The High School Physical Education Department utilizes 87 Polar Heart Rate Monitors with the Polar GoFit App in all Physical Education classes on a daily basis. Specifically there are 47 Polar A360/A370 Heart Rate watches, 30 Polar M200 GPS/Heart Rate Watches, and 10 of the latest version Polar OH-1 Heart Rate monitors.
Health Alliance donations and an Illinois Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (IAHPERD) grant allowed the district to obtain the Polar GoFit App and the initial 47 of the sensors. Polar donated 30 sensors after some of the High School Physical Education Staff conducted research for Polar comparing two of the monitors in the PE settings. Physcial Education Teacher, Kristin Allen, recently taught a lesson with Polar staff at the IAHPERD State Conference resulting in an additional 10 sensors. The remaining monitors have been purchased with the Physcial Education budget. The heart rate monitors and the Polar GoFit App are incorporated into almost all of our activities/units in PE. The Polar GoFit App program records each students heart rates throughout the entire lesson along with displaying which target heart rate zone the students are exercising in real time measurements.
The program also records how many minutes are spent in each of the various target zones. The students are educated on what each heart rate zone means in relation to their heart health along with what their goal is to achieve cardiovascular fitness. The PE department's mission is to teach students that there are a variety of physical activities that they can participate in that result in heart rates being maintained in the proper target heart rate zones, in order to achieve cardiovascular fitness. The students learn that if they don't enjoy an activity such as running on a treadmill, which is linked to being a common cardiovascular workout in a fitness center, they can look for alternative activities such as a game of Capture the Flag or a game of 3 on 3 basketball, and still achieve heart rates in the cardiovascular heart rate zone. Learning the benefits of various cardiovascular physical activities that they enjoy is important for them to carryover into their life outside of school and into adulthood.