ASU Emeritus professor Charles Corbin has developed a fitness program he hopes will prevent obesity among today’s youth, which is being implemented at elementary schools nationwide for the first time this semester.
Fitness For Life developers expanded the program after working with older students to promote healthy lifestyles among children in elementary schools.
Fitness For Life debuted its new program targeting elementary school-aged children this March to a packed house at the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) convention.
Dolly Lambdin, a co-author of the Fitness For Life program’s textbook and principles and a clinical professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said she saw the expansion into elementary schools as vital to the health of the future generation.
“It’s sort of like brushing your teeth — we wouldn’t wait to teach kids how important it is to brush their teeth,” Lambdin said. “It’s important that we start developing these habits as early as possible and teach our kids not only to be active and healthy, but why they need to be active to be in control of their own lives.”
Corbin said he developed this program, which now serves children from kindergarten through 12th grade, when he saw that children were developing diseases like type 2 diabetes earlier as physical education became less important in school.
“The teachers are under pressure to get the kids to do well on AIMS so P.E. has taken a backseat and even recess has fallen by the wayside,” Corbin said. “They are growing fatter with each passing decade. And diabetes is now becoming more and more common among kids.”
Lambdin estimated that one-third of today’s youth will develop diabetes in their lifetimes because of unhealthy lifestyles.
The Fitness For Life program complements Michelle Obama’s national “Let’s Move” campaign and emphasizes the importance of childhood obesity on society, he said.
“Type 2 [diabetes] has been on the rise,” Lambdin said. “We won’t survive if one-third of our population is dealing with a disease as serious as diabetes.”
The program’s website outlined its principles of the H.E.L.P. approach to fitness, which was designed to educate students about ‘Health’ and involve ‘Everyone’ in a ‘Lifetime’ of ‘Personal’ fitness.
Corbin said an essential part of this program was to develop the exercise videos and textbooks he produced for elementary, middle and high school-aged groups that could be used by teachers to break up academic learning with small breaks for exercise.
“The idea is that a teacher takes an activity break and gets kids moving. It’s designed to help kids spend more calories,” Corbin said. “Ideally kids need 60 minutes of activity [a day], so if we can give them small breaks of activity, it would go a long way.”
In addition to the physical activity breaks, Corbin said he would like to see elementary schools hold special events four weeks out of the school year to highlight both physical activity and nutrition and broadcast the importance a healthy lifestyle to students, staff and parents.
Corbin said although the elementary program is the most recent addition to the Fitness For Life program, it was his experience as an elementary school P.E. instructor that sparked his interest in the project.
“What comes around goes around,” Corbin said. “I started out in elementary, and now toward the end of my career I’ve gotten to come back and do something that I really wanted to do.”
Reach the reporter at michelle.parks@asu.edu
