The Multifaceted Benefits of Physical Education

The significance of physical education (PE) is often underestimated, yet it plays a pivotal role in the holistic development of children and adolescents. The benefits of physical education extend far beyond physical health, encompassing mental well-being, cognitive abilities, and social skills. In an era dominated by digital screens, PE offers a crucial break and an opportunity for children to engage in physical activities, thus mitigating the risks associated with sedentary lifestyles.

Physical Health and Well-being

Physical health is the most obvious benefit of physical education. Regular physical activity strengthens the body's functions and reduces the risk of various diseases. PE classes provide an excellent opportunity to educate students about the importance of a balanced diet, proper hydration, and adequate rest, along with regular exercise, instilling healthy lifestyle habits that can last a lifetime.

Cardiovascular Health

Heart disease and stroke are two leading causes of death in the United States. Engaging in at least 150 minutes a week of moderate physical activity can significantly lower the risk of these diseases. Moreover, increased physical activity can further reduce this risk. Regular physical activity can also reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, a condition characterized by excess fat around the waist, high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol, high triglycerides, or high blood sugar.

Weight Management

Both eating patterns and physical activity routines play critical roles in weight management. If you are not physically active, work your way up to 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity physical activity. This could be dancing or doing yard work. People vary greatly in how much physical activity they need for weight management. You will need a high amount of physical activity unless you also adjust your eating patterns and reduce the amount of calories you're eating and drinking. Healthy eating combined with regular physical activity help you get to-and stay at-a healthy weight.

Bone, Joint, and Muscle Health

As you age, it's important to protect your bones, joints, and muscles. Lifting weights is an example of a muscle-strengthening activity. Muscle strengthening is important for older adults who experience reduced muscle mass and muscle strength with aging. Everyday activities include climbing stairs, grocery shopping, or cleaning the house. Being unable to perform everyday activities is called functional limitation. For older adults, doing a variety of physical activities improves physical function and decreases the risk of falls or injury from a fall. Older adults need to include aerobic, muscle strengthening, and balance activities in their physical activity routines. Hip fracture is a serious health condition that can result from a fall. Breaking a hip can have life-changing negative effects, especially if you're an older adult.

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Mental and Cognitive Benefits

The benefits of physical education extend beyond the physical realm, significantly impacting mental and cognitive functions.

Mental Health Improvement

One of the significant benefits of physical education is its positive impact on mental health. When children participate in physical activity, their bodies release endorphins, which are neurotransmitters known as ‘feel-good’ hormones. Moreover, regular physical exercise has been associated with improved sleep patterns. Additionally, the sense of accomplishment and self-confidence gained from achieving fitness goals or mastering new skills can significantly boost a child’s self-esteem. Regular physical activity can relieve stress, anxiety, depression and anger.

Cognitive Enhancement

Physical activity has been shown to boost academic performance, as students who participate in regular physical activity tend to have improved concentration, better memory retention, and enhanced problem-solving skills. Some benefits of physical activity for brain health happen right after a session of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Benefits include improved thinking or cognition for children 6 to 13 and reduced short-term feelings of anxiety for adults. Regular physical activity can help keep your thinking, learning, and judgment skills sharp as you age.

Evidence suggests that increasing physical activity and physical fitness may improve academic performance and that time in the school day dedicated to recess, physical education class, and physical activity in the classroom may also facilitate academic performance. Available evidence suggests that mathematics and reading are the academic topics that are most influenced by physical activity. These topics depend on efficient and effective executive function, which has been linked to physical activity and physical fitness. Executive function and brain health underlie academic performance. Basic cognitive functions related to attention and memory facilitate learning, and these functions are enhanced by physical activity and higher aerobic fitness. Single sessions of and long-term participation in physical activity improve cognitive performance and brain health. Children who participate in vigorous- or moderate-intensity physical activity benefit the most. Given the importance of time on task to learning, students should be provided with frequent physical activity breaks that are developmentally appropriate. Although presently understudied, physically active lessons offered in the classroom may increase time on task and attention to task in the classroom setting.

