The Effect of Stretching Exercises Education on Mental Health and Learning Strategies

Introduction: Mental health is a combination of emotional, psychological and social well-being. It affects the way of thinking, feeling and acting. Mental health is very important at every stage of life and it could be affected by physical activity. Therefore in the current studey, the effect of stretching exercises education on mental health and learning strategies was investigated. Methods: In this quasi- experimental study, 100 online management courses students were selected and divided randomly into two groups of exercise and control on the same subject. The exercise group were asked to practice selected stretching exercises that were made available to them as movies on their given break time after 45 min since start of the class before continuing their study again. Both groups answered the Weinstein (2002) learning strategies questionnaire at the beginning and the end of the course. All data were analyzed using SPSS 23. Kolmogorov-Smirnov, paired sample t-test, independent samples t-test, and Pearson correlation coefficient, were used for data analysis (p≤0.05). Results: There was a significant difference between learning strategies (p=0.001) in two groups of exercise and control. Also the subscales, attitude (p= 0.003), information processing (p= 0.001), study aid (p= 0.003) and time management (p= 0.001) had a significant chenges on post-test. Conclusion: Improvement of mental health increases the effect of learning strategies. Applying stretching exercises on educational content can improve mental health which results in increasing the productivity of work and achieving educational goals.