The im­pact of sport par­tic­i­pa­tion and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty on aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance is an ex­ten­sive top­ic, one that can even be am­bigu­ous at times. How­ev­er, the ma­jor­i­ty of ar­ti­cles, stud­ies and re­search in­di­cate sport par­tic­i­pa­tion and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty can in­crease one's abil­i­ty to im­prove their aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance.

Yet, it is very com­mon for par­ents and guardians to pre­vent their chil­dren from en­gag­ing in both com­pet­i­tive sport and gen­er­al phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the dread­ed “ex­am time” here in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The com­pe­ti­tion in the class­room for high­er grades and more pres­ti­gious schools can and have un­for­tu­nate­ly dis­al­lowed chil­dren from en­gag­ing in sim­ple phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, much less struc­tured train­ing in sports. The job mar­ket is com­pet­i­tive and par­ents/guardians seem in­tent on prepar­ing their lit­tle ones from ear­ly as pri­ma­ry school; there­fore, re­cess­es and play­time breaks are in­stead uti­lized for ex­tra lessons.

While one may ar­gue there is a def­i­nite need for prepa­ra­tion, the method might be ar­guable.

Per­haps it would serve our so­ci­ety bet­ter if par­ents, and I dare­say, even teach­ers, are ed­u­cat­ed on the ef­fects that sports (com­pet­i­tive and recre­ation­al) and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty can have on their charges' aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mances. There are stud­ies and re­search that have proven the hy­poth­e­sis that there is a di­rect and pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ship be­tween sport par­tic­i­pa­tion and aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance.

An ar­ti­cle by Nan­cy Bar­ile, Award-Win­ning Teacher, M.A.Ed., refers to the book, Spark: The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary New Sci­ence of Ex­er­cise and the Brain, writ­ten by John J. Ratey, a Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Psy­chi­a­trist. Dr Ratey is said to have com­bined vol­umes of re­search for this book. Bar­ile notes in her ar­ti­cle that Dr Ratey writes about how ex­er­cise im­proves learn­ing. To quote from the ar­ti­cle, "First, it op­ti­mizes your mind-set to im­prove alert­ness, at­ten­tion, and mo­ti­va­tion; sec­ond, it pre­pares and en­cour­ages nerve cells to bind to one an­oth­er, which is the cel­lu­lar ba­sis for log­ging in new in­for­ma­tion; and third, it spurs the de­vel­op­ment of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hip­pocam­pus. In short, not on­ly does ex­er­cise help the brain get ready to learn but it makes re­tain­ing in­for­ma­tion eas­i­er”.

A doc­u­ment pub­lished on­line by the Flori­da Na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty al­so refers to a Wash­ing­ton Post ar­ti­cle that men­tions the book by Dr Ratey. The ref­er­ence here ex­plains that Dr Ratey not­ed in­creased vol­ume in the hip­pocam­pus and frontal and tem­po­ral lobes of the brain in seden­tary peo­ple who had sud­den­ly im­proved their fit­ness lev­els; this was ob­served via MRI scans of their brains.

A re­view pa­per by the De­part­ment of Di­dac­tic of Phys­i­cal Ac­tiv­i­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty School of Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion in Poland states that the re­la­tion of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance in­volves the im­pact of blood cir­cu­la­tion, specif­i­cal­ly in the brain, both dur­ing, but more im­por­tant­ly, af­ter ex­er­cise. The pa­per states, “Phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty in­creas­es the num­ber of cap­il­lar­ies in the brain, in­creas­es blood flow, and stim­u­lates the pro­duc­tion of neu­rotrophins and the growth of nerve cells in the hip­pocam­pus'.

These ar­ti­cles and re­views are not­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause they re­fer to the hip­pocam­pus. A de­f­i­n­i­tion from news-med­ical.net states that the hip­pocam­pus plays a vi­tal role in reg­u­lat­ing learn­ing, mem­o­ry en­cod­ing, mem­o­ry con­sol­i­da­tion, and spa­tial nav­i­ga­tion. In short, it can be said that the main func­tions en­tail hu­man learn­ing and mem­o­ry.

It should be not­ed too that an ar­ti­cle by Alahmed, Yu­sof and Shah (2016) cit­ed some stud­ies that rather sug­gest­ed a neg­a­tive re­la­tion be­tween sports par­tic­i­pa­tion and aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance or showed there was no im­por­tant link be­tween sports and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and high­er grades.

But chil­dren aren't nat­u­ral­ly wired to sit for long pe­ri­ods, and fur­ther, the sit-down time for young­sters in­creas­es dra­mat­i­cal­ly dur­ing pe­ri­ods of the ex­am. There are pri­ma­ry school chil­dren who start stud­ies in school at 7.30 am, use half of their lunchtime to study, and still have ex­tra lessons af­ter school. Un­for­tu­nate­ly for many, this then be­comes rou­tine as they tran­si­tion in­to sec­ondary schools. And it con­tin­ues to be lost up­on some par­ents and guardians and ed­u­ca­tors alike, that en­gag­ing in sport or gen­er­al phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty would serve a great pur­pose or pur­pos­es.

A study pub­lished in the Malaysian Jour­nal of Move­ment, Health and Ex­er­cise fo­cused on how el­e­men­tary school stu­dents learn­ing of math and dai­ly phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty were af­fect­ed by a morn­ing aer­o­bic ex­er­cise in­ter­ven­tion pro­gram. The find­ings showed three no­table el­e­ments which in­clud­ed an in­crease in math stan­dard scores, stu­dents demon­strat­ing high­er con­fi­dence in their aca­d­e­m­ic abil­i­ty and gen­er­al bet­ter phys­i­cal move­ment (steps tak­en) through­out the day. The study al­so stat­ed that the stu­dents re­port­ed a feel­ing of bet­ter readi­ness to learn af­ter the phys­i­cal ex­er­cise in morn­ings. The teach­ers cor­rob­o­rat­ed the find­ings of the re­searchers.

Maybe re­search needs to be done in the T&T school en­vi­ron­ment, but it can be fair­ly de­duct­ed that en­gage­ment in recre­ation­al or com­pet­i­tive sports and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty will have more of a pos­i­tive than a neg­a­tive im­pact on a stu­dent's aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance. Per­haps par­ents can be en­cour­aged to read more on Dr Ratey re­search and find­ings, as this may hope­ful­ly as­sist in pre­vent­ing the de­cline of ath­letes es­pe­cial­ly at the ex­am lev­el age groups or dur­ing the SEA, CXC and CAPE pe­ri­ods.

On a side note, dur­ing my box­ing ca­reer, I was of­ten re­quest­ed to be the keynote speak­er at grad­u­a­tions, achieve­ment days, etc. While prepar­ing these speech­es, some­times I found my­self “at a loss” for ex­act­ly what I should say, share or high­light; words of­ten es­cap­ing me de­spite hav­ing a theme to work with. My go-to rem­e­dy was an in­tense work­out, af­ter which the words flowed in my mind much faster than my hands could write or type let­ters. I had on­ly put it down to that feel­ing of hap­pi­ness cre­at­ed by the en­dor­phins that are sup­posed to be re­leased dur­ing ex­er­cise. I had nev­er re­lat­ed it to how ex­er­cise af­fects the brain un­til my re­search on this top­ic.

Ed­i­tor's note: The views ex­pressed in this ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the writer and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which she is a stake­hold­er.