Effect of Physical Education Class on Amount of Daily Physical Activity at School Children

Abstract

It is reported that physical fitness in Japanese children has been decreasing. It is generally admitted that the amount of daily physical activity has a high influence on physical fitness.To evaluate the effect of physical education class on the amount of daily physical activity of elementary children, the amount of physical activity in a day and in physical education class were measured using a pedometer. Ninety-five healthy children aged 10 and 12 were the subjects.The results were as follows:1) According to the pedometer, children took 1, 936±653 (mean±s.d.) steps during the physical education class.2) Total pedometer recordings of 13, 867±5, 009 steps were obtained on a day with a physical education class and 12, 079±4, 148 steps on a day without physical education class. The amount of daily physical activity with physical education class was significantly greater than that without physical education class.3) Steps taken during daily physical activity increased linearly as steps in physical education class increased.4) Sedentary children whose pedometer steps per day were less than 10, 000 steps accounted for 23.7%. In sedentary children, 21.9% of daily physical activity was performed in physical education class.These results indicate that physical education class comprises a large part of the daily physical activity of sedentary children.