Get Girls Active!
Studies show that girls who have many choices of leisure have promoted successful life skills such as utilizing positive coping skills, increased sense of self, reduction in risky behaviors and increased goal setting. Additionally, physical activity can be an effective tool for reducing the symptoms of stress and depression. Bottom line: sports help girls in all aspects of their lives. These tips will provide you with the information to get the girls in your life to be physically active and help guide them to a healthy, active lifestyle.
What It Means to be Physically Active
Physical activity is anything that requires movement of your body and increases heart rate. Working out on a regular basis (at least three days a week) will make you strong, increase energy and flexibility and turn you into a physically active person. Whether you engage in light activity like throwing a Frisbee, dancing, or more vigorous activity like running, you are still engaging your body in movement, and that’s what matters.
Activity is composed of three levels:
- Light Activity such as strolling at a park.
- Moderate Activity such as bicycling on level terrain.
- Vigorous Activity such as running or aerobics.
Beginners, regardless of age, should start easy and build to regular, moderate activity. Regular means just about every day. Moderate exercise is when you are active enough to increase your heart rate and breathing for an hour. You should be able to talk to someone, but you shouldn’t be able to sing. With more skills and training, regular moderate and vigorous activities should be part of your routine.
Keep It Fun!
The best way to keep it fun is to move in ways your body and personality-type enjoy. You may envision yourself as a hard-core athlete, but have a mellow personality more suited to yoga. Overall, it’s important to try to make every encounter that a girl has with activity a positive one. Here are some easy tips on keeping it fun:
- Take her to girls’ and women’s sports events. Introduce her to a heroine!
- Take advantage of the seasons. Each season try a weather-appropriate sport. For example, tackle ice skating, snowshoeing or skiing in the winter, volleyball and swimming in the summer, softball and track in the spring and soccer, cross-country or basketball in the fall.
- Rate the neighborhood! Pick a different walking route each time. What’s the prettiest house, the best mailbox, the prettiest flowers? Include bouts of power walking (big steps, pumping your arms, going as fast as you can), go from phone pole to phone pole or hydrant to hydrant. And then slow down to laugh, rest and recover.
- Vary the environment. Instead of running around a track or playing soccer on a soccer field, take your activities to the beach or a local park.
- Give gifts of sports equipment and apparel. These can tell her that you think she can.
Published by the Women’s Sports Foundation at www.WomensSportsFoundation.org.
For more tips on getting your kids active, take a look at these other posts.