In the United States each year, emergency rooms treat more than 200,000 children ages 14 and under for playground-related injuries. About 45% of those injuries are considered severe including internal injuries, fractures, concussions, dislocations and amputations. Approximately 75% of nonfatal injuries related to playground equipment take place on public playgrounds, and most of those are at schools and daycare centers. In a ten-year period (199…

Walker Tracker is a community site for pedometer fans to log and track their steps.Start Logging Your Walking by setting up an account.
(It's free and you can start tracking steps right away.)
→ Learn more about the Walker TrackerA few members who have posted in the last while.
Use the Walker Tracker to:Track your steps — great for 10000 step programsAlso track heart rate, blood pressure, aerobic steps and a variety of other health metricsCal…

Wearing a pedometer can motivate adults and children alike to add more steps to their day and get in more exercise. However, a study suggests that using cheap, inaccurate pedometers could do more harm than good in giving people an inaccurate count.

The study tested a cheap Stepping Meter vs. the accurate Yamax Digiwalker SW-200 on 35 study subjects. Each subject wore 1 Yamax pedometer and 5 Stepping Meters all day and the step counts were recorde…

Who knew that Leonardo da Vinci invented the pedometer? The prolific 15th-century inventor and artist sketched what's undoubtedly the world's first pedometer. This pendulum-driven device was strapped to the leg, swinging back and forth to measure distance. More than 500 years later, his invention — packed with high-tech features — has become all the rage in exercise circles, launching walking groups across the country.And both adults …

People who want some exercise often need to do little more than get off their, er, couches and go for a walk. Despite numerous studies linking walking to better health, many people cannot seem to bring themselves to do even that.
Now a new study reports that the most successful health initiatives to encourage walking tend to use “targeting and tailoring.” They are aimed at people who are most likely to be responsive, and they are geared to indivi…

How do you convince kids to get off the computer or couch and get more active? Give them free passes to municipal pools, rinks, gyms and recreation centres, which is what occurred in Kingston, Ontario, when school district officials copied an idea which reportedly originated in Delta, B.C. The Kingston Gets Active and Active2010 initiative was formally evaluated by Queen's University researchers from the school of kinesiology and health stu…

Trend setters??

The Prince George's County Board of Education recently passed a resolution just for the health of it. They supported legislation to increase time for daily physical activity for students during the recently completed legislative session.
At the May 17 board meeting, board members wore athletic gear from various county high schools, and they unanimously passed a resolution directing Superintendent of Schools Dr. John Deasy …

A study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was designed to translate ACSM/CDC public health guidelines for 30 minutes of daily moderate-intensity physical activity into steps. Researchers at San Diego State University and Arizona State University utilized commercial pedometers on a community sample of adults. Their results support an approximate 100 step/minute recommendation for minimally moderate intensity. To meet ACSM/…

A little something is better than nothing. Adults often think that the "all or nothing" approach to movement demands 30 minutes of physical activity a day or their wasting their time. However, anyone working with children know that their activity level can best be described volleying between "bursts of energy" and bouts of rest. Teach children that if they don't have a 30-minute "chunk" of time to move…

Giving older type 2 diabetic patients a pedometer and a goal to meet may be enough to get them moving, researchers said. A pedometer and the target of 10,000 steps a day increased their weekly calorie expenditure by nearly twice as much as controls, according to research released this week from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.

Moderate high-intensity exercise was also about eight times more frequent after patients received pedometers,…

As the weather gets warmer and we all start to spend more time outside it’s a good opportunity for us AND the children we supervise to ensure we are getting a healthy amount of physical activity.

Children need to be active every day to promote their healthy growth and development. We also know that people who establish a healthy lifestyle pattern at a young age will carry those habits with them into adulthood.

A healthy lifestyle is something we …

National Health-Through-Fitness Day in March a success. Advocates walked the halls of Congress campaigning for two physical activity initiatives - the Carol M. White Physical Education Program (PEP) and the PHIT (Personal Health Investment Today) Bill.

PEP provides grants to local school districts to purchase equipment and train teachers in innovative physical education methods. The PEP program has successfully enhanced K-12 physical education …