| 2006
National AAHPERD Convention
Although now back home in Pacific Northwest, I'm writing this from Salt Lake City, the site of this year's AAHPERD national convention. Together with several thousand colleagues in the allied fields of health, physical education, recreation, and dance, many of the pelinks4u editors and contributors spent the last week of April attending presentations and catching up with new developments in our area. Here's a sampling of what I learned from just a few of the presentations I attended, plus some thoughts on where technology belongs in physical education teaching.
Physical Activity - How Much
is Enough?
Two presentations, one by Cooper Institute
CEO Steve Blair, the other by Harvard Medical School researcher
I Min-Lee, addressed the amount of physical activity (PA) needed
to reduce the risk of heart disease. Apparently, the evidence is
now pretty clear that 30 minutes daily of moderate intensity PA
is sufficient for normal weight adults to reduce the risk of heart
disease and related chronic diseases.
Both Blair and Lee also noted that research showed that it was okay to accumulate the total of 30 minutes in shorter bouts spread throughout the day. Increases in total activity duration and intensity seemed to show even greater risk reduction, but the simple message of both presenters was that doing something active was better than doing nothing! One important caveat however, was that formerly overweight individuals probably needed 60-90minutes of daily PA to prevent weight gain.
Blair added that he believed resistance
training brought added benefits, noting that strong muscles were
important for sustaining good health. Blair also posed the question
of whether it was better to be fat and fit, or lean and unfit. The
data he suggested supported the former, adding that for many people
weight control was a far tougher challenge than staying physically
active. He concluded by pointing out our tendency to "engineer"
physical activity out of our daily lives through technological innovations
that are increasingly eliminating the need for physical exertion.
Janet Fulton from the CDC, and Jim Morrow
from the University of North Texas, responded to Blair's presentation
with observations of their own. Fulton pointed out that the reduction
of participation in school physical education seemed to have leveled
out and she believed that we needed to examine "environmental interventions"
to increase participation in PA. Morrow added a more disquieting
note by stating that while research clearly showed that efforts
to reduce smoking were succeeding, there was no evidence to indicate
similar progress in promoting greater participation in PA
Adults continue to spend most of their leisure time in sedentary activities. Even worse, there is evidence that not only is children's obesity continuing to increase, but proportionately it is growing faster among students in the lower school grades. Morrow's observations are of course supported by recently reported predications that by 2010, approximately 50% of our students will be overweight.
For more information on the latest findings
about physical activity see the newly updated report on the Shape
of the Nation scheduled for release this month.
This editorial continues here.
Sincerely,
Steve Jefferies, pelinks4u publisher
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