The Single Best Thing You Can Do to Improve Learning
Understanding this quirk of the brain should change everything.
Hello good people!
What if I told you there was one simple thing you could do to dramatically increase how well you and/or your students/kids learned?
I’m talking about one thing that will exponentially improve focus, retention, and cognitive speed.
It is like a magic fairy dust that, when sprinkled, will allow you to get more out of 45-minutes than most people can get in 90. What is the magical elixir?
Movement. I know it sounds too good to be true, but the science is overwhelming.
It is exercise, not Sudoku puzzles or brain games, that builds brain cells. Exercise grows neurons through neurogenesis. It strengthens existing neurons, develops the hippocampus (responsible for memory), and strengthens the prefrontal cortex (responsible for emotional regulation, focus, problem-solving, creativity, and perseverance).
As Harvard neuropsychiatrist, Dr. John Ratey put it:
“Exercise is like fertilizer for the brain… it's like Miracle Gro…”
As neuroscientist Dr. Wendy Suzuki put it:
“When you cut down recess, you are removing time that kids can run around. And when they run around, their brains are getting a bubble bath of good neurochemicals, neurotransmitters and endorphins. These help memory and mood. A simple burst of exercise helps students focus better—to filter out what they do and do not need to pay attention to in class.”
If you dig these quotes, there will be more like these at the end.
Lessons from Schools With the Courage to Be Different
After learning about these profound effects, Paul Zientarski, a PE teacher in Naperville, Illinois, hypothesized that students would do better in a class if they had PE before it, rather than PE after. He was able to convince his administrators to identify students who were struggling and assign them PE before the class they struggled in. The students with PE before reading improved reading scores by 52-56% more than their comparable peers who had PE after class, and they improved math scores by 93% more.
Similarly, TCU professor, Dr. Debbie Rhea, visited Finland in an effort to figure out what Finnish schools were doing that could explain their top tier international education rankings. There were many differences between the Finnish system and the American, but what she found most noteworthy was that Finnish students had PE every single day and, even through high school, they were given 15 minutes of free time for every 45 minutes of classroom instruction.
Dr. Rhea came back and created the LiiNK program, which requires participating elementary schools to include four recesses per day. The results speak for themselves.
Still, schools and teachers are reluctant to make the obvious changes. There is so much we are required to teach, so little time, and an educational environment that discourages teachers from informed risk-taking or personal discretion. All of this is compounded by what I call the More is Better fallacy.
The More is Better Fallacy
In weight training, many athletes and parents assume that the best way to get strong is to always lift more—to “live in the gym.” If one hour of training is good, then two is better. If four days per week is good, then six is better. If three sets of five reps is good, then ten sets of five is better. But, as the first chapter of any physical training textbook makes clear, this is, without question, not true. There is an optimal amount of training and, past that, you begin to decrease the total benefit.
It is the same with learning. More is not better. Time in focus must oscillate with breaks for movement and rest. I learned this the hard way while writing my book. During summers, I’d push myself to write for up to eight hours straight. But after the first few hours each day, everything that came out was garbage. I’d have to fix it all later. Eventually, I learned and adapted.
Sorry to break it to you, but you are human.
This is about acknowledging certain realities about humans and how we work. You can only get stronger so fast. You can only learn information so fast. But if you want to learn faster and retain more, the science is clear. Students will learn better, focus better, and retain more if they:
Move first
Have breaks for movement
And (especially at the elementary level) if they move while learning
Period. Full stop.
Wait! There’s More.
But I’m not done. The last part of my message is the most important:
Look at the insane state of our nation’s health.
Understand how young children flourish.
Ask yourself what competencies and inclinations are really core to the future thriving of our students.
Could there be anything more important than giving our children a strong foundation in health and a predisposition to love moving? This is just the right thing to do.
Practical Implications:
Parents:
Create an environment that promotes movement (which means a screen free environment).
Allow your kids the freedom to move.
If possible, get you kids moving before school. Walking or biking to school is a great idea!
Teachers:
Find a way to get your students moving at the beginning of each day.
Embed movement in learning when possible.
Take the time for movement breaks—it is an investment that pays off.
Administrators/State Legislators:
Mandate fewer tests and more recess at the elementary level.
Daily PE at all levels. No excuses.
If interested, you can see the proposal I submitted to my district, here. Not a slam dunk, but it got the ball rolling.
Saving the Best Quotes For Last
And, as promised, more sciency support. This is an excerpt from a conversation between Stanford Neuroscientist, Dr. Andrew Huberman and the renowned researcher and physician Dr. Peter Attia:
Dr. Huberman: In animal models, it is very clear that the best way to get a nervous system to atrophy—to lose neurons, shrink neurons, or lose connections between neurons—is to stop that animal from moving, or to de-enrich its environment (deprive it of some sensory input or multiple sensory inputs). And the best way to enhance the size of neurons, the number of connections between neurons, and maybe even the number of neurons is to enrich its environment and get it moving while enriching that environment.
Dr. Attia: It is very difficult for me to say that the same is not true in humans. The first time this became clear to me was in 2014. I had an analyst… and I said … I want you to look at all the literature that we have… that talks about Alzheimer's prevention and I want to know every single type of input and I want to have a clear sense of via what mechanism is it offering what mode of protection… And he came back with an amazing presentation that took 9 months to a year of work. And what amazed me is that when he came back he said that the single greatest efficacy that we can point to is exercise… and I was like… there is no way that exercise is the single best thing you can do for the brain. There has to be some drug you’ve missed. There has to be some other thing that you’ve missed. And he’s like, “No. This is hands down the best thing.” Because … it’s just touching every aspect of the brain.
Boom!
Thank you for reading! Please share with anyone who would enjoy or find value here!
Have a wonderful week and don’t be afraid to take a few more breaks for movement and sunshine. It is an investment that will pay off.
Life is too short to be normal,
Shane
This makes me very curious about implications for working from home. WFH means that you're in the same environment all day 5 of 7 days / week. This sounds really similar to critters in a de-enriched environment. The bathroom is closer, there are fewer to no people to interact with, and the home environment is more familiar and less novel from already being there on one's off time. Does anyone know of any research on this?