Experts say children need one hour of moderate physical activity each day – more than the two hours of PE offered in schools TAM FRY
Honorary chair, Child Growth Foundation, and spokesperson for the National Obesity Forum
J
ust over a year ago, I attended a Physical Activity Network
seminar in Westminster, organised to report on the progress of this offshoot of the government’s much-vaunted Responsibility Deal. The Deal, you will remember, is the government’s strategy to lower obesity in the UK, and I had hoped to fi nd that the work being led by the FIA (now ukactive) and supported by health clubs was signifi cantly more successful than what I perceived to be the very limited achievements of the Deal’s Food Network. I came away, however, bitterly disappointed. My impression was that the seminar had been a session going nowhere, populated by club owners far more interested in mixing with friends than in getting adults and children back into regular activity. I had wanted to know, in particular,
how advanced club owners’ plans might be to ensure the government’s pledge for an Olympic physical activity legacy
January 2013 © Cybertrek 2013
would be honoured. I didn’t hear of any! How awful. The result is that today, just over a year later, children especially are fi nding it diffi cult or impossible to fi nd the sporting facilities needed in their quest to emulate their Olympic heroes. Team GB exceeded its expected medal haul, but no owners appeared to have had the faith to plan for that possibility. With the connections to Whitehall that this think-tank has, how much had it clamoured for the minimum hours of physical activity in primary schools to be mandatory rather than aspirational? Not much it seemed. Children need one hour of moderately intensive exercise every day; the two hours a week they get of scheduled time is paltry. In some schools they may not even get that. Owners of health clubs across the UK should now be urgently linking up with schools, offering schemes to get their pupils active, if they are not to fail the children on whom our success in Rio and Chicago will depend. If there are enlightened club owners
who are already doing what I ask, I will apologise rapidly for my criticism – I’m quite sure that I will be hearing from them. On the other hand, a miniscule number of rebukes received may prove my point. My email inbox awaits.
DOUG WERNER
VP, Healthtrax Fitness and Wellness, and author of Abbie Gets Fit
C
hildhood obesity levels continue to rise dramatically. The NHS
predicts a 10 per cent rise in the prevalence of obesity among people under 20 years of age by 2015, and 14 per cent by 2025. Meanwhile, a recent study by the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, UK, indicated that 75 per cent of parents of overweight children do not even realise their children are overweight. Parents, schools, the NHS and the community at large are not getting the job done. Our industry could therefore benefi t
tremendously by being the authority in a new youth fi tness movement, taking the lead on battling this epidemic. We need to ask ourselves: do we want to trust less informed, less resourceful infl uences to solve this problem and develop our future customers for us, or should we be taking the lead now? To become the leaders in this
worthy crusade, more clubs will need Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital 49
© HOLBOX/
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
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