A recent study found that children's endurance and fitness is decreasing worldwide. In the United States children today are 15% less fit from a cardiovascular standpoint than their parents were as youngsters. This amounts to running a mile 90 seconds slower than their parents did as children. The study found 30-60% of the decline in endurance can be attributed to higher body fat levels and the growing obesity epidemic.
I believe there are many factors involved including:
I want to expand on that last point: kids are more dysfunctional than ever before. What does dysfunctional mean? Not posturally aligned. Kids today look a lot more like this:
I believe there are many factors involved including:
- Kids watch more TV now than ever before
- Children spend hours a day playing video games and other electronics
- Physical Education is being cut in schools nationwide
- Parents are less likely to let their children play outside freely and roam the neighborhood
- Kids are fatter today than any previous decade which makes physical exercise less enjoyable
- Many kids eat more junk food and less whole foods which decreases energy levels
- Kids are more dysfunctional than ever before
I want to expand on that last point: kids are more dysfunctional than ever before. What does dysfunctional mean? Not posturally aligned. Kids today look a lot more like this:
Than like this:
All the sitting, playing video games, watching TV, and not playing outside has led to the youth of today having terrible posture. Poor posture leads to inefficient movement. Inefficient movement means exercise and active play is no longer fun, it's a chore. Kids don't like chores, which is why they say "I don't like running" or "I don't want to play basketball" or "I'm not any good at soccer". It just isn't fun for kids to try to play sports, climb trees, or exercise with a body that is fighting itself and losing energy because of inefficient movement patterns all because of faulty posture.
To illustrate how postural imbalances lead to inefficient movement, look at the two pictures below:
To illustrate how postural imbalances lead to inefficient movement, look at the two pictures below:
 Pete Egoscue wrote about Tanya in his book Pain Free for Women. She is fully functional and has good posture. She can run, jump, climb stairs, play soccer, basketball, and climb trees and will enjoy doing it all because her body is moving the way it is designed. |  This in Tina, whose posture is collapsing because her deep structure muscles are no longer capable of holding her bones in place. Her pelvis has lost its neutral position, her spine's S-curve has turned into a C-curve and her feet are splayed out. This is a recipe for fatigue, injury, and a complete lack of interest in exercise because it's not fun to move with a dysfunctional body. |
Now, let's go back and look at the picture in the Runner's World and Running Times online article.
When running forward, everything should be moving in a straight line - feet, knees, arms - allowing all the energy to propel you forward. The photo at left shows very little forward motion and is very typical of kids today. The girl with the pink pants is swinging her right leg across the midline of her body, severely adducting and internally rotating her femur. This is most likely because her primary hip flexors (psoas and iliacus) are weak and she is using her secondary hip flexors to try to accomplish the task. The price to pay is slower running times, IT band syndrome, hip problems, and possible low back issues because the psoas and iliacus play a very important roll is supporting and stabilizing the lumbar spine and her's are not able to do the job.
The boy with the green shirt is showing a similar pattern of swinging his left leg across the midline of his body rather than straight ahead. His left foot is very turned out (everted) during swing phase which creates torsion in the knee joint and will create excessive stress on his ankle and foot when he strikes the ground. This gait pattern often leads to landing with the foot excessively supinated and then progresses to excessive pronation and foot eversion at toe off as seen in his right foot. His upper body is trying to counterbalance the inefficient leg movement and creates the arm swing seen above: forward swinging arm crosses midline of body and backward swinging arm flares out to the side excessively.
All these movement patterns are a waste of energy, create stress on the tissues of the body, and make exercise less fun. Faulty running gait like this comes from postural misalignments and can not be fully corrected by coaching or training the kids to run with better form. The underlying muscular imbalances must be corrected and when they are natural, smooth and efficient running form will naturally return…as will the kids' smiles as running and exercise become fun again.
When the body is posturally aligned, movement and exercise become fun, which leads to active play and less time for inactive play like video games and TV. I believe this is one of the (very overlooked) keys to rescuing this generation from the downward health spiral that they are in and getting their body fat and running times down to that of their parents…or maybe even better!
The boy with the green shirt is showing a similar pattern of swinging his left leg across the midline of his body rather than straight ahead. His left foot is very turned out (everted) during swing phase which creates torsion in the knee joint and will create excessive stress on his ankle and foot when he strikes the ground. This gait pattern often leads to landing with the foot excessively supinated and then progresses to excessive pronation and foot eversion at toe off as seen in his right foot. His upper body is trying to counterbalance the inefficient leg movement and creates the arm swing seen above: forward swinging arm crosses midline of body and backward swinging arm flares out to the side excessively.
All these movement patterns are a waste of energy, create stress on the tissues of the body, and make exercise less fun. Faulty running gait like this comes from postural misalignments and can not be fully corrected by coaching or training the kids to run with better form. The underlying muscular imbalances must be corrected and when they are natural, smooth and efficient running form will naturally return…as will the kids' smiles as running and exercise become fun again.
When the body is posturally aligned, movement and exercise become fun, which leads to active play and less time for inactive play like video games and TV. I believe this is one of the (very overlooked) keys to rescuing this generation from the downward health spiral that they are in and getting their body fat and running times down to that of their parents…or maybe even better!
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