Thanks to broad-based public information campaigns, many parents in the United States increasingly are aware of the toll lack of regular exercise takes on their children. Study after study indicates that a high percentage of American youngsters are overweight, even obese, and that their short and long-term health suffers as result. To remedy the problem, many parents turn to organized sports to provide regular exercise. The idea is a good one. Turns out, though, that the execution of that idea is problematic.
The problem is that most kids involved in youth sports apparently don’t get as much exercise in those programs as parents believe. A recent study reported in a pediatric medical journal exposes the shortcomings of many of the programs. The study of 200 California kids aged 7-14 who played soccer, football and baseball. Using sensors to record physical activity, researchers discovered that kids, on average, were inactive for about 30 minutes per practice. Clearly, kids in those programs gained little in the way of additional physical activity.
There are, to be fair, youth sports programs that are well organized and provide regular and vigorous physical exercise. Many, it now seems, do not. Many of the latter are run by volunteers who are fully engaged in the program, work well with kids and who become admirable role models in many instances for the kids in their charge. They are not trained, however, to emphasize fitness. The result, on the whole, is alarming.
Long-standing national guidelines suggest that children and adolescents – boys and girls – engage in moderate-to-heavy physical activity every day. Unfortunately, most do not. Indeed, less than 50 percent of U.S. children and 10 percent of teens attain that level of activity.
Girls, especially, fail to meet the mark. One study indicates that girls in the United States on average spend 10 minutes or less in physical activity each day. It’s hardly a wonder, then, that worried parents seek ways to provide physical activity for their children.