“Decrease in Mobility of Children and Young People: What the Studies Show”

Forty years ago, for example, a ten-year-old could run 1,000 meters in six minutes without any problems. Today, children would only be able to walk 900 meters in six minutes. “That means that we have about ten percent less ability in the children,” says Bös.

According to sports scientist Klaus Bös, it cannot be due to the range of sports on offer. Because today is better than 40 years ago. For example, there are many more children in sports clubs than before. But children’s everyday lives have changed significantly: the time children spend doing unorganized sports – for example playing tag or hide-and-seek with friends – has decreased in recent years. Klaus Bös is convinced that this is also reflected in the results of the German Motor Skills Test.

The sports scientist also believes that parents today attach more importance to the intellectual development of their children than to the physical condition: better an intelligent child than a fit child. Because this is also in greater demand in today’s professional world: While strength and endurance used to be important for many manual trades, these tasks are now mainly performed by machines, and to operate them, the head is more important than the body.

The sports educator Yolanda Demetriou sees it similarly. For her, the lack of exercise among children in this country is a consequence of our affluent society: from the escalator to the lawn mower, our structures are too much geared towards relieving us of all the effort.

But when did it start that we humans don’t move enough? After all, that’s what we were made for by nature, and 100 years ago we were moving a lot more. There was a big change in the cities with the beginning of industrialization and the invention of the car a short time later.

According to sports scientists, children and young people should walk around 12,000 steps every day. The walk to school or daycare is an important component here, which sometimes covers a large part of the step workload. But nowadays it is often covered by car – also to protect the little ones from the dangers of road traffic.

The lack of exercise increases with the age of the children: While day-care center children are most likely to fulfill the exercise time of around 90 minutes a day stipulated by the World Health Organization, the amount of exercise decreases with increasing age: The first big break occurs with the onset of the Schooldays. In adolescence, the daily exercise time decreases even further, and there are also major differences between the sexes: girls exercise even less than boys. And parents with a higher level of education pay more attention to the fact that their children move, be it in everyday life or in a sports club.

In the comparative study of the 57 countries, Nordic countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Finland do particularly well. “They have a lot of approaches to moving school and a lot of active transport to school,” says sports and health educator Yolanda Demetriou.

Exercise plays a much bigger role there: for example, every second person in Sweden, around ten million, is a member of a sports club. In Germany it is not even every third inhabitant. Clubs are considered important social meeting places in Sweden, especially in the many remote villages and small towns. In addition to sport, they thus fulfill another function.

In addition, the cycle paths in Scandinavia are very well developed in many places: Copenhagen is considered a model city, where the cycle paths are separated from car and pedestrian traffic in many places. This means that cyclists are often safer on the road than in Germany.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends 60 minutes of moderate- to vigorous-intensity exercise every day for all 5-17 year olds. This is achieved when the children find the movement strenuous or somewhat strenuous, for example when cycling or walking quickly.

However, according to the World Health Organization, around 70 percent of children in Germany do not get these 60 minutes of exercise a day. For many, when they start elementary school, their daily workload drops rapidly.

The term “moving school” was coined by the Swiss sports educator Urs Illi, who published specialist articles on it as early as the mid-1980s. Schools in Germany can now be certified as “moving schools” by the responsible school authorities. Among other things, they have to prove that they have a certain range of exercise.

There are two main ideas behind the concept: On the one hand, it has been scientifically proven that we humans can learn better when we move. This is because the motor centers in the brain are activated. They play a major role when we process and store information.

In addition, it is important to integrate movement into the children’s everyday life: by walking or cycling to school, while playing together. In addition, parents must act as role models in order to introduce their children to healthy eating, sports and exercise.

Today there are three to five ergometers in each of the rooms for grades five to seven, which are equipped with a table so that the children can follow the lesson and take notes while pedaling moderately. The children take turns every quarter of an hour, so that everyone gets a turn in the course of the morning.

“Over the years we have noticed that the overall learning climate has improved so much that we were also able to achieve better cognitive performance in the work towards the final exam there,” says Wolf.

The Bremen teachers can determine the effects of the exercise offer in concrete terms on the school performance of the children and young people: According to Harald Wolf, compared to previous “normal” classes, an above-average number of pupils in the ergometer classes have recently completed the tenth class or have made the transition to the passed high school.

Sources: Catalina Schröder, lkn