What do you think when you think about children and fitness?

Categories School Chat

I recently read an opinion piece which implied the use of the word ‘fitness’ as less than helpful in the context of children and physical education. I propose the opposite to be true. 

And here is why.

At the heart of a physical education is to develop and sustain in every child a positive relationship with physical activity (nurturing essential life skills long into adulthood). There are a multitude of factors influencing every child’s predisposition to be physically active – but the relationship between physical competence, confidence, motivation and physical activity is significant, impactful and reciprocal.

When we distil physical competence to its most basic form, we expose the different areas of fitness such as speed, agility, coordination, strength, stamina, balance and flexibility. Today, an increasing number of children (and adults) cannot: 

Move with control, speed, agility and coordination, engage their core muscles effectively, support their own bodyweight, exert force through their lower body, sustain an elevated heart rate and breathing rate, maintain their body in balance and/or demonstrate a reasonable range of movement. 

When physical fitness is supported and developed, we become more physically competent. We develop a more positive relationship with physical activity.

Beyond the propensity to relate positively towards physical activity, improved physical fitness provides significant long-term support to education and school leadership, the health industry and the economy. For every child, improved fitness will:

Enhance short-term mood, improve long-term mental health, facilitate the short-term buzz and endorphin release of exercise, improve long term physical wellbeing and increase alertness, posture and academic learning.

For most of us, fitness is not running fast, lifting heavy weights or competing against others. Fitness is surviving and thriving. The GCSE PE definition of fitness is, ‘The ability to meet the demands of the environment’ By its very definition, fitness matters. 

For children who are not meeting the demands of the environment, do we keep changing this environment, so they do not fail? Or do we support children, at their own pace and level, to face the environment, and to address its demands head on?

When children understand fitness goals are personal, and celebrate their own efforts and improvements, the sense of achievement they realise is palpable. Pitching fitness goals appropriately for every child requires a sensitive and skilled approach. I have long posited that we need qualified PE teachers in all schools.

I have worked in Physical Education since 2001. I have worked in the field of children’s fitness and physical development since 2016. In this time, I have supported so many inactive and disengaged children in very different school settings and in the NHS CEW clinical program to become faster, stronger and fitter. In doing so, these children become more resilient. 

And this is the crux. Fitness builds resilience.

Underpinning fitness development, within the pursuit of stretching what we can do with our physical bodies, we push, pull, run, ache, sweat and fail more. The more we fail, the more we learn, the more we become. These experiences build resilience and the quality of ‘not giving up’. Resilience is an essential life skill.

I wonder if the word ‘sport’ is sometimes cancelled in some school settings in a similar fashion. When inclusive, differentiated, age appropriate and personalised, sport can be for all. Words such as ‘fitness’ and ‘sport’ are not inherently positive or negative. What they represent to each of us is not fixed.

These words are likely to arouse feelings of incompetence in many of us, based on prior experience, context and perception. Should these feelings be sidestepped and brushed under the carpet, or should they be addressed, carefully and honestly, by passionate and committed subject experts?


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