We’ve taken eyes off ball when it comes to children’s fitness

TOM EDWARDS
September 22, 2016
The Australian
Australian children are not as fit as those growing up in Iceland and Estonia, but fitter than those in the US and Mexico, an international report has found.
The University of South Australia study, which used 20m shuttle-run data from more than 1.1 million children aged between nine and 17 worldwide, ranked Australia 35th out of 50 countries.
Grant Tomkinson and Tim Olds from UniSA’s School of Health Sciences found the ­nation’s schoolchildren ranked below average on fitness levels.
“If all the kids in the world were to line up for a race, the average Australian child would finish somewhere in the middle of the pack,” Professor Olds said.
“They’d be a long way behind the fittest children in the world, from Tanzania, Iceland and ­Estonia, but a long way ahead of the Mexicans, Peruvians, Latvians and Americans.
“Cardio-respiratory fitness is an excellent indicator of good health and there’s evidence showing that kids with high fitness ­levels are healthier and tend to live longer.”
The UniSA team worked with researchers from Canada and the US for the study, which has been published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
Dr Tomkinson said the report highlighted living standard disparities affected results. “One of our key findings was that income ­inequality — the gap between rich and poor — was strongly linked to cardio-respiratory fitness, with kids from countries with a small gap between rich and poor having better fitness,” he said.
Both researchers are part of ­Active Healthy Kids Australia, a collaboration between universities and research organisations to promote childhood physical activity.
“One thing we’re focusing on this year is what we call physical literacy: the knowledge, skills and motivation kids have or don’t have to be physically active in all sorts of different ways,’’ Professor Olds said.
Nazareth Catholic College physical education teacher Chris Catalano said schools were tackling children’s health, but the ultimate responsibility was with parents. “The biggest hurdle is not the activities of children in school, it’s what they do outside of school hours where there are too many distractions, such as computer games and new toys and gadgets,” Mr Catalano said.