How do physical activity strongly influence ones lifelong health and fitness status?

As a parent, you need to encourage healthy habits—including exercise—in your youngsters. Physical activity should become as routine a part of their lives as eating and sleeping.

Reassure them that sports such as cycling (al­ways with a helmet), swimming, basketball, jogging, walking briskly, cross country skiing, dancing, aerobics, and soccer, played regularly, are not only fun but can promote health. Some sports, like baseball, that require only spo­radic activity are beneficial in a number of ways, but they do not promote fit­ness. Physical activity can be healthful in the following ways:

Increase Cardiovascular Endurance. More Americans die from heart dis­ease than any other ailment; regular physical activity can help protect against heart problems. Exercise can improve your child's fitness, make him feel bet­ter, and strengthen his cardiovascular system.

Aerobic activity can make the heart pump more efficiently, thus reducing the incidence of high blood pressure. It can also raise blood levels of HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, the "good" form of cholesterol that re­moves excess fats from the bloodstream. Even though most cardiovascular diseases are thought to be illnesses of adulthood, fatty deposits have been de­tected in the arteries of children as young as age three, and high blood pres­sure exists in about 5 percent of youngsters.

At least three times a week, your middle-years child needs to exercise con­tinuously for twenty to thirty minutes at a heart rate above his resting level. As a guideline, the effort involved in continuous brisk walking is adequate to maintain fitness.

Each exercise session should be preceded and followed by a gradual warm-up and cool-down period, allowing muscles, joints, and the cardiovascular sys­tem to ease into and out of vigorous activity, thus helping to guarantee a safe workout. This can be accomplished by stretching for a few minutes before and after exercise.

Improve Large Muscle Strength and Endurance. As your child's muscles become stronger, he will be able to exercise for longer periods of time, as well as protect himself from injuries—strong muscles provide better support for the joints. Modified sit-ups (knees bent, feet on the ground) can build up ab­dominal muscles, increase lung capacity, and protect against back injuries. For upper body strength, he can perform modified pull-ups (keeping the arms flexed while hanging from a horizontal bar) and modified push-ups (position­ing the knees on the ground while extending the arms at the elbow).

Increase Flexibility. For complete physical fitness, children need to be able to twist and bend their bodies through the full range of normal motions with­out overexerting themselves or causing injury. When children are flexible like this, they are more agile.

Although most people lose flexibility as they age, this process can be retarded by stretching to maintain suppleness throughout life, beginning in childhood. Stretching exercises are the best way to maintain or improve flexibility, and they can be incorporated into your child's warm-up and cool-down routines.

In most stretching exercises, your child should stretch to a position where he begins to feel tightness but not pain, then hold steady for twenty to thirty seconds before relaxing. He should not bounce as he stretches, since this can cause injury to the muscles or tendons.

Maintain Proper Weight. Twelve percent of children in the pre-puberty years are overweight, but few of these youngsters are physically active. Exercise can effectively burn calories and fat and reduce appetite.

Ask your pediatrician to help you determine whether your youngster has a healthy percentage of body fat for his or her age and sex.

Reduce Stress. Unmanaged stress can cause muscle tightness, which can con­tribute to headaches, stomachaches, and other types of discomfort. Your child needs to learn not only to recognize stress in his body but also to diffuse it effectively. Exercise is one of the best ways to control stress. A physically ac­tive child is less likely to experience stress-related symptoms than his more sedentary peers.

The benefits of physical activity and exercise have been demonstrated across the lifespan. We are meant to move and many of our body’s systems work better when we are consistently physically active.

For managing symptoms of depression, some research suggests that elevated levels of aerobic activity (exercise that significantly raises our heart rates) may be associated with greater reductions in depressive symptoms. Consider engaging in physical activity once or twice daily that includes brief periods (30-90 seconds) of greater intensity. For some, this might be accomplished through exercise in their homes including jumping jacks, mountain climbers, and sequencing strength training exercises (i.e. standing squats, push-ups, sit-ups). For others, the use of home exercise equipment such as treadmills, elliptical machines, and stationary bikes may be helpful.

Strength-training has been shown to reduce symptoms of anxiety for individuals with and without an anxiety disorder. Weightlifting using exercise equipment or household items (textbooks, canned goods, milk jugs filled with water, paint cans) may help us to reduce the negative effects of stress and anxiety.

For children and adolescents, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and exercise during the day are associated with elevations in self-esteem, improved concentration, reductions in depressive symptoms, and improvements in sleep.

For older adults and among individuals managing chronic medical conditions, regular walks are recommended. The benefits of strength training and weightlifting (low weight with high numbers of repetitions) may be even greater in older adults to maintain quality of life and functioning.

Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (such as speed-walking or jogging) has been shown to help reduce the use of alcohol and other substances. Additionally, participation in regular physical activity is shown to boost the immune system. Reduction in substance use is also associated with improvement in the body’s ability to fight off infection.

Many companies are offering free use of their on-line platforms that may help to identify a variety of in-home activities (indoor cycling, treadmill running, dance cardio, yoga, strength training, and more) to help make exercise more enjoyable during this critical period. We strongly support the idea of ongoing vigilance regarding physical-distancing and limitations on in-person contacts as guided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We recommend finding physical activities that you enjoy and to share your experience with others. At the same time, there is also evidence to suggest that exercise can be helpful to mood even if the act of doing the exercise is not as enjoyable.

It is important for family members to take a supportive role in the promotion of physical activity and exercise. Allowing individuals to maintain their autonomy and choice in their activities will be important for ongoing engagement.

We are all managing additional stress related to the growth of the COVID-19 pandemic and its potential to threaten the health of ourselves, our families, and our communities. Please consider using physical activity and exercise as a strategy to maintain health during this stressful period.

Although many things feel beyond our control right now, we do have the ability to be creative and to build physical activity and exercise into each of our days. We may even look back on this difficult time as the turning point when we learned new ways to build our emotional resilience and our physical health.

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