Introduction: In recent years, due to changes in lifestyle, eating habits and inactivity, obesity and overweight statistics have increased among society members, especially students, and it has become a problem. Obesity and overweight in students can lead to problems such as reduced academic performance, reduced motivation and psychological problems. Therefore, the importance of creating physical activity programs, group games and creating fresh and dynamic school environments to improve the executive functions, academic motivation of obese or overweight students is more necessary than ever. It seems that rhythmic sports activities combined with music can increase mental and motor performance in children due to the two factors of rhythm and movement. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of sports activities on the academic motivation of overweight and obese students.
Methodology: The statistical population for this study consists of all female students in Shahrekord City's second elementary school round, ages 9 to 13, who are inactive, obese, or overweight in 1402–1403. The sampling process was multistage and random. A multi-stage cluster sampling technique was used to choose four Shahrekord elementary schools, and one class was randomly selected from each center's classes. After that, 80 individuals were arbitrarily divided into four groups: 1) regular sport activity without music, 2) regular sport activity with music, 3) rhythmic sport activity with music, and 4) rhythmic sport activity without music. Eight training sessions were conducted as part of the school's physical education physical activity program. The experimental group participated in two 45-minute lessons each week for eight weeks, which included standard physical activities with and without music and rhythmic games with and without music. Before and after the end of the intervention, students' academic motivation was evaluated using Harter's academic motivation questionnaire. The dependent t-test was used. A significance level of less than 0.05 was considered.
Results: The results showed that the average academic motivation of the subjects after eight weeks of the intervention (four training methods) by controlling the effect of the pre-test, there is no significant difference between the four groups in terms of the academic motivation variable (P<0.05).
Conclusion: It seems that the reason for the non-significance of the effect of sports exercises in this research on academic motivation is that the people in this study may not have participated in any other sports or exercises outside of school. According to the research results, school-based physical activity alone may not be enough to improve academic motivation.