Fitness and Health

Fitness and Health

DONNELLAN, CRAIG (2006) ‘Fitness and Health’ Volume 113. Published by Independence, Cambridge.

In recent years we have become aware of our need of exercise especially for children. 9 out of 10 children are not getting enough exercise to ensure that will become healthy adults. Only 10 per cent of young people get one hour of physical activity per day that health experts and scientists say is necessary and needed. Becoming lazy and ‘couch potatoes’ leads to obesity and a number of different diseases, more and more children sat in after school watching TV or playing video games instead of meeting friends out, playing football etc.

Researcher’s monitored 4500 11 year old pupils in Bristol area, using sophisticated motion sensors called ‘accelerometers’ they found out most students did not do enough exercise during the day, some did not even exercise at all, and only a handful of students did the correct amount. Children are expected to exercise only 60 minutes per day. Children need to exercise such as walking, but also vigorous exercise like running and cycling. Vigorous intensity aerobic exercise is where you perform a certain type of exercise which increases your heart rate significantly and causes heavy and fast breathing. Parents and children need to understand balancing the energy they take in from food by burning off calories through exercise.

Britain was third fattest in the world after the US and Malta, 22 percent of boys and 28 per cent of girls aged 2-15 in England, which is a huge amount. Neville Rigby of the International Obesity Task Force, said ‘We live in a society where parents are too frightened to let their kids out to play, school playing fields have been sold off and streets are so packed with parked cars that youngsters have nowhere to kick a ball around even if they feel like it.’

Why Exercise is Wise

Children need more physical activity than adults, children need 60minutes per day, and adults need 30minutes of exercise 5 or more times per week which experts agree with. Being more active is not just about running, swimming, and playing a certain sport, being more active also involves walking, gardening and climbing the stairs, which is in our daily routine. There are lots of advantages of being more active, and you will start to feel the benefits such as: better health, more energy, reduce stress, stronger bones and muscles, better balance, more independence in later life, improves sleep, more social opportunities, a sense of achievement, increased enjoyment. This shows that being more active helps physical and mental health, we need to exercise our heart, it is the most important muscle we have, and it needs to keep fit so it can pump blood efficiently with each heartbeat.

There are also certain health problems which being active helps with too; coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, stress, depression, obesity, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, certain cancers, abnormal blood cholesterol levels.

Aerobic Exercise

Making sure your heart gets a good workout is important, aerobic exercises is any type of exercise that gets your heart pumping and the muscles using oxygen, you will notice your body using more oxygen when you start breathing faster) If you give your heart this type of workout regularly, your heart will get stronger and more efficient in delivering oxygen (in the form of oxygen-carrying blood cells) to all different part of the body. Being in a team sport is a great way to make sure you get enough aerobic exercise per week, maybe even more which is great! But there are other types of forms of exercise too, you do not need to be in a team sport, but most children join a team at school weather its football, basketball, swimming etc. After finishing school is when people start doing less activities, like I said before most children join a club or team at school which helps towards keeping fit, after you leave school you still need to find some way of keeping fit such as swimming, biking, hiking, dancing.

Flexibility Training

Strengthening the heart and other muscles is not the only important goal when exercising. Exercise also helps keeping your body, joints and muscles flexible, people who are flexible can worry less about strained muscles and sprain. Some sports such as gymnastics and dance you need to be flexible, but it also helps in football and other sports too. Warming up before a workout is especially important, but during a warm up and cool down is a perfect opportunity for some stretching and help develop your flexibility.