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Physical Exercise Makes You Brighter! How?

by | Last updated Aug 20, 2025 | Brain Health

Based on my experiences as a slow learner, a classroom teacher, and a scientific researcher, I have a suggestion for anyone looking to learn material more efficiently. Exercise several times a day. Regardless of your age, regular exercise can help keep your mind sharp and better equipped to handle complex problems. Physical exercise enhances learning and memory by increasing the number of synapses, communication connections between nerve cells. Regular activity increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), promoting the formation and efficiency of synapses. As a result, learning and memory processes become more effective.

Frequent, Short Periods of Exercise Improve Self-Control and Mental Concentration.

In children, short bouts of moderate or intense exercise improve self-control.1 Self-control and concentration are essential for disciplined study. Exercise also improves concentration.

One study divided elementary students into two groups. One group had a 20-minute resting period during the school day, while the other students engaged in 20 minutes of walking. They were then given a flanker test. This test consists of a set of response inhibition quizzes used to assess the ability to suppress responses that are inappropriate in a particular context. To pass, one must concentrate on one stimulus while ignoring other stimuli. Immediately following the walking, children:2

  • performed better on the flanker task
  • had a higher rate of accuracy, especially when the task was more difficult
  • had experienced favorable changes in the brain’s electrical activity, conducive to learning
  • improved reading comprehension

A morning bout of moderate-intensity exercise improves serum BDNF and working memory or executive function in older adults.3

Can Exercise Improve Teen Academic Performance?

Regular exercise improves teens’ academic performance.4  Often, students living in low-income communities have poor academic scores for various reasons. Brief aerobic exercise improved selective visual attention in children with low-income status. Just 12 minutes of exercise can improve attention and reading comprehension in low-income adolescents.5

Exercise Improves Mental Health During the Teen Years.

Mental stress interferes with learning. Twenty percent of teenagers are subject to bullying. Experiencing bullying has been linked with academic struggle, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and self-harm. Exercising for 4 or more days per week is associated with an approximate 23% reduction in suicidal ideation and attempts among those teens who were bullied.6

Overweight adolescents have an increased risk for mental pain from body dissatisfaction, social alienation, and low self-esteem. After 10 weeks of engaging in light-to-moderate exercise twice a week, overweight teens did self-report improvements in perceived scholastic competence, social competence, improved body image, and esteem, independent of weight and fat loss.7

Exercise Helps the Slow Learner.

For the slow learner, the mind will not be engaged until the body moves. A nine-month-long, randomized controlled trial involving 221 preadolescent children found that those who engaged in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for at least 60 minutes a day after school saw substantial improvements in their ability to pay attention, reduce distraction, and switch between cognitive tasks.8

Exercise Helps ADHD.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most common mental disorder in children. Signs of ADHD can include inattentiveness, moodiness, difficulty getting along with others, difficulty controlling impulses, and difficulty following directions, organizing, and completing tasks. ADHD can extend into adulthood.

Irritated by the foot-tapping, leg-swinging, and chair-scooting movements of a child with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder? Don’t be. Excessive movement, common among children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is vital to how they remember information and work out complex cognitive tasks.9 Students with ADHD could perform better on classroom work, tests, and homework if they’re sitting on activity balls or exercise bikes. Thirty-one minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise on school days helps improve symptoms in ADHD students in elementary schools.10

Regular Exercise Enlarges Our Creativity.

People who exercise regularly perform better at creative thinking. The researcher, Colzato, in one study, divided his group of participants into two groups: those who bicycled 4 times a week versus those who did not engage in exercise. “Remote associates testing” measures a skill needed for creative thinking. Why? Because it measures one’s ability to see relationships between things that are only remotely associated. This test aims to find a fourth word remotely related to three given words. In this test, for example, participants were presented with three non-related words, like “time”, “hair” and “stretch”, and had to come up with the common link, which in this case was “long”. Colzato found that regular exercisers outperformed those who did not exercise.11

If one is not accustomed to physical exercise, it might take time for this effect to kick in. When one first learns to engage in exercise, some of his mental energy is engaged just learning exercise routines.

Go Green.

When contrasted with the benefits of indoor exercise, outdoor exercise yields greater benefits. Exercising in a natural environment was associated with greater feelings of revitalization, increased energy, and positive engagement, together with a decrease in tension, confusion, anger, and depression.12

Just five minutes of walking, cycling, or gardening– in a park, on a nature trail, or in a garden– bolsters the mood and gives a sense of well-being.13 A small study, done by Stephen R. Kellert suggests that children who spend significant time outdoors could have a stronger sense of self-fulfillment and purpose than those who don’t. Children who engage in free play outside regularly have a deep appreciation for beauty, order, and wonder, and feel a stewardship toward the earth. In contrast to gym exercise, exercise in nature provides a diverse display of colors, sights, and sounds, an ever-changing environment, and aliveness.

