ARKANSAS — Last week I had an article lamenting the sad state of Americans’ fitness, particularly the poor condition afflicting the children of our country.
I touched briefly on the problems some parents have in recognizing the fitness and health of their own children. There are in play a variety of “myths” floating around our country that kind of serve as blinders, preventing folks from seeing how fit they really are. What follows are some of those myths and how they are misleading a lot of people.
◊Myth one - My child is not fat, therefore, he is physically fit and perfectly normal.
There is a lot more to being fit than just not being fat. One of the most unfit children I ever had in a physical education class was considered by health charts to be within a normal range of weight. When I tested this young fourth grader, he couldn’t do a single sit-up, he couldn’t even hang on to a chin-up bar much less pull himself up on one. His shuttle run test placed him in the bottom one percent of the nation, where he also scored in his flexibility test.
When he took the mile run/walk test, he took over 30 minutes to complete the four-lap task. Lest you think he was just goofing off, he recorded a pulse rate of 190 beats a minute at the finish. His heart rate was a little higher than the kids who ran the mile in the low seven minutes, meaning that he worked as hard as the others, just taking a lot longer to get there. I related this to his mother, who became alarmed and had her son checked out the next day at the doctor. There was nothing wrong with the lad, except of course that he was in an extremely weak condition due the fact that he never, I mean never, ever walked anywhere, never ran and spent all of his waking time in front of either a computer or a television set. In his case, he probably had an adequate diet buthad never developed his muscles.
The boy’s mom? After learning that he wasn’t sick or had some horrible handicap, his mother decided to take action. She asked the principal to excuse her son from P.E. as it was too much for him.
The President’s Council on Physical Fitness many years ago did a 10-year study of American youth. They tested thousands of American children and developed some standards and data on what constitutes fitness.
Since about half of American kids were considered to be adequately fit (as compared to about 25 percent today), a score of 50 percent was considered normal with scores in the 40s and below considered reasons for some interventions.
For a 10-year-old boy to be considered “fit” in the very loosest connotation of that word, he would need to: (1) be able to do 35 sit-ups, (2) stretch one inch past the soles of his feet sitting on the floor with the legs straight and hands together, (3) do one pull-up, (4) do a shuttle run (30 feet back and forth four times) in 11.3 seconds, and (5) run a mile in 9:48. For a 10-year-old girl to have a similar score, she would need to be able to (1) do 30 sit-ups, (2) stretch three inches, (3) do one pull-up, (4) run the shuttle in 12.1, and (5) run the mile in 11:22.
◊Myth two - My child is active in sports and is therefore fit.
Most kids sports, while worthwhile and fun, do not affect a child’s fitness level one way or another.
As a veteran T-ball coach, I would dare say that most kids who play that sport never so much as break a sweat. While learning better eye-hand coordination,or learning a particular skill is good for a kid’s mental development, that in itself does nothing for a child’s physical fitness.
A sport that meets once or twice a week that doesn’t involve running in some way won’t have much effect in a child’s health. We have all attended practices in the kids sports where a lot of the time is spent with kids standing around listening to adults talk. Even where the adults aren’t talking to kids standing or sitting still, a lot of time is spent with kids standing in line waiting for their turn to attempt a particular skill.
Any sport that can raise a child’s heart rate on a regular basis will have a positive effect. Individual sports that involve running or swimming do the most good, as all participants will get equal workouts no matter the skill level. Kids team sports also don’t do much for the kids who spend most of their time sitting out, which due to the nature of team sports, will be most of them.
◊Myth three - Running is not necessary for a child to be physically fit.
Americans, for a large part, look upon the act of running as something best avoided. However, since the dawn of man, the number one best overall exercise activity is running. Not necessarily racing, but running nonetheless.A study of human anatomy will tell you then we are made to run. The way our feet are formed, the way our legs are put together and the way we move about this planet tells us that we are designed to run.
In 1991, when I was a P.E. teacher in east Arkansas, I had 180 kids of elementary ages in my classes. I decided to spend the year doing activities that involved running in some manner or another. We even kept track of distances covered with the kids all seeking to cover 100 miles before the end of the school year.
I tested the kids in all five fitness areas (pull-ups, situps, stretching, shuttle and mile run) when the school term began. I did not test them again until the end of the school year, not doing so much as one sit-up or pull-up along the way.
When I tested them again in May, their mile times were mostly in the top 10 percentile of the nation as you might expect, but all the other areas tested resulted in doubling and even tripling of scores. The scores earned the school a plaque as we had the highest fitness scores in the state that year.
I could relate dozens of stories of athletes who, after deciding to put more running into their training, reached levels of success that others thought unlikely.
More important than athletic success though, is a person’s health. The two most important organs in our bodies are our hearts and lungs. The stronger those organs are, the longer they will keep us alive.
The Pentagon generals in my earlier column had come to the conclusion that in order to change the direction of America’s downward spiraling state of health, something had to be done with America’s youth. Next column I will be discussing what that something could be.
Sports, Pages 8 on 02/17/2010