Team sports aren’t enough exercise for homeschoolers

Organized sports and physical activities aren’t enough to keep homeschoolers fit, research finds.

Researchers studied data from 100 homeschooled children age 10-17 to back up their assumption that such activities are sufficient to keep children physically fit. The data, however, proved them wrong.

Laura Kabiri, a sports medicine lecturer in Rice University’s department of kinesiology, says the problem lies in how much activity is part of organized regimens. According to the World Health Organization, children should get about an hour of primarily aerobic activity a day, but other studies have noted children involved in non-elite sports actually get only 20 to 30 minutes of the moderate to vigorous exercise they require during practice.

The researchers decided to quantify it through statistics Kabiri gathered about homeschooled children and adolescents as a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher at Texas Woman’s University.

“We assumed—and I think parents largely do as well—that children enrolled in an organized sport or physical activity are getting the activity they need to maintain good body composition, cardiorespiratory fitness, and muscular development,” Kabiri says. “We found that is not the case. Just checking the box and enrolling them in an activity doesn’t necessarily mean they’re meeting the requirements they need to stay healthy.”

Kabiri says the researchers suspect the same is true for public school students in general physical education classes, where much of the time is spent getting the class organized. “When you only have 50 minutes, it’s very easy for half that time or more to go to getting them in, out, and on-task,” she says.

While public school data would be easier to gather, homeschooling presents a different problem for researchers. “There’s a lot that’s not known about this population, and the population is expanding,” Kabiri says. “Homeschool is becoming very popular in the United States. It’s grown steadily.

The authors conclude parents would be wise to give their children more time for unstructured physical activity every day.

“Parents know if they attend activities and don’t see their kids breathing and sweating hard, then they’re not getting enough exercise,” Kabiri says. “So there should be more opportunities for unstructured activity. Get your kids outside and let them run around and play with the neighborhood kids and ride their bikes.

“If I learned one thing about homeschool families, it’s that they are really dedicated to the entire education of their children,” she says. “If there’s an issue, they will want to know and will make adjustments as needed.”

The results are available in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology. Funding for the work came in part from the Texas Physical Therapy Foundation.

Source: Rice University

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