How to Establish Healthy Exercise For Kids
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, 1 out of every 5 children in the United States struggles with childhood obesity. When looking at this astonishing statistic, it’s important to educate ourselves on childhood obesity prevention and healthy exercise for kids, making sure they can get fit, stay fit, and increase their energy. Heart Zones philosophy on childhood obesity prevention is a simple formula—eat well, exercise strong, and move the mind by engaging the heart. After all, inactive kids can often become inactive adults which sets an unhealthy precedent for life, so let’s do something about it now and pave a path for success and invest in our kids health safety.
It’s no secret that exercise for kids typically means fun games that keep them active and engaged—it’s achievable for them and delivers unbelievable benefits. A big part of childhood obesity prevention is understanding all of the advantages that come with an active lifestyle such as overall increased strength and endurance, improved cardiometabolic fitness like decreased risk of type 2 diabetes and lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, improved mood, behavior and sleep, enhanced ability to learn, increased attention in school, and increased capability to handle physical and emotional hurdles. To strive for these benefits, there are three core types of exercises for kids including endurance/aerobic, strength, and flexibility. But, this still begs the question—how can we incorporate these types of exercises and combine them with Heart Zones personalized fitness tracking and engagement technology and programs to effectively tackle childhood obesity prevention?
According to the American Heart Association, children and adolescents should participate in at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) every day (you can track MVPA using the Heart Zones system to make sure you’re hitting personal goals)! The best way to achieve this goal is with the main three categories of exercises for kids. For example, endurance/aerobic activities include games like tag, basketball, cycling, swimming, and running, while strength exercises include climbing, lifting, and jumping. Lastly, examples of flexibility exercises for kids might include stretching, gymnastics, dance, yoga, and martial arts.
All of these exercise categories can vary depending on the age of the child, so it’s key to weave age-appropriate exercises into their routine—as long as they’re moving every day (preferably to the beat of their heart and their heart rate monitor)! Since Heart Zones is all about connecting your head and your heart, here are some optimal endurance/aerobic exercise suggestions for various age groups, making it an inclusive experience for every kid.
According to Stanford Children’s Health, aerobic activities for children ages 6-9 involve running, walking, chasing, jumping, and games like basketball. Childhood obesity prevention aerobic exercises for kids 10-12 can be more advanced like dancing, biking, skiing, and tennis. Aerobic exercises for kids 13-17 are often more complex and can include lacrosse, volleyball, badminton, and swimming. Regardless of what exercises your child is ready for, the key to childhood obesity prevention is to combine regular physical activity with a healthy, balanced diet, avoid a sedentary lifestyle filled with excess screen time and sedentary video games, and set unique fitness goals to strive for using Heart Zones real-time personalized fitness data. By monitoring individual effort and progress using Heart Zones wearables, kids can easily build exercise into their routine in a fun way and treat their individual benchmarks as a goal to hit. This increases their chances of beating childhood obesity and it’s companion risks. When we can take data and turn it into a game for our kids to win, we can call that a win-win. When we teach kids physical literacy and the why behind their data, we give them a chance to truly understand their bodies and hearts. Knowing is better than guessing.
Heart Zones is passionate about childhood obesity prevention and motivating kids to pursue healthy lifestyles using our patented methodology and user-friendly technology. Our mission is to get everyone fit, even kids who struggle with their weight or any health challenge from A to Z—asthma to zinc toxicity. So, giving them personal, tangible support that helps them strive for and keep track of their goals is a big win for all. Wondering how you can make sure your kids are staying active and meeting the American Heart Association’s MVPA standards? Learn more about the Heart Zones system and wearable technology to unlock a new level of personalized fitness that motivates the mind and engages the heart.