The most obvious benefits of physical education class are on students' health. As the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion suggests, physical activity helps build and maintain healthy bones, muscles and joints, and it also allows teens to control weight, build lean muscle and reduce fat. In addition, exercise helps reduce blood pressure in adolescents experiencing hypertension (such as in stressful periods before important exams).
Physical education class includes much more that just playing sports, like basketball and soccer, but even this part can be beneficial for students. Apart from healthy competition that allows students to struggle for a common cause (victory) and socialize with their classmates, gym class games can also help students identify their talent in certain sports. For instance, a student's neighborhood may not have the necessary space or his friends may not be fond of a particular sport, but P.E. allows the student to try his hands at a sport and see if he can succeed in it on not.
Gym class allows students to see the benefits of exercise for themselves, as they keep fit and healthy through physical drills. According to a NewsHour Extra report, "Learning to be Fit," a specialized physical education program that takes each student's abilities and endurance into consideration can also show the fun side of exercising to students. In addition, it enables students to understand how helpful exercising can be in preventing obesity and bad health later in life.
As Dawn Podulka Coe argues in her doctoral dissertation on the importance of physical education classes, while the research does not indicate a significant relationship between P.E. and academic achievement, "vigorous" physical activity does correlate to higher academic achievements, which is a reason enough to improve P.E. programs and increase physical activity during class.