Children and young people should continue training when they have exams coming up, here’s why…

With the GCSE exams taking place in May every year in the UK, many young people’s final push begins around January. They attend extra revision classes at school, take additional lessons in subjects they are struggling with, and very often, reduce their attendance, or stop training completely for a few months leading up to their exams.

It makes sense on the surface from a parent’s perspective; to stop your child going to the boxing gym, so that they can focus entirely on what’s important right now and get the best GCSE results possible. However, research on the brain, exercise, and memory, suggests that stopping your child training, may have the opposite effect.

The positive effects of exercise on brain function has been demonstrated extensively by research, in several domains. The hippocampus is our brain’s primary structure for consolidating short-term memory into long-term memories. Aerobic exercise has been shown to predict larger hippocampal volume in adolescents. Exercise has also been shown to induce neurogenesis (the generation of neurons) in the hippocampus (Herting and Nagel, 2012). The dentate gyrus (one of the two parts of the hippocampus) has even been shown to triple in size following physical exercise in rodents (Cassilhas et al. 2016). Studies on cardiovascular training’s effects on memory have suggested that achieving a higher fitness level, and maintaining it, may be necessary for keeping cognitive abilities at their highest level (Hotting and Roder, 2013).

The prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain responsible for our ‘executive functions’, which are: self-control (inhibition), working memory (retaining and working out information in mind, such as multi-step processes), and cognitive flexibility (adapting to new situations, lateral thinking, responding to changes). These are all incredibly important skills when preparing for, and sitting exams. Exercise has been shown in research to have positive effects on the prefrontal cortex, including increased oxygenation leading to improved inhibitory control. Other studies have shown that more cognitively engaging exercise like boxing or martial arts elicits greater improvements in executive functions than traditional exercise (Bremer et al., 2020). With these brain structures not maturing until late in adolescence, the immature teenage prefrontal cortex may be significantly more affected by exercise at this age.

Adolescence is often characterised by unhealthy lifestyle changes, such as a poor diet, inadequate sleep, increased stress due to social pressures, peer relationships, and of course, exams. Stress has been shown to have a negative effect on hippocampal function, with research demonstrating that an increased HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis (stress) response acts as a significant inhibitor to neurogenesis in the hippocampus (Hueston et al. 2017). Exercise is known to modulate stress, and could potentially reduce the effects of the unavoidable pressures, and stress of exams.

In summary: Exercise affects the hippocampus, the brains ‘memory centre’, structurally, functionally, and in volume and has positive effects on the structures of the frontal lobes, an area of the brain especially vulnerable to environmental insults such as stress during adolescence. Cardiovascular exercise has been shown to have a positive influence on self-control in children. Exercise may modulate the effects of negative lifestyle and environmental changes that often characterize adolescence.

So, should parent’s stop their children from attending sports activities in order to achieve better exam results? Based on the evidence that can be found…no. It’s important to remember however, that many young people, especially those preparing for competitions in a sport like boxing, experience incredibly high levels of stress and anxiety, equal to, if not worse, than those experienced in preparation for exams, so the few months prior to GCSE’s, is obviously not the best time to be preparing for competitions.

The physical and mental health benefits of the sport can still be experienced by young people attending boxing gyms, without the pressure of competition. This may be the best way for them to achieve the best results in their exams. Boxing coaches, and most people working with young people, want the best for them too, so if you’re concerned about this as a parent, or young person preparing for exams, just talk to your coach!

References:

Bremer, E. et al. (2020) “Effect of Acute Exercise on Prefrontal Oxygenation and Inhibitory Control Among Male Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Exploratory Study,” Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 14, p. 84. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00084.

Cassilhas, R.C., Tufik, S. and de Mello, M.T. (2016) “Physical exercise, neuroplasticity, spatial learning and memory,” Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS, 73(5), pp. 975–983. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-015-2102-0.

Herting, M.M. and Nagel, B.J. (2012) “Aerobic fitness relates to learning on a virtual Morris Water Task and hippocampal volume in adolescents,” Behavioural brain research, 233(2), pp. 517–525. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2012.05.012.

Herting, M.M. and Nagel, B.J. (2012) “Aerobic fitness relates to learning on a virtual Morris Water Task and hippocampal volume in adolescents,” Behavioural brain research, 233(2), pp. 517–525. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2012.05.012.

Hueston, C.M., Cryan, J.F. and Nolan, Y.M. (2017) “Stress and adolescent hippocampal neurogenesis: diet and exercise as cognitive modulators,” Translational psychiatry, 7(4), pp. e1081–e1081. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/tp.2017.48.