PE: Why it's important.

Post date: Nov 23, 2016 4:40:58 PM

Kids need PE. Kids need Health Education. In a school setting, by placing kids in desks, in essence cutting the body off, we unconsciously attempt to separate the body from the mind. The mind and body are of one entity. What the mind thinks affects the body. The reverse is also true. They cannot be separated. We cannot have a healthy mind if we don't have a healthy body and we can't have a healthy mind without a healthy body. The human animal was meant to move. Yet, in our modern society we spend most of our time seated and staring at screens, slowly destroying our health.

In the book Spark, Dr. Ratey cites multiple studies that prove for a fact that a fit body derived from proper nutrition and adequate conditioning serves as Miracle Gro to a developing brain. Exercise also helps balance hormones, elevates the mood and improves behavior. Nonetheless we don’t see big companies spending thousands of dollars on advertisements for exercise because exercise is free. It cannot be bottled and sold. I think that deep down everybody recognizes this fact but the majority of us choose not to make it a priority in our everyday living. My belief is that the time has come to make this a focus and priority in the schools, not only for the students’ benefit but for the benefit of our healthcare system as a whole.

A student who is prepared to enter the world and strengthen our future has an optimal interplay of social, emotional, physical, and academic intelligences. Development towards all of these intelligences should be made on a daily basis, not just once a week.

To address the needs of the whole child is of fundamental importance. This makes for a child who can be principled, with morals, and see things from all perspectives and not only that, have the physical and mental capacities to act. I am of the opinion that if we focus on making better children, they will be better readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, test takers etc.

The focus has been on Math and Reading because that is what is constantly being formally assessed. This is important, but if our ultimate goal is to create a well rounded child who can be a contributing member of society, then we need to ensure that he or she be as healthy and as fit as possible so that he or she may be able to contribute to our society at a full capacity throughout the course of the lifetime--a lifetime which can and should be lived and moved through gracefully and relatively pain free.

Thus far, at best, we have been mildly successful in regards to the consistent implementation and conveyance of up-to-date messages we give students in terms of healthy habits, fitness, and social and emotional development in our PE curriculum. Kids know that vegetables and fruits are good for them but still choose to eat engineered food that comes from packages. Kids know that exercise is important yet they move horribly and are getting injured at alarming rates. The simple fact that students have PE only once a week at the elementary level shows how low a priority this has become. This is the time when they are developing their movement base and should be provided ample opportunities to develop motor patterns and discover the most efficient (injury preventing) way of accomplishing physical tasks.

98 percent of the ailments that doctors treat are 100 percent preventable . If our intent is to truly make a positive impact in the lives of our students, then we should be providing them with the tools necessary to move well, lift heavy things safely, eat healthy, deal with adversity, etc. In a nutshell, we need to give them the tools necessary to make better decisions and practice better habits so that as they age, they can avoid having to constantly be off of work, sitting in Doctor's offices, spending money on medications and going into debt because of poor health like so many in our society currently do.

In fact, movement cannot and should not be placed in one period throughout our day. If I workout or play for one hour, even if I practice good technique, and then go and sit at a desk with horrible posture the rest of the day, what gets trained more? Physical therapist Kelly Starrett likes to use the quote, “Make your warrior stance your everyday stance. Make your everyday stance your warrior stance.” Humans should always be working their bodies through their full ranges of motion consistently throughout the day. This serves the purpose of keeping body awareness levels high, muscle activation continual, and keeps the body supple rather than stiff.

By the time our students graduate, they should know how to identify their limitations and the correct moves they need to practice in order to improve or maintain their movement quality. They should possess the knowhow to counteract the negative effects of our modern “plugged in” society. As physical therapist and strength coach Gray Cook says, “Move well first. Then move often.” This is how we thrive, maintain our quality of life and stay younger longer.

Legendary strength coach Dan John argues that if we look back on the happiest times of our life, they were times in which we had a relative balance between our work, our play, our rest and our pray (By pray I don’t necessarily mean religion. Pray, by my definition, simply means having grace, gratitude and demonstrating kindness and support to others.) We need to take care of business, but we also need to take our shoes off and play in the sand. All play and no rest can lead to soreness, injuries, fatigue. Too much rest leads to lethargy and work left undone. We need time with good friends but some time alone to care for the self. We need both community and solitude to master a movement or a concept. This is the type of balance I seek in my own life and what I am trying to instill in the lives of the children I teach and coach.