I’m a massive advocate of everyone doing ‘activity’ and sport. It has huge benefits for both the body and the brain. So aside from the obvious health benefits for our hearts and cardiovascular systems it develops interoception/proprioception (knowing where are bodies are in space as well as in relation to other parts of us), mobility, strength, coordination, confidence, determination and competition.

I had a quick ‘AI’ about ‘recommended’ exercise for children and here’s what it came up with;

Children and adolescents (5 to 17 years)

• Daily duration: An average of at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity every day is recommended.
• Variety of activities: This activity should include a variety of types and intensities to develop movement skills, muscular fitness, and bone strength.
• Intense activities (at least 3 days/week): Vigorous-intensity activities and those that strengthen muscle and bone should be incorporated at least three days per week.
  • Vigorous examples: Fast running, swimming, or sports like football and basketball.
  • Muscle-strengthening examples: Climbing on playground equipment, resistance exercises using body weight, or push-ups.
  • Bone-strengthening examples: Hopping, skipping, and jumping.
• Limit sedentary time: These age groups should also minimize the time they spend sitting or lying down for extended periods. 

I was a little surprised by the 60 mins/day if I’m honest. I’m not sure why given that from a young age I was a competitive gymnast then diver (off boards, Tom Daley type) and we trained for at least 2 hours every day and I thought that was pretty normal.

Perhaps we can think of those children who go off fairly early and specialise in a sport versus those who participate at a recreational level. Possibly getting less ‘sporty’ kids doing 60mins a day might be hard especially given the age of smart phones, tablets and easily accessible on demand TV. In my day, if you didn’t like Blue Peter or Byker Grove you were a bit stuck.

From a Physio perspective we tend to see kids who have started to specialise in sports and their volume increases. Potentially there is a lack of variation in the activity – only play football, only do gymnastics. Possibly this is biased to certain times of the week so training and matches are loaded towards the weekend. Are they getting adequate wraparound support – fitness, mobility, techniquebiomechanical work, body preparation/conditioning work? Possibly not in my experience but understandably so when we tend to rely on volunteers/parents to provide coaching so we can’t expect them to have extensive knowledge of these things.

These are all considerations that apply to adults too but we do need to bare in mind that childrens’ skeletons are immature so loading needs to be considerate – recovery time, variation and variety of activity to prevent overload that cannot be managed by the body.

So what am I saying?? DO exercise, it’s good for us. If they’re doing a lot, write it down in a table/spreadsheet/calendar and see if there could be any potential overload points. Is your child ‘prepared’ for this type of activity? Is their balance good, can they squat, jump, hop and land without looking like they’ve just come out of a washing machine? Do they look and behave like they’re strong enough or do they look weak, tired and overwhelmed by activity.

That’s a lot of information without necessarily giving a lot of definite do’s/dont’s and that’s because kids, like adults are all different, hence not everyone is going to become an Olympic sprinter or wrestler or the Stephen Hawking or Stephen Fry, so it’s about tailoring and preparing as best we can.

If you think you could do with some help, please get in touch and by all means speak to one of our Physios, 656340 or book online here.