Curing the Teenage Couch Potato

American Fitness, May, 2000

Young people who spend too much time indoors are setting themselves up for a future of coronary heart disease, hypertension, obesity and osteoporosis, reports Research Digest, a publication of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. Research shows that what we do to our bodies--or don't do while we're growing up--will surface clinically in our older adult years. Plus, adolescent physical activity habits are more likely to track into adulthood. Young people who only get out of the La-Z-Boy long enough to stock up on Pringles[R] and Pepsi[R] may one day find their medicine cabinets stocked with expensive pharmaceuticals.

To maintain high levels of physical activity, Research Digest recommends teenagers participate in organized sports. There is, however, a bit of a paradox here. Opportunities to participate in organized sports decrease during the teen years. Unlike elementary school, where any child can make the team (no matter how athletically skilled or unskilled they may be), "everybody plays" programs disappear in high school and are replaced by highly competitive programs designed for athletically skilled students.

When it comes to physical education classes, a youth risk behavior survey reveals a downward trend in enrollment during high school. In the ninth grade, 81 percent of females and males were participating in physical education. By their senior year, however, these numbers had fallen to 39 percent and 45 percent respectively. Gym is no longer cool by this point.

Research Digest suggests providing adolescents with a choice of activities may prove more effective than physical education programs that dictate a curriculum. For instance, when using community programs, it might be possible to offer a choice of activities such as rock climbing, in-line skating or kayaking. If intramural sports cannot be made available within the school programs, community recreation departments could develop such activities. They also put forward the idea that school gymnasiums, exercise rooms and pools could be geared specifically to adolescent groups during evening hours.