Post-Exercise Physiological Recovery and Academic Achievement in Adolescents: The Role of Autonomic Regulation

Background. Physical education represents a regular physiological stimulus within the school day, yet little is known about autonomic recovery following curricular lessons and its relationship with academic achievement. Objectives. To compare post-exercise autonomic recovery following a regular physical education lesson with a time-matched control condition and to determine whether autonomic recovery is associated with academic achievement in adolescents. Materials and Methods. Ninety-two adolescents completed both a physical education condition and a time-matched control condition using a within-participant repeated-measures design. Heart rate variability was recorded before and after each condition, and the root mean square of successive differences was analyzed after natural logarithmic transformation (lnRMSSD). Academic achievement was assessed using the official grade point average. Results. A significant Condition × Time interaction was observed for lnRMSSD (F(1,91)=4.06, p=0.047, partial η²=0.043). Post hoc analyses demonstrated a significant increase in lnRMSSD following physical education (p=0.003), whereas no significant change occurred during the control condition (p=0.292). Autonomic recovery following physical education was positively associated with academic achievement (r=0.52, p<0.001). Linear regression analysis showed that autonomic recovery explained 27.5% of the variance in academic achievement (R²=0.275, p<0.001). Conclusions. A regular physical education lesson elicited significantly different autonomic responses compared with a time-matched control condition. Adolescents exhibiting greater post-exercise parasympathetic recovery achieved higher academic performance. These findings indicate that autonomic recovery following physical education may represent a meaningful physiological correlate of scholastic achievement and support further longitudinal and intervention-based research examining the role of autonomic regulation in educational outcomes.