Just like the ABCs of a language, there are the ABCs of physical activity. The fundamental movement skills that make up the ABCs of physical activity can be broken down into three categories: 1. Locomotor skills: Running, jumping, hopping and skipping 2. Object-control skills: Catching, throwing, kicking and bouncing 3. Stability skills: Balancing, twisting, rotation…
Eight-year-old Marcus lives in the city. Surrounded by busy streets and unpredictable strangers, “outside” has become an unsafe place to play. Not having the athletic predisposition to compete and enjoy sports, Marcus has gravitated away from youth sports leagues, and his grade school has been forced to cut their physical education program due to lack…
Physically confident and competent children are active for life, but far too many of America’s youth are physically inactive. Health and fitness professionals are in a great position to help kids become more physically active and, as a result, more physically literate. To begin, consider how academic literacy is developed. Through the process of neural…
According to the CDC, 17.7% of children age 6 to 11 are considered obese. This means that fitness professionals have a very important role in the fitness of future generations. By focusing on youth fitness, the fitness professional can help proactively reduce the obesity epidemic in our country and help the youth of America love…
ACE Advocacy and Outreach Financially supporting your children is part of the imaginary contract you sign when you become a parent, but we all know this can be a struggle for a lot of families. Unfortunately, tight family budgets can make it difficult to pay for the extracurricular activities kids want to participate in, like youth sport…
Youth need regular opportunities to be physically active. Unfortunately, schools are not meeting their needs through physical education classes and recess, and many children and adolescents live in neighborhoods with limited space and options for safe, age-appropriate physical activity outside of school hours. To address this topic, the American Council on Exercise and the Alliance…
Youth training is more popular than ever. This may be attributed, in part, to the fact that over the past three decades, childhood obesity has significantly increased, predisposing many children to health problems and chronic disease (Xu et al., 2016; Copeland et al., 2013; Springer et al., 2013). This has raised awareness regarding exercise in…
Resistance training is essential for optimal growth and development in the youth population and has shown to be safe and effective (Faigenbaum et al., 2009). This form of training can provide significant benefits within this group, which may have a substantial impact on future participation in physical activity and decrease risk of health complications. Furthermore,…
The Active People, Healthy Nation initiative from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a mission of helping 27 million Americans become physically active and “creating an active America, together.” There are three distinct elements involved in reaching that 27 million milestone: (1) inspiring inactive individuals to perform at least one 10-minute session…