Does Better Health Equal Better Grades?: How Flexing Your Muscles Can Help You Flex Your Brain
Fall term is beginning and there is a lot to take in on the LBCC campus. All the new classes, locations, and students can be overwhelming. For many attending, a new term in school not only brings about costs that can drain your bank account, but stress that can drain you physically and mentally. With all these new things going on, some students still focus on their health by holding memberships to any number of the gym’s local to the area. This is just another cost to the already monetarily stretched student.
For those that are new to LBCC, or those that didn’t know; LBCC has a fully equipped weight room with nearly everything that you would find in a gym with a membership. The only caveat is that the open hours are Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. The open gym program runs Fall, Winter, and Spring terms.
“Gym users need to know how to do their own workouts, and how to properly use the equipment, and there are locker rooms and showers available. Funding for the open gym hours comes from Student Life and Leadership. Questions related to the gym and its open hours are part of the Destination Graduation scavenger hunt, said Gayle Rushing, the Administrative Assistant for the Activities Center.
There are no available morning hours for open gym as of now, but some students will be approaching the SLC to see if that may be a possibility in the future.
“I believe it promotes wellness that can benefit the student physically and mentally,” said Mark Majeski, Athletic Director, about the possibility of open morning hours for students.
Not only can using the open gym hours save a student money on gym memberships, but it can potentially help the student in other areas of their life.
“Anytime a student can set up a consistent schedule, it allows them to get more organized and it promotes stress reduction. Exercise has its physiological and psychological benefits. The open gym can help keep students on campus more, which in turn could help reduce missed classes when there is a large break between them, which can help with rendition,” said Jayme Frazier, faculty for the Health & Human Performance Department. She is right, according to a study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
“After a systematic review of more than 800 studies, a highly respected team of researchers reported that students who are physically active earn higher grades and score better on achievement tests than their inactive peers,” reported journalists from the San Diego Union-Tribune, Tom Torlakson and Robert K. Ross.
There are many reports and articles that point to a correlation of health and academic performance, and their findings shouldn’t be ignored.
“A sensible report from the Institute of Medicine, a unit of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that exercise can significantly improve cognitive abilities and academic performance, as well as health,” reported the Editorial Board for The New York Times.
The studies and reports suggest that having a healthy body and mind, help with having healthy grades. As an LBCC student, you have the option to reduce a little stress and not worry about gym memberships, because the free open gym is available to all students.
Story By Lee Frazier
