Riding a bike for transport can be a great way to prepare for a day of focus and learning, a new study of high school students has found.
Researchers at University of Eastern Finland explored the premise that physically active students made better learners, and shed new light on the benefits of riding and walking to school.
The researchers examined the association between educational outcomes and either leisure-time physical activity (such as lunchtime sport) or active school transport.
They drew on the School Health Promotion study from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, which gathers data on primary and secondary school school students across Finland.
The team's analysis involved 34,100 Finnish adolescents with an average age of 15.4 years and was reported in the European Journal of Public Health. It gauged the benefits of physical activity for student learning through questions such as how the students rated their academic performance at the moment, how difficult they found academic skills such as reading and writing, and whether they felt overwhelmed by their schoolwork.
This enabled the researchers to tease out associations between both types of activity and perceived academic performance, competency in academic skills, school burnout and school enjoyment.
They found that all active school travel was positively associated with perceived academic performance and school enjoyment, and moderate doses of exercise were linked to higher competency in academic skills.
Regular leisure-time physical activity, however, was linked to lower odds of school burnout and had an even stronger positive association with perceived academic performance.
“The results regarding active school transport were particularly intriguing as researchers are increasingly interested in the health benefits of travel-related walking and cycling," says study author Juuso Jussila.
Being physically active before school could, for example, enhance concentration in classroom, explaining our observations. However, due to the cross-sectional design, our study cannot establish causality."