Phys Ed: Can Exercise Make Kids Smarter?

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Phys Ed









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From an evolutionary point of view, the finding in both studies make perfect sense. What we call exercise today was the way of life for our ancestors. Our lives have changed drastically in the last few decades and our kids spend much of their time indoors and learning has become a structured activity. Our ancestors, on the other hand, needed constant physical activity to negotiate the complexities of life. Problem solving was concurrent with physical effort, so the brain must have adapted by developing appropriate regions to enhance neurocognition.
This connection between the brain and body has been wonderfully systematized in yoga along with another important component: meaningful relaxation. Our kids today are so stressed out that they need not only physical activity but also personal sanctuaries to grown from within. //

This information should be run as a 30 second “advertisement” on every daytime TV channel that a parent or a kid could possibly view, right after the whole grain Cheerios ad (is there one yet).

Wow, I see a powerful marketing tool here. If parents want to boost their kids’ academic scores, they’re better off increasing cardiac capacity than enrolling them in enrichment classes or tutoring. Not to mention the added benefit of longer, healthier lives.

Want to get Junior into Harvard? Join a fitness club and skip the college coach.


You’ve presented several studies that showed a correlation between fitness and various mental abilities, but none that showed that exercise increased those abilities. As someone that tests well in both IQ and fitness, 99th and 97th percentiles, respectively, I know that much of my abilities are based on how well I chose my parents.

Although I am only a study of one, I know that my abilities were neglected in my youth, and barely nurtured, I also know from numerous MZA (mono-zygotic raised apart) studies that the majority one’s intellectual abilities are the outcomes of heredity.

You are perpetrating bad science.

Just another angle-study to get children moving again. Shouldn’t chidhood obesity be the operative overarching theme here? Overall health. Oxygenating grey matter is good for anyone and systemic movement is good for the body, because it’s the body that shuts down the mind.
This study just panders to the lost generation of parents suffering from their own values breakdown, the genesis of their children’s inactivity and overindulgence….it’s the “Wii Gen not on my watch you don’t, back to the Playstation please and I’ll get you a nice cookie and biscuit parent”. Look, when I was growing up, if you didn’t have a flat nose, one broken limb and at least ten stitches by the time you were 12yo, you hadn’t lived — and that was just the girls! I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.


Moving is an essential part of everyday life. Many times I have worked on something until feeling exhausted. When I got up and started moving around or exercising I could feel an immediate change in the body like everything was flowing at a faster pace. My mind began to open up.
Physical, Mental and Spiritual (PMS) activities are required for a balanced life. Each helps us fill a specific need in life.
As far as aerobic exercise there is no doubt it contributes to better mental performance. I hope people don’t get the message from this article that fitter people are smarter. They are not. Aerobic exercise applies to everyone. When you study you may do well. However, if you exercise before you study you will do even better. No matter how fit you are.
Kids need to move. I hope we don’t get rid of exercise time in school. For free exercise advice or training in nyc //

The Healthy L ibrarian September 15, 2010 · 7:20 am

Ditto for grown-ups. What’s good for the heart is good for the brain.

Here’s a serious motivator to get out there & exercise (& eat right) that appeared in the August 2 issue of Circulation. Brain atrophy!

Those study participants whose hearts pumped less blood, had brains that appeared older than the brains of those whose hearts pumped more blood–to the tune of two years worth of brain aging.

The biggest surprise to the researchers was that in this group of 1504 mostly healthy middle-aged volunteers–all offspring of the original Framingham Study volunteers–not only did the folks with lowest cardiac index show significant brain volume shrinkage, but so did the folks with a cardiac index in the middle range!

Only those with the highest cardiac index showed significant retention of their brain volume.

The researcher’s other big surprise was the high number of “normal healthy” adults who had a cardiac index below normal. Around 30% of these seemingly healthy middle-aged adults had a low cardiac index.

“The Latest Framingham Heart Study. Brain Shrinkage? Atrophy of the Brain? Getting to the Heart of the Matter – It’s All About the Cardiac Index”


Good I hope a lot of parents see this amd states stop cutting out gum class. I thought it was obvious exercise is great for overall health but now we have some solid proof it effect your brain. Hopefully this leads to more active kids, now let’s get them to eat properly //

Despite scientific support for both physical and mental benefits of exercise parents, children, and school systems continue to not make the choice to exercise. In regards to children, they learn most through modeling. If parents don’t show the benefits of exercise by themselves participating in a daily routine, children will be less likely to make the choice on their own. All Americans need to get moving.