Children respond faster and with greater accuracy to a variety of cognitive tasks after participating in a session of physical activity. A single bout of moderate-intensity physical activity has been found to increase neural and behavioral concomitants associated with the allocation of attention to a specific cognitive task. And when children who participated in 30 minutes of aerobic physical activity were compared with children who watched television for the same amount of time, the former children cognitively outperformed the latter. When physical activity is used as a break from academic learning time, postengagement effects include better attention, increased on-task behaviors, and improved academic performance. Teachers can offer physical activity breaks as part of a supplemental curriculum or simply as a way to reset student attention during a lesson and when provided with minimal training can efficaciously produce vigorous or moderate energy expenditure in students. Further, after-school physical activity programs have demonstrated the ability to improve cardiovascular endurance, and this increase in aerobic fitness has been shown to mediate improvements in academic performance, as well as the allocation of neural resources underlying performance on a working memory task.

Brain Health

Given that the brain is responsible for both mental processes and physical actions of the human body, brain health is important across the life span. In adults, brain health, representing absence of disease and optimal structure and function, is measured in terms of quality of life and effective functioning in activities of daily living. In children, brain health can be measured in terms of successful development of attention, on-task behavior, memory, and academic performance in an educational setting. Correlational research examining the relationship among academic performance, physical fitness, and physical activity also is described. Because research in older adults has served as a model for understanding the effects of physical activity and fitness on the developing brain during childhood, the adult research is briefly discussed. The short- and long-term cognitive benefits of both a single session of and regular participation in physical activity are summarized.

Social and Personal Development

The importance of PE also lies in the development of essential social skills. PE classes offer an inclusive environment where children of all abilities can participate and thrive. Adaptable activities and supportive environments enable students with different abilities to participate in and enjoy physical activities.

Social Skills

By working together to achieve common goals, children learn to appreciate the value of collaboration. They also learn important life skills such as leadership and problem-solving, which come into play when planning strategies for team games. In a P.E. classroom setting, some students have goals for improving social standing. Because student-to-student interactions are higher in a P.E. class than in the typical classroom, there are unique opportunities for interacting with peers. The social ladder is ripe for climbing. Or it can be a time of insecurity, when students do not want to feel the discomfort of comparison. These goals drive motivation and athletic performance, according to a study by Alex Garn, David Ware and Melinda Solmon.

Personal Qualities

Participating in PE classes requires a certain level of self-discipline and responsibility, from following the rules of a game to taking care of sports equipment. Physical education provides a platform for students to face challenges, overcome obstacles, and learn the value of perseverance. P.E. trains personal motivation and enjoyment in exercise. According to a study published in the Journal of Sports Science & Medicine called “Analysis of Motivational Profiles of Satisfaction and Importance of Physical Education in High School Adolescents,” there is a level of satisfaction involved, as P.E.’s social environment prompts internal motivation and task-orientation. Students are presented with opportunities to enhance their physical ability in a way that bolsters mental capability. P.E. encourages students who are goal-oriented - whether they are athletically inclined or not - to participate. When P.E. caters to internal motivation, it becomes enjoyable for students.

Motor Skills and Coordination

PE classes often involve a variety of exercises that require balance, agility, speed, and coordination. These activities help children develop and refine their motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and spatial awareness.

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Combating Sedentary Lifestyles

In an era where children are increasingly glued to digital screens, PE classes offer an essential break and an opportunity for children to engage in physical activities. Incorporating physical activity into children’s daily routines can significantly mitigate these risks. Activities such as biking not only contribute to physical fitness but also ensure that children enjoy their time away from screens.

