UW Researchers Lead Community-Engaged Mountain Biking Research with Laramie Middle School Students

For the past five years, two University of Wyoming researchers have focused on the benefits of biking for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) treatment and student motivation for biking outside of physical education, with a grant from a biking-focused nonprofit and the Laramie community.

Cynthia Hartung, a professor in UW's Department of Psychology, and Tristan Wallhead, a professor in UW's Division of Kinesiology and Health, conducted research with Laramie Middle School (LMS) students using grant funding from Outride. The organization is the nonprofit arm of Specialized Bicycle Components, which provided LMS with a class set of bikes and a physical education curriculum -- Riding for Focus -- for middle schools.

Hartung and Wallhead's research was recently featured in a release from Outride, which can be viewed at https://outridebike.org/newsblog/2026/6/16/the-laramie-way-how-a-community-on-bikes-became-a-model-for-whats-possiblenbsp.

Outride "provides research, cycling programs and funding to empower all people to experience the social, emotional and cognitive benefits of cycling," according to the mission statement on its website.

Hartung's research -- in collaboration with Derek Smith, an associate professor in the Division of Kinesiology and Health -- is focused on studying the effects of high intensity interval training (HIIT) on the executive functioning of middle and high school students with and without ADHD disorder.

Wallhead's study -- published as a chapter in the 2025 book "Teaching and Coaching Lifestyle Sports" by Wallhead; Kelly Simonton, a UW associate professor of physical education teaching education; Tamara Abu-Ramadan, a former UW graduate student from Syracuse, N.Y.; and Hartung -- investigated whether the Riding for Focus Biking program in physical education carried student motivation into extracurricular biking activities. This research is in line with previous research Wallhead has conducted on physical education leading to increased student extracurricular physical activity.

Hartung -- whose work has included developing treatments for adolescents and young adults with ADHD disorder -- spoke about her research with college students on cycling and ADHD at the Stanford campus as part of Outride's annual summit in 2018.

Following her presentation, Hartung contacted Jamie Simmons, a former UW student and now a physical education teacher at LMS, about Outride's Riding for Focus program. Hartung also assisted the middle school in receiving funding support from the nonprofit Laramie BikeNet, of which she's a board member, to obtain volunteers and assist with things such as bike maintenance. After a program was in place at LMS, Hartung then applied for grant funding from Outride to UW, bringing in Smith and Wallhead, who collaborate with Hartung.

"I think there's a lot of benefits from this symbiotic relation between research, education and community engagement, because it's benefiting the middle schoolers after they got the bike program," Hartung says. "We just really have a lot of cool things going in the community in terms of promoting cycling, in particular, and then also doing this research on it. So, it's synergistic."

Hartung has been investigating the connection between cycling and ADHD -- and exercise in general -- since 2018, she says.

HIIT for Executive Function

Hartung's research, "Acute Effects of High-Intensity Interval Training via Cycling on Executive Functioning in Middle School Students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder," part of the Outride grant, examines the acute effects of HIIT on executive function by assessing executive function both with and without exercise beforehand, Hartung says. This study, focused on middle and high school students, is still ongoing as they work to gather a sample size of 24 students with ADHD and 24 students without ADHD to accurately compare the groups with and without exercise, and to have a representation of male and female students.

"We're interested in middle school, high school and college students because we ultimately would like to know if this works across all developmental stages, and there's actually a fairly good bit of evidence showing that it is helpful in children, and there's less evidence in adolescents and college students," Hartung says, adding that adolescents and emerging adults are understudied.

Hartung's research into the benefits of exercise via cycling involves the use of a stationary bike, she says, because it's accessible and allows participants to engage in moderate to vigorous levels of physical activity.

In the study, participants come to the lab twice -- exercising during one visit and not exercising during their other visit -- to take computer tests measuring executive function and complete next-day symptom measures of ADHD, depression, anxiety and sleep.

Her research with these middle and high school students is similar to her previously published research involving college students, published in 2022, which received a grant from the Wyoming IDeA Networks for Biomedical Research Excellence program, she says.

A study from Hartung with college students, "Acute Effects of Physical Exercise on Cognitive and Psychological Functioning in College Students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder," was the dissertation of Patrick LaCount, a former UW graduate student from Fort Collins, Colo. It also included Smith among the co-authors.

The study found those with ADHD exhibited improvements in measures of executive function within normal range after exercise. The control group -- the students without ADHD -- did not have an attention deficit, so there was less room to improve. But exercise could have positively impacted them in other ways, Hartung says.

This study suggested physical exercise may result in executive function improvements and promote brain development, while also being inexpensive as a form of ADHD treatment with limited abuse potential and side effects, such as with medication.

What is not yet known is how long the positive effects last and the role the frequency, time and type of the exercise plays, Hartung says.

While Hartung studies the impact cycling and exercise may have on students' ADHD, Wallhead focused on their motivation.

Biking and Motivation for Physical Activity

The study, titled "Taking it out of PE: Transfer of mountain biking in physical education to extra-curricular contexts," was written by Wallhead, Simonton, Abu-Ramadan and Hartung. To study the effect of the Riding for Focus program on students' motivation to participate in extracurricular biking, Wallhead studied 272 students, which included an outdoor mountain biking physical education intervention using the Riding for Focus program. Students also were offered the option to participate in a bi-weekly, voluntary after-school mountain biking club to gauge their motivation for extracurricular participation.

This research was an opportunity for interdisciplinary, community-based collaboration with UW faculty and graduate students providing expertise to develop research protocols and financial support for an after-school mountain biking club. LMS provided trained physical education teachers and volunteers as biking coaches. Community volunteers also lent a hand with coaching, Wallhead says.

His previous research has examined the impact physical education curriculum has on students' motivation for extracurricular physical activity regarding sports, he says. To promote lifelong physical activity, the type of activities included in physical education needed broadening.

He proposed that including more lifetime activities -- such as hiking and biking in physical education -- could lead to more transfer outside physical education.

From 2021-24, Wallhead collected data from the fall and spring after-school clubs, when biking also occurred during physical education. This length of time was needed to build a large enough sample size for statistical analysis of the Trans-Contextual Model of Motivation used in the study. The model is "a psychological theory that examines how students perceived motivation for physical education transfers to another leisure time physical activity context, such as an after-school club," Wallhead says.

The study found that lifetime sports offered in physical education classes, such as mountain biking, which builds biking competence and offers challenge by choice, may increase motivation to participate in extracurricular biking contexts and promote more gender inclusivity in extracurricular physical activity participation.

"These biking activities are likely to transfer out of PE if they tend to have greater perceived utility value that can sustain participation and appeal to both sexes -- if there is an option for both technical challenge and socializing," Wallhead says.

Wallhead's current research examines the role of choice within the after-school biking program and how this influences middle school students' motives to participate in the club.

For more information on the collaborative projects, as well as Hartung's work, visit www.uwyoall.com/current-projects.html.