Exercise Can Make You Smarter
Juvenal, Roman poet & satirist (55 AD – 127 AD) “A sound mind in a sound body”
The Ancient Romans had it right. The Ancient Athenians adopted the Roman motto and took it a step farther. They believed in doing everything in moderation. So that even when scholars were studying for a higher education they still spent equal time on physical fitness.
More recently, in the 2007-2008 school year the Texas Education Agency started the “fitnessgram” experiment to battle the increasing obesity in students. They found that more physically fit students had less absences and disciplinary problems than their less fit counterparts. They also scored higher on standardized test.
In December 2009 the results of a study involving over one million Swedish men was released. The information was gathered when the men enlisted for their mandatory military service.
It was then compared with other factors including number of siblings, their economic class and academic scores.
Higher cardiovascular fitness was associated with higher intelligence, while increased strength was not.
It was also noted that genetics had only a fifteen percent impact on the results where environmental conditions had an eighty percent impact.
Intelligence and fitness has less to do with where you came from than what you choose to do.
Choose to be more fit and automatically you choose to be smarter.