A new study on the fitness of British children has been undertaken by Essex University, and the findings have been published in child health journal Acta Paediatrica. The data makes for rather gloomy reading, and has fuelled concerns about the lifestyle of the modern child.
The study compared the fitness of 315 10-year-olds in 2008 with 309 kids who were 10 in 1998, and found that today's generation are physically weaker. They can't do as many sit-ups, find it harder to hang from wall bars, and have less muscle mass than their 90s counterparts. This has been blamed on the decline of traditional activities such as tree-climbing and rope-climbing - these kinds of activities have been hit by health and safety fears, where the threat of litigation is always looming, and the rise of indoor pursuits such as videogaming and social networking.
Dr Gavin Sandercock, fitness expert and lead author of the Essex University study, said children were now less able to lift and hold their own body weight. Although the average height to weight ratio has remained the same, children have become weaker, less muscular, and incapable of performing physical tasks that were regarded as straightforward by previous generations.
From 1998 to 2008, the number of sit-ups 10-year-olds can do dropped by 27.1%, arm strength decreased by 26% and grip strength by 7%. In 1998, 1 in 20 children couldn't hold their own weight when hanging from wall bars. In 2008, that had risen to 1 in 10.
Even though previous research indicated that he was likely to find that children had become less fit and less active, Dr Sandercock was still shocked at some of his findings. One of the more intriguing insights was that children's BMIs have remained steady - this throws the Government's focus on the National Child Measurement Programme, which takes BMI as an indication of fitness, into question. Plainly, their needs to be a more multifaceted approach to checking the fitness of our young population, and attitudes towards what constitutes an acceptable level of physical risk need to be relaxed.
The study compared the fitness of 315 10-year-olds in 2008 with 309 kids who were 10 in 1998, and found that today's generation are physically weaker. They can't do as many sit-ups, find it harder to hang from wall bars, and have less muscle mass than their 90s counterparts. This has been blamed on the decline of traditional activities such as tree-climbing and rope-climbing - these kinds of activities have been hit by health and safety fears, where the threat of litigation is always looming, and the rise of indoor pursuits such as videogaming and social networking.
Dr Gavin Sandercock, fitness expert and lead author of the Essex University study, said children were now less able to lift and hold their own body weight. Although the average height to weight ratio has remained the same, children have become weaker, less muscular, and incapable of performing physical tasks that were regarded as straightforward by previous generations.
From 1998 to 2008, the number of sit-ups 10-year-olds can do dropped by 27.1%, arm strength decreased by 26% and grip strength by 7%. In 1998, 1 in 20 children couldn't hold their own weight when hanging from wall bars. In 2008, that had risen to 1 in 10.
Even though previous research indicated that he was likely to find that children had become less fit and less active, Dr Sandercock was still shocked at some of his findings. One of the more intriguing insights was that children's BMIs have remained steady - this throws the Government's focus on the National Child Measurement Programme, which takes BMI as an indication of fitness, into question. Plainly, their needs to be a more multifaceted approach to checking the fitness of our young population, and attitudes towards what constitutes an acceptable level of physical risk need to be relaxed.
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