The Role of Comprehensive School Physical Activity Programs (CSPAP)

Schools are in a unique position to help students get the daily recommended 60 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. The Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program (CSPAP) provides details about its suggested Physical Education and Physical Activity Framework. This document outlines professional development opportunities and resources to help schools implement the framework. CDC worked with SHAPE America to create a step-by-step guide: Comprehensive School Physical Activity Programs for schools and school districts. This physical activity program guide can help you develop new programs, evaluate programs, or improve existing programs. The guide can be helpful to an existing school health council or wellness committee, or to a new committee. This module is designed to help educators create and refine a Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program.

Making Physical Education Engaging

Making exercise fun and exciting is a key aspect of a successful PE program. In recent years, bike riding has been increasingly incorporated into PE curriculums worldwide. By incorporating activities like bike riding, PE becomes an anticipated part of a child’s school day rather than a chore. All Kids Bike is a national movement dedicated to bringing the mental and physical benefits of bike riding to every kid in America. Led by the Strider Education Foundation, our mission is to make bicycling skills an integral part of kids’ elementary school education. Our Kindergarten PE Program provides the curriculum, bikes, and safety equipment needed to teach every kindergartner how to ride at no cost to the school itself. All Kids Bike and the Strider Education Foundation depend on generous contributions from the community to do the important work that we do. Consider donating to a school in your area to support our vision of making this milestone skill accessible to children across the country.

Physical Fitness as a Learning Outcome

Achieving and maintaining a healthy level of aerobic fitness, as defined using criterion-referenced standards from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES; Welk et al., 2011), is a desired learning outcome of physical education programming. Regular participation in physical activity also is a national learning standard for physical education, a standard intended to facilitate the establishment of habitual and meaningful engagement in physical activity (NASPE, 2004). Yet although physical fitness and participation in physical activity are established as learning outcomes in all 50 states, there is little evidence to suggest that children actually achieve and maintain these standards.

Statewide and national datasets containing data on youth physical fitness and academic performance have increased access to student-level data on this subject. Early research in South Australia focused on quantifying the benefits of physical activity and physical education during the school day; the benefits noted included increased physical fitness, decreased body fat, and reduced risk for cardiovascular disease. Even today, Dwyer and colleagues are among the few scholars who regularly include in their research measures of physical activity intensity in the school environment, which is believed to be a key reason why they are able to report differentiated effects of different intensities. A longitudinal study in Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada, tracked how the academic performance of children from grades 1 through 6 was related to student health, motor skills, and time spent in physical education. The researchers concluded that additional time dedicated to physical education did not inhibit academic performance. Longitudinal follow-up investigating the long-term benefits of enhanced physical education experiences is encouraging but largely inconclusive. Longitudinal studies such as those conducted in Sweden and Finland also suggest that physical education experiences may be related to adult engagement in physical activity. From an academic performance perspective, longitudinal data on men who enlisted for military service imply that cardiovascular fitness at age 18 predicted cognitive performance in later life, thereby supporting the idea of offering physical education and physical activity opportunities well into emerging adulthood through secondary and postsecondary education.

Castelli and colleagues investigated younger children (in 3rd and 5th grades) and the differential contributions of the various subcomponents of the Fitnessgram®. Specifically, they examined the individual contributions of aerobic capacity, muscle strength, muscle flexibility, and body composition to performance in mathematics and reading on the Illinois Standardized Achievement Test among a sample of 259 children. Their findings corroborate those of the California Department of Education, indicating a general relationship between fitness and achievement test performance. When the individual components of the Fitnessgram were decomposed, the researchers determined that only aerobic capacity was related to test performance.

Physical Activity and Reduced Risk of Infectious Diseases

Physical activity may help reduce the risk of serious outcomes from infectious diseases, including COVID-19, the flu, and pneumonia. People who do little or no physical activity are more likely to get very sick from COVID-19 than those who are physically active. More active people may be less likely to die from flu or pneumonia. Being physically active lowers your risk for developing several common cancers.

The Impact of Physical Activity on Premature Death

adults ages 40 and older increased their moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Taking more steps a day also helps lower the risk of premature death from all causes. In one study, for adults younger than 60, the risk of premature death leveled off at about 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day.

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