Stronger muscles may mean sharper minds for kids: Study

LONDON: Making sure kids have good muscle fitness might also benefit their school performance, according to a recent U.S. study.

Aerobic fitness has already been linked to better thinking abilities in pre-teen children, but the current study found an independent link between muscle fitness and kids’ performance on memory tests as well as their math and reading skills.

“We’ve seen this relationship for cardiorespiratory fitness many times before,” said senior author Charles H. Hillman of Northeastern University in Boston. “The relationship with strength is novel in children, but based on work with older adults, it was expected.”

For the study, which was funded by Nike, 75 kids aged 9 to 11 years completed an aerobic exercise test at steady speed on a treadmill with gradually increasing incline until they were too out of breath to continue.

After accounting for age, sex, grade, IQ and family education levels, researchers found that kids with better aerobic fitness on the treadmill test also had more accurate responses in the memory test and better performance at algebraic functions.

Kids with more muscular fitness on the body weight and medicine ball tests also did better than others on memory and academic tests, according to the report in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. REUTERS