Benefits Of Exercise For Students
Exercise can feel like a chore when you’re feeling a little worse for wear after a night out or are cramming for an upcoming exam or deadline, but working exercise into your routine has so many benefits beyond just keeping you healthy and feeling good.
Below we’ve outlined some of these benefits and how they can support your lifestyle as a student.
1. Relieving Stress
Juggling studying with socialising and other commitments can feel overwhelming at times – exercising just a few times a week can really help you to manage and relieve some of stress of daily student life. Scientists have found that even just 5 minutes of aerobic exercise can stimulate anti-anxiety effects!
2. Enhancing Mood
It’s important to keep a positive mindset – even when studies and deadlines pile up – to help you stay focused and engaged. Exercise increases your levels of endorphins, which are natural mood boosters. This is why incorporating regular exercise into your routine – whether that’s a walk, a class or a strength workout – will help to keep you in the right frame of mind for learning.
3. Improving Concentration
Research shows that just 20 minutes of exercise before studying can improve concentration and help you focus when learning. This is because intense physical activity causes blood to flow to the brain, which then fires up your neurones and promotes cell growth, particularly in the hippocampus (which is critical for learning).So before your next lecture try out a WeGLOW Energise workout – they can be done with no equipment and are all just 20 minutes long!
4. Improving Memory
Studies have found that when you exercise, your body produces a protein called FNDC5, which is then released into the bloodstream. This then helps your brain to produce yet another protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which then prompts your body to grow new nerves and helps existing brain cells to survive – in other words, exercise regularly makes your brain stronger.
Certain areas of the brain are more likely to develop in this way than others, but it just so happens that the hippocampus – the area of our brain that is involved with retaining information – is incredibly responsive to these proteins. This means that exercising regularly can help you take in and retain what you learn in lectures more easily than if you didn’t exercise at all.
5. Keeps You Physically Healthy
Perhaps an obvious one but exercising regularly keeps us physically healthy and experts have found a strong connection between being physically healthy and strong academic performance. This is because low-intensity exercise can give our energy levels a much-needed boost – which is perfect for after a day of back to back lectures!
