'Flabby' kids swing into action

By DITA DE BONI

The sight of weak, flabby arms on primary schoolchildren is causing some principals to redesign their playgrounds to help build upper-body strength.

Computer games, text-messaging and television remote controls have left many children with nimble fingers but weak bodies.

Revamped playgrounds at May Rd School in Mt Roskill and Halsey Drive School in Lynfield include jungle bars, flying foxes and climbing walls in an attempt to get children using their upper bodies for more than just lifting gadgets.

Halsey associate principal Denise Ritchie says the school tested pupils' upper-arm strength with activities including distance throwing. It concluded that most of them were weak in activities involving the arms, a finding that gelled with the experience of other schools.

Halsey spent around $16,000 on playground equipment that could also be used during physical education classes aimed at working everything above the navel.

"When you think about it, most physical activity children do uses the lower body, like running, athletics and team sports such as rugby or soccer," said Ms Ritchie.

"So we thought things like monkey bars and small ropes would help strengthen arms and get the whole body into better shape."

Kevin McFadden, general manager of Drury equipment manufacturer Playground People, said children in Australasia had lower upper body strength than those in Europe or America.

Equipment which challenged that part of a child's body was in demand.

"It's important that playground equipment is not only fun but also provides some enhancements to health," he said.

But Bernard Butler, an Auckland primary school adviser for the Ministry of Education, said there had not been a dramatic decline in upper-body strength in New Zealand children.

He said the claim surfaced occasionally, but was a marketing ploy aimed at selling playground equipment.

"How much upper-body strength does a child need?" he said.

John Cronin, a strength and conditioning consultant for the Auckland University of Technology's sports performance centre, said anything that required children to push or pull part of their body weight was beneficial, although he had not heard New Zealand children were spindly compared with children in other countries.

But he said it was conceivable that modern children who spent too much time handling appliances and too little time lifting anything heavier might have weaker upper bodies compared with other eras.

"With strength, if you don't use it you lose it," he said.

A ministerial taskforce on Sport, Fitness and Leisure reported in January last year that it was "appalled at the state of physical education, physical activity, movement and recreation and sport education in New Zealand".

The Education Review Office followed Getting Set with its own report, Physical Activity in Primary Schools, in May last year.

That report - which painted a more positive picture of primary school physical activity - found that children were often given balls, ropes, hoops and bats to play with informally during break times and that there was a "high level of informal physical play".

But a study by Sport Tasman, expanded on by Massey University, found that a high proportion of 10 and 11-year-olds lacked fundamental motor skills for basic sports, including skipping and catching.

It attributed the problem to "spending more and more time in front of the TV".

nzherald.co.nz/health