Academic stress among university students has emerged as a pressing public health and youth development concern, with far-reaching consequences for mental health, academic engagement, and long-term human capital formation. Despite a growing global evidence base, the combined influence of anxiety, emotional stability, and physical fitness on academic stress and whether resilience acts as a mediating bridge between physical fitness and stress remains insufficiently examined among Indian university students.This cross-sectional study surveyed 366 university students from government, private, and autonomous institutions in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. Validated multi-item Likert scales assessed academic stress (Cronbach's α = .82), anxiety level (α = .79), emotional stability (α = .77), physical fitness frequency (α = .78), and resilience (α = .76). Statistical analyses included Pearson correlation, independent-samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, multiple linear regression with demographic controls, bootstrap mediation analysis (1,000 iterations), regression diagnostics, and machine-learning classification for robustness validation.Anxiety level emerged as the strongest positive predictor of academic stress (β = .43, p < .001), while emotional stability (β = −.28, p < .001) and physical fitness frequency (β = −.18, p < .001) were significant negative predictors. Together, these three variables explained 62% of variance in academic stress (R² = .62). Resilience did not significantly mediate the physical fitness–academic stress relationship (indirect effect = −.026; 95% CI [−.083, .028]). Academic stress did not differ significantly by gender (p = .480) or by university type (p = .312). Random Forest classification confirmed the predictor hierarchy with 82% accuracy.These findings establish that academic stress is driven primarily by psychological and behavioural rather than demographic or institutional factors, and point to the urgency of integrated campus wellness strategies that simultaneously address anxiety management, emotional regulation, and physical activity promotion in Indian higher education.