Olivia Bloom

Professor Debra Jizi

UWRT 1102
25 April 2016
The Secret Ability of Exercise
Starting out in high school, I didnt engage in any physical activity. I wanted to do
something so, I started competitive cheerleading and it changed my life. Dont get me wrong it
was the hardest thing Ive ever done, but it made me push myself to limits I didnt know were
possible. Not only was my physical ability getting better, but my grades were improving. At the
time, I didnt know that cheerleading was actually helping my grades. It shocked me to know
having one more thing to do would help my GPA. Going into college, I didnt know exercise is
what helped me get good grades. Freshman year, I went to the gym as much as I could, but I
wanted to go more. Not just to keep my physical endurance, but to get a relief from all the
studying and school work I had going on. My grades were good, but when sophomore year rolled
around, things started to slip. Fall semester, I didnt exercise because I had a job and I thought I
should have be studying more. At this point, I wasnt going to the gym at all; I started to wonder
what went wrong. A friend told me to try working out again, I didnt listen until spring semester.
I started going to the gym, and then I started to see a difference. I was able to focus more,
remember things I would usually forget, and study better.
Exercise is basically only known for its health benefits, but it also has a secret
ability. It helps one of the most important parts of our body, our brain. Not many people put the
two together; it took me 5 years to understand that exercise can help the way I think. It took me a

while to figure out that exercise is what is boosting my grades. I was very curious of how
exercise would help the brain since its not like youre doing brain workouts when you go to the
gym. In the spring semester of my sophomore year, I finally realized that just going to the gym
for an hour a day, helped a lot more than my physical ability.
I think quite a few college students and maybe some high school students could benefit
from knowing exercise can help them with their grades. Exercise can do a lot more for a person
than they think. College students dont get the most sleep or are always stressing about
something either related to school or not. Exercise and its effects on the brain is a very
significant question to very many college students.
As the award winning health journalist, Heidi Godman, states in her article for the
Harvard Health Blog, Indirectly, exercise improves mood and sleep, and reduces stress and
anxiety. Problems in these areas frequently cause or contribute to cognitive impairment. In
college, our mood, sleep, and stress reduction and anxiety are very important. If we have
problems with those, especially in college, we can hurt our brains. We all know exercise is
important, and should do it more often so we can live longer, but exercise helps our mental
ability just as much as our physical ability. I think college students underestimate how much
exercise can really help them. It can make a huge difference in someones life, and all they have
to do is give up one hour of their day and go to the gym.
They are many studies done on this subject. Quite a few of those studies are done on
elderly people and animals. There is one doctor, Wendy Suzuki who is also a professor at New
York University, did a study on her college students. She tested the students on memorization
before and after aerobic exercise, and the results increased after every class once a week. She
talks about how exercise helps the brain and all the many ways you can see yourself improve

with many other things other than your memory. In college our memory is very important, so if
exercise can make it better then why not make time for it. If you are like me, I get way too busy
with all the school work and studying I have to do along with going to work, so I try and find
time before I get my day started. Working out in the morning is one of my favorite ways to start
the day. College students get very busy, so maybe it is hard to set aside time to go to the gym
when all they want to do is relax. What if exercising made life a little easier in college, than that
one small hour of relaxing will do, it might not be easy but maybe it will benefit more.
Both the doctor/professor and the journalist have very good points to my question: what
does exercise do to the brain. Exercise is a good way to relive stress, and I think stress is at its
highest in college, like when is there not something to stress about? Exercise can help with the
stress college brings. Another point brought up is it can help memorization, and focus abilities in
class. When the doctor/professor did the study on her students, it showed how just a little bit of
exercise can help us.
As I said before, I think we underestimate how much exercise can really help us. It also
brings up questions like what kind of exercise helps more or even can it really help everyone. I
think the people who are already working out, might know or might not know what effect
exercise has on them, but the people who dont do any sort of physical activity, have no clue
what they are missing out on. I think the people who dont really do physical activity should start
out small like walking for an hour. Exercise doesnt have to be lifting weights or anything it can
be anything that gets you moving. I think there are many other factors that will play into the fact
that exercise can help the brain. Its like a whole different world when I give up an hour of my
day to exercise.

An hour might seem like a lot of time to give up, you could be studying for a test or
finishing a paper. An hour is nothing, after I exercise for an hour I feel ready to take on the rest
of my day and motivated. Coffee might wake me up and drag me through the rest of my day, but
exercise really helps me stay motivated and awake throughout the day. I might be a little sore
after a hard workout, but not everyone needs to do a hard workout for their exercise. I think the
most convincing part of exercising helping me in school is when Doctor Wendy Suzuki did the
experiment on her undergraduate students. It showed me how doing an exercise before class can
help our brains on a test even though it was a simple test, it can still help more than not doing
anything. I saw how exercise helped me in school first hand as well, it might have taken me a
couple years to figure out, but after I realized it, I noticed a change. I think exercise has helped
me more than any other relaxing technique ever has or will, which in turn also helps my ability
to study and then get good test grades.
Before I started researching exercise on the brain, I didnt think exercise could really help
the brain. I thought I would have to discipline myself to study more after exercising. I didnt
really know there would be science behind it. After researching I came to understand that
working out for an hour day isnt just helping me get my day started and motivating me but its
actually helping my brain. It makes me wonder what it is actually doing to my brain, like what
exercise does to my brain to help it with memorization and focusing. What goes on inside my
brain to help me destress and study better? If I were to keep researching I would figure out the
deeper science into exercising and see what goes on inside while I exercise to help me study after
I finish my workout. Exercise has many different benefits and I want to know what else it can do.

Works Cited
Clow, Angela and Sarah Edmunds. Physical Activity and Mental Health: Relationship Between
Physical Activity and Mental Health. Champaign: Angela Chow and Sarah Edmunds,
2013. Print. 1 Apr. 2016.
Fox News. Can Exercise Make you Smarter? Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 19 May
2015. Web. 29 Mar. 2016
Reynolds, Gretchen. "Getting a Brain Boost through Exercise." New York Times, 10 Apr. 2013.
Web. 30 Mar. 2016.
Tomporowski, Phillip D. "Exercise And Cognition." Pediatric Exercise Science 28.1 (2016): 2327. SPORTDiscus with Full Text. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.