| Riding bike or jogging for pleasure, walks or hikes with family |
| I dont remember anyone asking about high schoolers staying fit 20 years ago. They are teenagers. |
| I think this is is a fair question - it seems options are more limited once they get older if they aren't wanting to play at high level (for whatever reason - interest, time commitment, skill). My oldest is a boy and he switched from baseball (enjoyed, but wouldn't have been competitive at the high school level) to crew, my middle child is a girl and she is still heavily into ballet (huge time commitment) - my youngest is the one I am not sure what she will do, her main EC is music and she plays LL softball in the Spring and Fall for now. I am happy she has found her passion in music but I think it's important to move your body as well. |
They didn’t have to because teens were just more active not glued to their phones staying home alone. |
This. A lot of teens, if not out at sports practice or doing an intentional workout are sitting in their phone or computer. Plus teens eat a lot more junk now as well. My teen’s high school has various teachers always passing out candy, snack bags of chips, bringing in donuts, every extracurricular has junk food brought in my parents on the regular as well. I don’t recall all these extras when I was a teen 20 yrs ago. |
It's even more insidious than that, I think. Every time we mechanize something or normalize using transit to get to something, we take away another small bit of activity. And yes - the junk food (and when they're littler, cheap plastic junk) is everywhere. Plus the probable epigenetic things we have done to our bodies to make it harder for us to maintain the same weight as our parents and grandparents. |
+1 for gym membership. I'm converging towards doing that in lieu of competitive sports. She isn't a teen yet, but we signed up for a gym membership instead of competitive swimming to get pool time. |