Gymnastics Makes Smarter Kids
Today we are pretty comfortable knowing that a childs success is based off of good health and
education. That seems like something we could all agree on, right? Right. Yet we see disturbing trends in
child obesity still on the up-swing. This is particularly disturbing because obesity and lethargy go hand in
hand and as research has shown, physical activity and academic achievement also go hand in hand but
are opposite of the first pair. So how do we change the trend to curve downward instead of its current
climbing trend?
I have been reading a lot about brain function lately and I have found that neuroscience has some
interesting points that indicate how we actually learn and how we can stop the trend mentioned
above. This down-sloping trend has children spending, on average, about 5 hours a day of screen time;
that is computer screen, hand held screen, TV screen etc. This is a problem because being sedentary
leads to lethargy. Lethargy leads to increasingly being more sedentary and merrily we go along. Parents
too are spending many hours in front of a screen but the developing brain of a child and the brain of an
adult have different effects from the same input. When a baby is born it has 100 billion neurons, or
brain cells, and it begins laying connections or circuits to other cells by being exposed to stimuli. This is
basically how we learn, grownups too. But since the babys brain is so un-connected it needs those
stimuli even more. Between the ages of 3 and 10 a childs brain is twice as active as an adults because it
is establishing trillions of new connections and neural pathways. In fact its building so many new
connections that it actually begins pruning unused connections to reestablish more pathways. Amazing!
What exactly does that have to do with exercise? Well, most of the connections being created are
enhanced by movement and interactive sensory input. Without that coordination of input the brain has
a more difficult time laying those connections and there is a direct impact on how well we learn.
Scientists have documented through research the coordinating relationship between learning and
physical movement and skill acquisition. Learning new physical skills incorporates muscle movement;
and that type of learning overlaps and enhances the other learning that people need, namely reading,
math, language and logic.
Gymnastics is the learning of new skills as the athlete develops into a gymnast. A somersault or roll on
the floor develops into a handspring, develops into a front flip, develops into a twisting front flip etc.
New pathways are created with every new layer of skill acquisition. This is markedly different than a
sport like baseball, for example, where the basic skills are refined as the athlete progresses but no new
skills are learned; throwing catching, swinging and running are the same skills for a 5 year old in T ball as
they are for an MLB player, albeit at a different level of performance. So again, gymnastics is the top of
the list for helping children develop their brains.
The latest studies in education are showing that the single greatest predictor for success in reading and
math from kindergarten through 4th grade is actually hand-eye coordination and motor skills. I
personally feel that gymnastics is the highest form of physical skill development and more studies have
shown neural networks, i.e. the flow of information in the brain, of children in preschool gymnastics is
much higher than children who are not exposed to such activity.
Neurologists are finding evidence that the cerebellum, which coordinates the physical movement, also
coordinates the movement of thought says John Ratey in his book The Users Guide to the Brain.
Learning in essence then, is not just in our heads, but in our bodies. If we are to learn and reach or
surpass our potential we must exercise both. Sadly as our schools have financial restraints put on their
operations, we are seeing student access to physical activity reduced. Our nightmare of not only being
the biggest, fattest, blobs on Earth will be enhanced with other descriptors like slowest, dumbest or
most unsuccessful. This is an embarrassing place for a great country to be in. As the rest of the world is
catching up with America in the footrace of ingenuity we are finding ways to slow our pace.
Children need a physical outlet, not only to combat the trend of obesity but to help them learn and
develop their brains and learning capacity. There is a reason why early educators came up with the idea
of recess; because some of the most productive time of a students day is right after physical activity.
Why on earth would we take that away?
by: Jay Orkowski
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