Baby Boomers, Listen Up.

Exercising regularly in old age may better protect against brain shrinkage than engaging in mental or social activities. According to the American College of Neurology, people in their seventies who participated in more physical exercise, including walking several times a week, had less brain shrinkage and other signs of aging in the brain than those who were less physically active.14

Exercise Helps Stroke Patients.

Exercise helps cardiovascular fitness and reduces the risk of stroke. Does exercise yield any benefit for individuals who have already had a stroke? People who have cognitive deficits after a stroke have a threefold risk of mortality. Just six months of aerobic exercise and strength training can improve memory, language, thinking, and judgment problems by almost 50 per cent after a stroke.15

Exercise Helps Seniors.

Early evidence suggests that resistance exercise encourages structural brain changes in older adults that may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s (AD) or mitigate its progression. The greatest reversal of undesirable changes to the brain’s structure and the improvement of cognitive performance occur when resistance exercise is performed at least twice a week for at least six weeks.16

Does resistance training in older adults lead to structural brain changes associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s dementia? A narrative review,
Ageing Research Reviews, Volume 98, 2024, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1568163724001740)) Another study found that a 20-minute low-to-moderate intensity gardening activity intervention, making a vegetable garden, boosted two brain proteins that act like fertilizers to brain cells.17

Best Exercise?

Certainly not contact sports, in which the risk for head injury and concussion is high. Neurophysiologist Bernell Baldwin rated motivated, altruistic, and moderate manual labor as being at the top for brain development. This is true especially for slow learners because they become discouraged as they do not perform well in scholastic pursuits. These individuals can be educated to perform useful work well. I know in my own life as a slow learner and have seen many times as a classroom teacher, that manual labor primes the mind to learn. Sometimes learning a practical skill first will unlock the brain for future scholastic achievements. How?

Manual, mind-engaging labor strengthens the front brain. Initiative, the will, the ability to plan and execute decisions, and the motor centers which regulate gross and fine movements are all located in the front brain. Motivated manual labor strengthens the front brain more than mental work alone. The will often goes with the labor of the hands, and gardening will “quicken the mind and refine and elevate the character.” Dr. Bernell Baldwin, neurophysiologist and worldwide lecturer, stated, “Motivated work integrates the brain. The motor centers of the brain are near the center of the cerebrum. Unlike video games and computers, useful, constructive work gives sensory balance to the mind.” Some educators are aware of the detriments of introducing computers to students before they have had sufficient exposure to the practical arts of life—cooking, sewing, basic carpentry, gardening, and housekeeping. Computers are valuable, but they can never replace motivated, thought-provoking manual labor in the building of intellect and character.

 

Sources

  1. BMJ-British Medical Journal. “Short bouts of exercise boost self-control.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 6 March 2013. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130306221143.htm[↩]
  2. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Physical Activity May Strengthen Children’s Ability To Pay Attention.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 1 April 2009. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090331183800.htm[↩]
  3. Wheeler, Michael, Distinct effects of acute exercise and breaks in sitting on working memory and executive function in older adults: a three-arm, randomised cross-over trial to evaluate the effects of exercise with and without breaks in sitting on cognition. British Journal of Sports Medicine 2020;54:776-781.[↩]
  4. Booth JN., Associations between objectively measured physical activity and academic attainment in adolescents from a UK cohort. British Journal of Sports Medicine. October 2013[↩]
  5. Dartmouth College. “12 minutes of exercise improves attention, reading comprehension in low-income adolescents.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 June 2014. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140612104952.htm[↩]
  6. Elsevier. “Physical activity, sadness, and suicidality in bullied U.S. adolescents.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 September 2015. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150917091407.htm[↩]
  7. Goldfield, Gary. The Effects of Aerobic Exercise on Psychosocial Functioning of Adolescents Who Are Overweight or Obese. Pediatr. Psychol., September 30, 2012 DOI: 10.1093/jpepsy/jss084[↩]
  8. Hillman, C.H., et al., Effects of the FITKids randomized controlled trial on executive control and brain function. Pediatrics. 2014 Oct;134(4):e1063-71. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4179093/[↩]
  9. University of Central Florida. “Kids with ADHD must squirm to learn, study says.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 April 2015. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150417190003.htm[↩]
  10. Hosa, Betsy, A randomized trial examining the effects of aerobic physical activity on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms in young children. J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2015 May;43(4):655-67.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4826563/[↩]
  11. Colzato, Lorenza. The impact of physical exercise on convergent and divergent thinking. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2013; 7 DOI: 3389/fnhum.2013.00824[↩]
  12. The Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry. “Benefits of outdoor exercise confirmed.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 5 February 2011. sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110204130607.htm[↩]
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