Parents usually seek my academic coaching services because their bright, busy high schoolers, who carve out time for jobs, friends, clubs, and activities, are not optimizing their academic experience. These parents are frequently miffed and frustrated that their children earn disappointing grades and display one or more common student weakness.[1] As I review their children’s schedules and activities, I often find one integral component missing - the magic bullet - that could mitigate many of their problems: exercise.
Parents often fail to push their children to exercise. Once parents determine that they do not have star athletes under development, they may allow, even encourage, their children to pursue other paths in lieu of that individual or team sport. Soon thereafter, their children are sleeping in, returning home after school to complete homework, and then resorting to streaming or gaming to fill out their days, with little to no exercise. They may be plenty “involved,” but they are not moving sufficiently. Moreover, for students who are involved in organized sports, many of them do so only for a single season or two. The rest of the year, these students become virtually inert, abandoning the benefits of conditioning until the next pre-season practice, and this abrupt discontinuation of exercise often upends their academic performance. Daily exercise, though, is critical to good health and clear thinking for all teenagers, even for non-athletes.
The CDC reports that every teenager should get “60 minutes or more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity daily.” I recommend more than the prescribed 60-minutes of exercise, particularly when students display any of these common issues.
We know the positive outcomes of exercise from personal experience: improved mental health and mood, better sleep, and better self-image. We may not recognize, though, that exercise also improves cognitive functioning, such as attention, organization, and memory. While a daily exercise regimen will not render instantaneous results, it will, almost always, yield positive outcomes relatively quickly. The most common pushback I hear when I suggest exercise to a student is a lack of time or interest, but students who regularly exercise seem to find more time in their days because they have more vigor and focus when attacking tasks, and their interest in exercise always seems to grow with practice and commitment.
Exercise should be a rewarding part of every student’s day. Encourage your children to engage in their choice of exercise. If their choice is a sport that will neither elevate their heart rate nor require excessive movement (e.g., walking, bowling, and golf), pair that choice with a personal workout plan. If children have an “off season,” do not celebrate the opportunity to indulge in a little laziness but instead transition to a new form of exercise. Finally, remember that exercise will make us more productive adults, too. Let’s get moving!
[1] My student population has collectively displayed the following relevant issues: a lack of motivation, anxiety, distraction, depression, isolation, low self-image, disrespectfulness, boredom, disorganization, negativity, lethargy, addiction (to using social media, streaming, gaming, eating, dieting, vaping, drugs, cutting, et al.), and poor sleeping habits.