Do Exercise Programs Help Children Stay Fit?

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http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/do-exercise-programs-help-children-stay-fit/?ref=health



Getting children to be more physically active seems as if it should be so simple. Just enroll them in classes and programs during school or afterward that are filled with games, sports and other activities.

But an important new review of the outcomes of a wide range of different physical activity interventions for young people finds that the programs almost never increase overall daily physical activity. The youngsters run around during the intervention period, then remain stubbornly sedentary during the rest of the day.

For the review, which was published last week in the British medical journal BMJ, researchers from the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry in England collected data from 30 studies related to exercise interventions in children that had been published worldwide between January 1990 and March 2012.

To be included in the review, the studies had to have involved children younger than 16, lasted for at least four weeks, and reported objectively measured levels of physical fitness, like wearing motion sensors that tracked how much they moved, not just during the exercise classes but throughout the rest of the day. The studies included an American program in which elementary school-age students were led through a 90-minute session of vigorous running and playing after school, three times a week. Another program involved Scottish preschool youngsters and 30 minutes of moderate physical playtime during school hours, three times a week.