The Impact of Exercise on Studying

Use this tip to dramatically improve your memory retention after studying!

Exercise can be an important tool for making sure that you are mastering your material from studying as best as you can! Read for tips on how to do this!

By: Isabel Sipkema, Biology and Educational Studies at Rhodes College ‘22

Studies have shown that regular exercise and a good physical health can significantly improve your brain’s ability to recall the things that you have learned. This can be crucial to making sure that the material that you have been studying and learning is remembered to the best of your ability. However, while regular exercise is important, the time at which you exercise in relation to your studying is also important. Some more recent studies have shown that working out after you have been studying will greatly benefit your brain's ability to remember what you just learned. This means that exercise after studying is a great tool for enhancing your retention skills, whether this is right after studying or a few hours after. 

There are many different types of exercises that exist and there is no specific one that would benefit your ability to remember information the most. The key is to exercise, regardless of what kind of exercise that it is, after you have been studying for a while. Choose a form of exercise that you enjoy or that you think will make you feel better, as this is crucial to ensuring that your body gets the physical stimulation that it needs to best recall the information you were just learning. This exercise should excite you and should give your body the motivation that it needs to feel productive, which will in turn improve your ability to retain information.

Although exercise can be very beneficial to improving your brains ability to remember information, it is very important to make sure that your study habits are working for you. If you waste time while studying or do not understand the material well, exercising afterwards will not magically make it so that you fully understand it. If you're curious about how to actually study more effectively, check out our other blogs on optimal study habits. Exercising after studying will only serve as a tool that will increase your chances of remembering the information that you studied. The actual act of studying is the foundation that exercising then adds to. At the end of the day, the best thing to do is to choose a study habit and exercise plan that works for you and to stick to it. 

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