Aussie kids need to jump into an active lifestyle, study finds
Australian children cannot jump as far as their parents, according to new research, and their sporting abilities and participation rates are on the downward slide.
The research by Active Healthy Kids Australia (AHKA) identified that children, in general, are not doing the activities they were in the past, including playing hopscotch, climbing trees, and skipping rope.
AHKA co-chair Natasha Schranz has been leading the research and said the reduced participation in these activities has led to children's muscular fitness decreasing.
Some of the material guiding Dr Schranz and her team included research published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport earlier this year, which detailed the lengths achieved by children while completing a long jump.
The research stated that the length of long jumps had decreased for boys aged 9-11 years by 4.5cm in 30 years and 7.6cm for boys aged 12-15 years.
Meanwhile, the jump for girls aged 9-11 years had decreased by 8.5cm and by 9.3cm for 12-15-year-olds.
"We know that over the last 30 years … muscular fitness, specifically looking at muscular power and standing long jump has declined, so kids today aren't as muscularly fit as say, their parents were," Dr Schranz said.
"Muscular fitness, irrespective of aerobic fitness, is really important for health and wellbeing but also, we know that then helps continue an active lifestyle across the lifespan too."
If they're not playing hopscotch, what are kids doing?
In South Australia, Loxton Primary School health and physical education (PE) teacher Leigh Kruger has been teaching for around a decade and is not surprised by the AKHA's findings.
He said while there was more opportunity for kids living in rural communities to be involved in physical activities, children were generally leading more sedentary lives involving increased screen time.
"Lots of kids still go and play their sports, but if they aren't playing sport, I really would probably question what they are doing," he said.
"More often than not they're probably sitting on the couch playing video games or are involved in social media rather than unstructured play outside.
"In the rural landscape there are so many opportunities for kids to get active there shouldn't be any excuses, but we probably are seeing a decline in unstructured physical activity."
Dr Schranz said decreased muscular fitness had resulted in children being less likely to participate in sport as their ability to carry out the skills necessary were reduced.
"We know that most Aussie kids aren't getting the 60 minutes of huff and puff activity [and are not doing] muscle and bone strengthening activities at least three days a week," she said.
"We don't see as many kids climbing trees or hanging on the monkey bars and that is a vicious cycle.
"Their strength declines, and then they don't feel like they can do other things as well some other kids so they tend not to do them anymore."
Are helicopter parents creating inactive kids?
In late 2017, an Australian-Dutch study found that overprotective parents were causing their children to be more anxious.
Dr Schranz said anecdotally, it could also be part of the reason why children were less likely to participate in more risky play, such as swinging on monkey bars or doing cartwheels.
She said investment in nature play spaces had been a positive move by schools as it enabled children to test their own boundaries while engaging in outdoor activity.
"We know kids are more active [when they are outside] compared to when they are inside," she said.
"These nature play type of environments are typically conducive to those muscular building and strengthening types of activities.
"There's lots of pushing, there is lots of pulling, and there's lots of climbing [so] they are quite conducive to increasing the muscular fitness."
Mr Kruger said Loxton Primary School's new nature play space had been a positive addition, but kids needed to be encouraged to move when they were at home too.
"If we did a survey at school, I'm not sure how many kids would regularly climb trees or regularly ride a bike," he said.
"We are lucky here in the rural landscape that we've actually got a safe environment to do things like riding bikes.
"One of the parting statements that I always leave with the students every term [before the holidays] is 'get off the couch, get outside, climb a tree, ride a bike'."
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