Why movement is important for your child’s brain development

In his book, Livewired, neuroscientist David Eagleman illustrates how the neurons in our brains look similar to plants with roots. Like plants (or kittens), those that are enriched grow more than those that are deprived.

Children who are exposed to a limited form of movement, such as treadmills, exercise bikes and machine weights, will develop their neurons more than those who just sit at home watching screens or get transported everywhere by car.

This ‘normal’ enrichment is fine if the only physical challenge you are going to face is jogging around a pitch in your p.e. warm-up and then standing in a queue waiting for your turn to kick the ball.

However, a movement rich learning environment will help your child’s neurons flourish.

Movement rich environments include gymnastics and athletics (if the children practise all the events), or tennis (when they are a bit older).

In a less varied environment, such as swimming or football, movement can be enriched by including a multi-dimensional warm-up that changes every week to produce a varied stimulus (that’s what we do in weightlifting).

Best still: having a variety of different activities each week, plus time to explore and play.

That’s why James set up this club: to provide a movement rich learning environment that helps minds and bodies. Our strength and coordination sessions are not just press-ups and sit-ups (we never do sit-ups and our press-ups are limited) like some adults think children should be doing to the exclusion of all else!

We have a variety of movement puzzles to solve and exercises that challenge both strength and coordination.

This is also brain training. The enriched brain is better able to cope with the high-speed, multi-directional, complex-decision making movements that occur in team sports.

Are you going to enrich your child’s brain or let it wither with disuse?

Further reading

• For p.e. teachers and sports coaches, try our warm-up and assessment p.e. puzzles here
• For parents, either join our club, or watch our Willand p.e. videos to see lots of puzzles