s get physical

Research has demonstrated some major intellectual benefits to physical fitness.

• Physical fitness stimulates neural development, which includes greater density of neuronal synapses and higher capillary volume, both of which may help brains function [1].  (Think of it like upgrading the brain’s wiring.)
• Students who are more physically active have greater attention spans than sedentary students [2].
• Being physically active results in:
  • higher self-esteem
  • lower anxiety
  • lower stress and…
  • higher academic performance [3-5].

Hmm, so far the stereotype of the dumb jock has little support.

All these studies say that if you want to be smarter, then you should be fitter… which is the exact opposite of what everybody does when they need more mental oomph:

• If you need to do really well this term, you probably lock yourself in your room and study. No time to go to the gym or go for a walk! Gotta just sit and study.
• Maybe your child failed an exam, so you decide to punish them by grounding them from playing on the school athletic team of their choice.
• Maybe our school’s test scores are dropping — that must mean we need more homework and less recess!

We tend to imagine that the brain and body are somehow unrelated, or that focusing on one takes resources away from the other.

Testing the theory

In this review, the researchers try to figure out whether there is, in fact, a relationship between physical fitness and academic achievement in math and English in a US public school system.

Chomitz VR, Slining MM, McGowan RJ, Mitchell SE, Dawson GF, Hacker KA. Is there a relationship between physical fitness and academic achievement? Positive results from public school children in the northeastern United States. J Sch Health. 2009 Jan;79(1):30-7.

Methods

To figure out whether there’s a correlation between physical fitness and how well students do in school, the scientists in this study got hold of two key pieces of information:

• Academic performance records: Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) in math and English for the Cambridge Public School Department (CPSD) for grades 4, 7, and 10 in English; and grades 4, 6 and 8 for math
• Physical fitness records: physical fitness tests passed by each student in March and April 2005 that evaluated cardiovascular endurance, abdominal strength, flexibility, upper body strength, and agility with one point each. Students passing all five tests would get a full 5 marks out of 5.

They assessed 1478 children for this study.

Results

After they crunched the numbers, researchers found that the more fitness tests the students passed, the better they did at standardized tests of math and English.

Even more interesting: for some reason math scores were more closely linked to physical fitness than English scores.

Conclusion

More physical fitness was related to better performance in standardized math and English tests.

The researchers suggest some possible explanations for why physical fitness and academic success could be linked:

1. Students that test well may be more motivated to be successful in general.
2. Being more physically fit could be part of better health, which includes nutrition and healthy body weight. It’s actually better health that leads to better grades, not how many situps you can do.
3. Physical fitness may help with concentration and behaviour in school. Thus fitness enables students to learn more effectively.
4. Physical activity may help with mental health and self-esteem, so that students don’t suffer with stress, anxiety and depression (which then inhibit their performance).
5. As I mentioned in the beginning, exercise and fitness seem to help with brain function, so that should help students get better grades.

Study limitations

Chances are that all these possibilities contribute to academic performance to one degree or another.

However, in this study, researchers have only found that the two are linked — not that physical fitness causes better academic performance.

Additionally, while the academic performance tests were standardized (every child took exactly the same test), the physical fitness testing is probably not as reliable.

What does this mean? For example, let’s say you ask your friend how many pushups they do. They say 50. You’re impressed until you see them actually do a pushup, and realize they’re only half-assing it by doing the top half of the rep.

Now, I’m not saying that children can’t have picture-perfect exercise form… especially not your adorable offspring… but there’s a slight chance.

Bottom line

The US Institute of Medicine recommends that children do at least 1 hour a day of physical activity to help health and weight issues. This 1 hour of activity may improve your kid’s grades more than 1 hour of daily tutoring.

And it doesn’t have to be organized sports, either.  Indeed, studies show that unstructured play (aka “getting outside” or “let’s run around pretending to be superheroes”) is essential for kids.

So push for more physical activity in your child’s life… as well as your life.

While this study doesn’t show that improving physical fitness, or even that physical fitness causes better academic performance, it does find that if you’re more physically fit you’ll likely be better at math and English.

Hit the gym, and you might just understand non-Euclidean geometry after all.

References

1. Studenski S, Carlson MC, Fillit H, Greenough WT, Kramer A, Rebok GW. From bedside to bench: does mental and physical activity promote cognitive vitality in late life? Sci Aging Knowledge Environ. 2006 Jun 28;2006(10):pe21. Review.
2. Shephard RJ. Habitual physical activity and academic performance. Nutr Rev. 1996 Apr;54(4 Pt 2):S32-6.
3. Ekeland E, Heian F, Hagen KB, Abbott J, Nordheim L. Exercise to improve self-esteem in children and young people. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2004;(1):CD003683. Review.
4. Shephard RJ. Physical activity and the healthy mind. Can Med Assoc J. 1983 Mar 1;128(5):525-30. Review.
5. Flook L, Repetti RL, Ullman JB. Classroom social experiences as predictors of academic performance. Dev Psychol. 2005 Mar;41(2):319-27.
6. Burdette, Hillary, Robert C. Whitaker. Resurrecting Free Play in Young Children: Looking Beyond Fitness and Fatness to Attention, Affiliation, and Affect. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2005;159:46-50.