Effects of Exercise on Students with Intellectual Disability

Mentally retarded children, because of special mental conditions are more sedentary than healthy people. Their physical inactivity leads to motor and body weaknesses. Physical education is one of the key areas of education plays an important role in achieving the goals of education. This paper presents the results of various researches about the effects of exercise on various factors, physical fitness, postural control and physiological characteristics, mental health and learning skills. The results of researches show that exercise is beneficial in many dimensions for students with intellectual disability. These indicators include improving physical fitness, especially cardiovascular and muscular fitness, balance, posture such as spinal angles and lower extremity anomalies, adaptive behavior, social adjustment, cognitive development, motor learning and the reduction of aggression. Exercises can also be training programs or different sports, direct and indirect methods including physical education classes in school or regular exercise and weight resistance exercises, corrective exercises or Play Therapy. As a result, this people with an appropriate exercise program will have the opportunity to be trained physically and mentally and dexterity. And therefore they can have an active and healthy life when entering adulthood and this shows the importance of physical activity and physical education among these people.