~JTrempe PT, ATC

As with a previous poster, I don’t see any evidence here that exercise improves intelligence. That fitness is correlated with some types of mental function is no surprise, but that correlation could just as easily be due to overall health, family income levels, nutrition, quality of upbringing, etc. Both fitness and brain function depend on physiological systems working properly (the brain is an organ of the body, after all).

Certainly I think kids (and adults) should be exercising more, but the science here is jumping to conclusions (unless the science reporting has simply missed the point, not the first time for that). The animal studies are suggestive, and it may turn out to be true, but it is certainly not demonstrated yet.

Hey Ky,
This is an interesting article that reminded me of you and your work in HealthCorps. It’s encouraging, too, that small amounts of exercise can have such a positive impact on people! I have been running lately and feel so much more clear-headed. I found it interesting what the article said about increased attention/concentration. I’ll take as much of that as I can get!

So much for the stereotype of the dumb jock!

well, well, the dumb jock stereotype breaks down here. What I find puzzling is that more kids seem to do sports than ever before. I don’t remember kids getting schlepped to 18 different sports when I was growing up; my neices and nephews and neighbor’s kids are all in travel sports and extra soccer coaching and getting injuries and all the rest by age 6. They may not have gym in school, but they are putting in plenty of time at competitive athletics. It likely would be making them smarter, except that they keep falling asleep in class because they were out at an away game till midnight the night before.

People with better focus tend to perform better?

When I was a kid I know as a family we exercised often such as bike rides or walks after/before dinner. My older brother and I would get home from school, change, and then go outside until the sun came down. We played games that we made up usually or enhanced games like football and baseball with our own crazy rules… I think the imagination alone might have helped our brains develop! I didn’t have a lot of toys growing up so maybe that’s why I’m so smart? hah. :)

I don’t know if exercise makes kids smarter, but it does make them more patient – so they have the constancy and attention span to study for longer periods of time.

Throughout my children’s elementary, middle and high school education, I have always made sure that they had a gym class every singe day. Dealing with all that energy was never a luxury, always a necessity.

My oldest son is in law school now, and when I ask about his study habits, he always includes the necessity of exercise.

He is right! Body and mind work together.


“Mens sana in corpore sano” — it doesn’t date back to the Romans for no reason.

We need to move and we need to have time to sit still and do nothing. We need to listen and we need time for silence. We need time to be human.

Those of us who have been pushing Safe Routes to School programs so our kids can walk or bike to school are once again vindicated. These programs not only reduce traffic congestion but result in fitter and smarter kids.

Kids who exercised developed larger basal ganglia, “a key part of the brain that aids in maintaining attention and “executive control,” or the ability to coordinate actions and thoughts crisply.”
Attention and executive control are poorly developed in kids diagnosed with ADHD.
Perhaps the ADHD epidemic is another result of chronic lack of exercise in kids, along with obesity and mental illness.

Some people will believe anything. What ever happened with that “Mozart makes babies smarter’ malarkey? Funding agencies should stop funding these ridiculous support-a-fad ‘studies.’ The authors obviously know what answer they want, and they get it. Can you imagine a study coming out announcing that watching TV and eating fatty fast foods make children smarter? It wouldn’t get funded, it wouldn’t get published, and it wouldn’t get publicized. The gatekeepers know what they want to hear, and they don’t allow anything that goes against their prejudices.

karen from Benicia CA September 15, 2010 · 1:50 pm

Parent, here’s an idea. Walk, don’t drive, your kids to school. You will get the exercise you need, they get that and more– they will have burned off excess KID energy and are ready to settle down and work. Plus it’s fun! Plus you will make friends! Plus you get fresh air!

1. Hey. Correlation does not establish a cause-and-effect relationship. How about the possibility that kids with bigger structure X tend to exercise more and be better fit? In other words, this stuff only weakly suggests that exercising will affect brain structure.

A much more convincing (and difficult) study would be to take the non-exercising group, make them exercise and see the before-and-after effect on brain structure.

2. The hippocampus and basal ganglia are no more strongly connected than other parts of the forebrain and basal ganglia. Seems like they’re making up a story to match the data.

Unplug everything and get your kids outside!

Everyone is spotting the flaw with this article — correlation is not causation. Seems like what’s needed is a longitudinal study where two random groups of kids are selected, and then one group is exercised for a year while the other is not. Then see if the exercised group get better scores. Not sure that’s considered an ethical study.

Our culture is strongly biased in favor of the scholar athlete and this just reads like a weak attempt to confirm the cultural bias.