Does your child’s daily schedule involve physical exercise? If it does, be it in a school environment or at home, then your child is safe from increased risks of certain health issues. Let us explore more on this topic to see how great the impact of exercising on brain development truly is.

Cognitive Performance

Exercising is known to boost brain growth and encourage cognitive performance. These factors help children focus which is an important aspect of improving their learning capacity. When adults create an environment that limits a child’s physical movement, they are indirectly preventing them from reaching greater heights in their studies.

Physically Active vs. Couch Potatoes

Research has shown that physically active mice have a visibly larger hippocampus as compared to mice that do not exercise at all. Hippocampus refers to a region of the brain that is associated with memory and learning. Additionally, physically active mice have brain cells that are much more sustainable in terms of supporting communication between neurons. This experiment shows how much exercising impacts overall learning capacity in humans too.

Improving Mood

Exercising can help improve our mood. This is explained through the spike of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) when aerobic exercises are being performed. Exercising also helps to stimulate the development of brain cells and mobilizes the growth of genes which enhance the brain’s ability to alter its neural pathway. In addition, exercising also prevents the loss of brain tissue in much older adults.

Exercising for Children

Research has also been done on children to see the impact of exercising on their cognitive health. Results have shown that children who are physically active have a stronger ability to focus and are also much less impulsive. When they are given a cognitive task to work on, physically active children performed with a higher level of accuracy and displayed more focus and control. Some of them react faster too which is highly critical in emergencies.

Exercising and Attention

A recent study has shown that children who performed poorly on tasks that require intense attention saw an improvement in subsequent tests after they were told to perform moderate acute exercises. They walked for just over 20 minutes on a treadmill and impressive results were attained.

Physical Exercises and Academics

Studies suggest that physical exercises help yield both short- and long-term positive effects on academic achievements. An experiment found that a short walking session of 20 minutes saw an improvement in a student’s spelling, reading, and arithmetic tests. Yet another study found that students who did 10 to 20 minutes of exercises outperformed their peers within the same control group. The results from these different studies show that being physically active does have positive effects on children’s abilities to learn, memorize, and focus.

If you are thinking of incorporating physical exercise into your child’s routine but don’t know where to start, why not take a look at our indoor gyms for children? Not only is it a fun way of getting your child to exercise, adults can use the equipment too! If you have any queries about our products or need recommendations, feel free to contact us and our friendly customer service representatives will be in touch!