Gym Use Research Articles

Best Practice? Advice Provided to Teachers about the Use of Brain Gym® in Australian Schools

Perceptual motor programs continue to be used in Australian schools despite evidence showing they do not influence academic learning. Brain Gym® is one perceptual motor program that is used in schools in Australia and overseas. There is little evidence to support the claims made about the benefits of Brain Gym® its theoretical underpinning has been subject to criticism by neuroscientists. A search was made of Internet sites, including state department of education sites to locate information provided to teachers about Brain Gym®. Although education departments and others responsible for providing advice and professional development to teachers espouse research-based practice, they continue to endorse and support the use of Brain Gym®.

Socioeconomic environment, availability of sports facilities, and jogging, swimming and gym use

The aim of the study was to evaluate the association of the availability of sports facilities and socioeconomic environment with jogging, swimming and gym use in Spain. The indicators of availability of sports facilities were the number of swimming pools and the number of gyms per 10,000 population. The indicators of socioeconomic environment were average provincial income and provincial unemployment rate. The number of sports facilities was not related with either swimming or gym use and the indicators of socioeconomic environment were not associated with swimming in either sex, or with gym use in men. The findings of this study do not support the hypotheses proposed in previous investigations to explain the consistent relation between socioeconomic environment and lack of physical activity.

EMOTIONAL REACTIVITY TO STRESS IN DAILY LIFE, COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING AND THE SYMPTOMS OF PSYCHOSIS: EVIDENCE FOR A POSITIVE VERSUS NEGATIVE SYNDROME

We explore the efficacy of a combination of interventions to encourage exercise in a field experiment hosted at a large public university. The experimental groups include individuals and teams and those with and without information about peers. We find that team incentives are associated with greater behavior modification (e.g. more gym visits) than individual incentives. Information on peers’ gym attendance (either in a team or individual setting) also promotes more frequent gym use relative to a simple individual incentive. In addition, being in a team and receiving information on peers are effective in changing a non-user of the gym to a user. We also observe that periodic information feedback has a longer-lasting impact on gym attendance than other interventions. Our findings provide insight for any organization seeking to incentivize behavior change in the most efficient, and cost effective, manner.

The effects of exposure to muscular male models among men: Exploring the moderating role of gym use and exercise motivation

This study examines the effects of exposure to the muscular male body ideal on body-focused negative affect among male gym users and non-exercisers. As hypothesized, the impact of media exposure depended on men's exercise status. Non-exercisers ( n = 58) reported greater body-focused negative affect after exposure to images of muscular male models than after neutral images (no model controls), whereas gym users ( n = 58) showed a tendency for less body-focused negative affect after the model images than after the control images. Furthermore, the extent to which gym users were motivated to increase strength and muscularity moderated these exposure effects; men who reported stronger strength and muscularity exercise motivation reported a greater degree of self-enhancement after exposure to the muscular ideal. The findings are interpreted with respect to likely differences in motives for social comparisons.

School Injuries and Preventive Policies and Programs

Injuries are a major source of morbidity and mortality throughout childhood and many occur on school premises. Differences in policies, programs and practises at the level of school boards or individual schools may account for some of the differences in injury rates among schools.We used data from the Montreal Children's Hospital to identify children injured at school. By telephone interview, we identified the school attended and calculated injury rates per school for the study year. A questionnaire to principals identified practises and programs. The two data sets were merged and the data analyzed using cross tabulations and logistic regression.Nearly one third of the 310 injured children required admission or follow up. Most involved falls, boys, 10-14 year olds, and sports. The variables associated with higher rates of injuries were: school board (English), proximity to hospital, wood gym flooring, gym use during breaks, presence of a playing field, frequent checks of field surface, and the presence of an injury prevention program. Using logistic regression, after controlling for all other variables in the model, only school board and distance to hospital remained significant.These findings provide little support for the notion that school policies influence injury rates. If anything, they suggest that the reverse may be true; i.e., that injury rates help stimulate schools to take certain preventive actions. An alternative explanation is that many of the differences observed among schools simply reflect differences in the extent to which their pupils are exposed to the risk of injury because of, for example, the availability of sports facilities.

Report on the 13th International Hypoxia Symposium. Banff, Canada, February 19-22, 2003.

AFTER TWO SYMPOSIA at Jasper, Hypoxia returned to Banff, the town in the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies where Charlie Houston started the meetings 24 years ago. We were not, however, at the Edwardian Banff Springs Hotel, where the first conferences were lodged, but at the Banff Conference Center on the opposite bank of the Bow River. This is a campus of buildings including lecture theaters, dining hall, accommodation blocks, and leisure center. The facilities were excellent, especially the lecture room allotted to us with adjacent rooms for poster presentations, coffee lobby, and the like. The ski slopes of Sunshine and Norquay were a 20-minute bus ride away, and we had the use of the swimming pool and gym in the Center. Access to Banff is much easier than to Jasper, with direct flights to Calgary from many cities in North America and Europe and a transfer from the airport of only about 90 minutes. However, some 40 registrants were delayed by a very severe storm affecting New York, Boston, and other U.S. East Coast airports and arrived up to 2 days late. There were a total of 190 people registered from 32 countries, including about 40 students. It is good to see so many younger participants as they bode well for the future of our specialty. There was the usual mix of people from Europe and North America, though we would like to see more from other countries.

The Case for Religious Incorrectness

Church-state cases keep arising as if past decisions have settled nothing. Recently the Wisconsin high court divided evenly on the constitutionality of a voucher system that allows tax money to help subsidize the tuition costs of enrolling public school children in private sectarian schools. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court will probably have to rule on the constitutional issue in that case. In a Mississippi school district dominated by Baptists, once the foremost champions of the separation of church and state, a Lutheran mother recently objected to school prayers and to her children being taunted for their beliefs when they refused to participate in the prayers. A federal district court upheld her objections but allowed the use of the school gym for devotional services before the start of the school day. The authors of the pithy book under review here would, like the reviewer, oppose the voucher plan and support the views of the Lutheran mother.