Back to School Blueprint: Prioritizing Sweat, Step, Sleep, and Sit for Well-being
Back to School Blueprint: Prioritizing Sweat, Step, Sleep, and Sit for Well-being
Are your children ready for class and all their extra-curricular activities coming September? The Canadian Guidelines for Physical Activity have provided a few recommendations to help encourage youth to live a healthy lifestyle.
1. Sweat:
An accumulation of at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity involving various aerobic activities. Vigorous physical activities and muscle and bone strengthening activities should be incorporated at least thrice weekly.
2. Step:
3. Sleep
4. Sit:
Returning to Sports?
If your children are returning to a specific sport or activity this fall, consider the following tips to avoid injury. A common cause of muscle injury is overload – doing too much too soon. Muscle strains occur when the tissue exceeds its loading capacity. Here are a few tips to help manage the risk of injury: Arrive 15-20 minutes before practice to ensure adequate warm-up before activity.
- Sport-specific training (i.e. a warm-up for a baseball player should incorporate sprint training in addition to catching/throwing drills)
- Gradual increase in training load, otherwise known as volume (try to increase one of the following variables at a time: frequency, intensity, duration)
- Get yourself back to baseline (this includes a low-intensity activity to help you lower your heart rate, hydration, refuelling & rest)
Conclusion
Physiotherapists can assist with injury prevention, sport-specific training and recovery from injury. If you have more questions, contact one of our experts at Treloar Physiotherapy!
By Jamie Mistry (Registered Physiotherapist, Treloar Physiotherapy Kerrisdale)
