LaVerne >> Today’s children can’t ran as fast or as far as their parents did when they were children.
According to research released by the American Heart Association[1] at its annual conference in November, children around the world take an average of 90 seconds longer to run a mile than their counterparts did 30 years before. Overall, heart-related fitness has declined by 5 percent every decade since 1975 for children between 9 and 17.
One local gym owner is aiming to change that.
“What we’re really trying to do in the new year is bring fitness to the whole family,” said Emily Mora, owner of My Gym Children’s Fitness Center in LaVerne.
Mora, who’s owned the gym for several years, has spent the past year turning the site from an activity center for small children into a gym more focused on teaching children — and their parents — better fitness habits. Today, a kid doing a forward roll is less likely to hear simple praise and more likely to hear how they’re doing a great job building up their core, and parents will hear about the impact of kids’ diets on their overall health.
This spring, the My Gym franchise is going to be trying out Mora’s new program to test sites in three states.
The measurable decline in children’s fitness is no surprise to some.
“It makes sense. We have kids that are less active than before,” said Dr. Stephen Daniels, a University of Colorado pediatrician and spokesman for the Heart Association.
Experts recommend that children 6 and older get 60 minutes of moderately vigorous activity accumulated over a day. Only one-third of American kids do now. Many school districts have cut back on physical education programs due to economic pressure.
“We are currently facing the most sedentary generation of children in our history,” said Sam Kass, a White House chef and head of first lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move program, in a speech at the Heart Association’s conference.
The study was led by Grant Tomkinson, an exercise physiologist at the University of South Australia. Researchers analyzed 50 studies on running fitness — a key measure of cardiovascular health and endurance — involving 25 million children ages 9 to 17 in 28 countries from 1964 to 2010.
The studies measured how far children could run in 5 to 15 minutes and how quickly they ran a certain distance, ranging from half a mile to two miles. Today’s children are about 15 percent less fit than their parents were, researchers concluded.
“The changes are very similar for boys and girls and also for various ages,” but differed by geographic region, Tomkinson said.
The decline in fitness seems to be leveling off in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and perhaps in the last few years in North America. But it continues to fall in China, and Japan never had much falloff — fitness has remained fairly consistent there.
World Health Organization numbers suggest that 80 percent of young people globally may not be getting enough exercise.
“It’s important these days to really get your children healthy, living this healthy lifestyle so they can become healthy adults in the future,” Mora said.
The Associated Press and Staff Writer Beau Yarbrough contributed to this report.
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