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Louisiana Action for Healthy Kids - Team Nutrition
60 Minutes of Physical Activity
Students should aim to accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate physical activity most days of the week, preferably daily. Moderate physical activity is any activity that requires about as much energy as walking two miles in 30 minutes.
Physical activities for children and teens include:
- Play tag
- Jump rope
- Walk, wheel, skip, or run
- Play actively during school recess
- Actively participate in physical education classes
- Join after-school or community physical activity programs
Regular physical activity offers students many health benefits including:
- Improves aerobic endurance and muscular strength
- Helps control weight, build lean muscle, and reduces fat
- Helps build greater bone mass, which may help prevent osteoporosis in adulthood
- Helps build and maintain healthy muscle joints
- Prevents or delays the development of high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes
- Helps reduce blood pressure in some adolescents with hypertension
- May favorably affect blood lipid profiles
- Improves self-esteem
Students spend seven to eight hours each day in school and up to one to two hours in transit, frequently passive transit. Physical education classes may be one of the few opportunities for many students, especially adolescents, to engage in weekly physical activity. Schools provide safe places for exercise for our nation's youth. In many communities, the only such place may be the school. Therefore, it is necessary for the school to provide time for the students to achieve the goal of engaging in 60 minutes of physical activity each day.
Lifelong physical activity programs for young people are most likely to be effective when the programs:
- Emphasize enjoyable participation in physical activities that are easily done throughout life
- Offer a diverse range of noncompetitive and competitive activities appropriate for different ages and abilities
- Give young people the skills and confidence they need to be physically active
- Promote physical activity through all components of a State coordinated school health program and develop links between school and community program.
Qualified, certified and appropriately trained physical education/health teachers are crucial for a quality physical education program. Students should be physically active at least 50 of the class period. Adolescents should engage in three or more sessions per week of activities that last 20 minutes or more at a time and that require moderate to vigorous levels of exertion.
At home parents should limit the time they spend in sedentary activities such as watching television or playing computer or video games.
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