Promote physical activity as a way of life

As a parent, you should encourage healthy habits in your children, including exercise. Physical activity should become as much a part of their lives as eating and sleeping.

Assure them that sports, such as cycling (always with a helmet), swimming, basketball, jogging, dynamic walks, cross-country skiing, dancing, aerobic exercise, and soccer, if practiced regularly, not only are fun but they also promote health. Some sports, such as baseball, that require only sporadic activity, are beneficial in many ways, but they do not promote physical fitness. Physical activity can be good for your health for the following reasons:

Increases cardiovascular endurance. Americans die more often from heart disease than from any other disease. Regular physical activity can help protect you from heart problems. Exercise can improve your child's fitness, make him feel better, and strengthen his cardiovascular system.

Aerobic activity can make your heart pump more efficiently. This reduces the incidence of high blood pressure. It can also increase the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol in the blood. HDL is the "good" form of cholesterol that removes excess fat from the bloodstream. Although most cardiovascular diseases are believed to be diseases of adulthood, fatty deposits have been found in the arteries of children as young as three years old, and high blood pressure occurs in about 5% of young people.

At least three times a week, if your child is an older child, he should exercise continuously for twenty to thirty minutes, at a heart rate higher than his resting rate. As a guideline, the effort involved in continuous dynamic walking is adequate to maintain good physical condition.

Each exercise session should be preceded by a gradual warm-up period and followed by a gradual cool-down period. This allows the muscles, joints, and cardiovascular system to adapt to the speeding up or slowing down of strenuous activity, helping to ensure a safe workout. This can be achieved by stretching the muscles for a few minutes before and after exercise.

Improves strength and endurance of muscles.

As the muscles get stronger, the child will be able to exercise for longer periods and also protect himself from injury; strong muscles provide greater support to the joints. Modified squats (with knees bent and feet on the floor) can develop abdominal muscles, increase lung capacity, and protect against back injuries. To strengthen your upper body, you can perform modified pull-ups (keeping your arms flexed while hanging from a horizontal bar) and modified push-ups (placing your knees on the floor while extending your arms at the elbow).

Increase flexibility.

To achieve full fitness, children must be able to twist and flex their bodies within the full range of normal motion, without overexertion or injury. When children have this flexibility, they are more agile.

Although most people lose flexibility over the years, this process can be delayed with stretching exercises to maintain agility throughout life, beginning in childhood. Stretching exercises are the best way to maintain or improve flexibility, and can be incorporated into your child's warm-up and cool-down routines.

For most stretching exercises, your child should stretch into a position where he feels tension but not pain. Then she should stay in that position for twenty to thirty seconds before relaxing. He should not bounce when he stretches, as this can cause injury to the muscles or tendons.

Maintains the proper weight.

12% of prepubertal children are overweight, but few of these young people are physically active. Exercise can actually burn calories and fat and reduce your appetite.

Ask your pediatrician to help you determine if your child has a healthy body fat percentage for someone her age and gender.

Reduce stress.

Unmanaged stress can cause muscle tension. It can contribute to headaches, stomachaches, and other types of discomfort. Your child needs to learn not only to recognize stress in his body but to reduce it effectively as well. Exercise is one of the best ways to manage stress. A child who is physically active is less likely to have stress-related symptoms than his more sedentary peers.