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8U: Better Health, Better Play with 60 Minutes a Day

01/08/2015, 1:45pm MST
By Kelly Erickson - Special to USA Hockey

Sixty minutes, at the very least. That’s how much physical activity young kids should get per day, as recommended by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

But, between video games, television, school, and the many other activities that fill a child’s time, finding that single hour of increased activity can be difficult.

As Dr. Michael Kanters — a Professor of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University — notes, the changes in our society within the last couple of decades have left children with less free time to simply get outside and play. Instead of heading to the park and playing until the streetlights flicker or parents call them home, kids are becoming more sedentary.

Hockey’s Benefits

As a result, structured activities, like hockey practice, play an even greater role in a young person’s life — especially for providing those 60 minutes of active play. And remember, moving and being active at a young age pays dividends in a child’s life and beyond, helping establish an active lifestyle for their entire lives.

“There’s a whole host of benefits; the research is pretty non-equivocal on this,” Kanters said. “Regular exercise, in addition to having physical benefits, has been shown to have both emotional and psychological benefits.

“Physical literacy becomes very important during those developmental years. It builds a repertoire of skills and abilities in young children that allow them to maintain an active lifestyle throughout their lifespan. The longer that you wait, the older a child gets when it becomes involved in various forms of physical activities, the harder it is for them to develop competencies in those physical literacy areas.”

Let’s Move

While Kanters recommends that children don’t specialize in one particular skill or sport, the important thing is to move. And hockey is one of the most active sports available to kids.

According to Kanters’ research, with the use of the American Development Model (ADM), kids are more moderately to vigorously active during a single hockey practice (56-67 percent of the time) as compared to soccer (53 percent), baseball or softball (41 percent), flag football (43 percent), or basketball (54 percent).

This is aided by USA Hockey’s effort to implement its ADM, which places an emphasis on fun, all-around skill development and age-specific training. At younger ages, the idea is to focus on maximizing activity and skill development through small-area games and station-based practice sessions. As a result, more kids get involved and engaged in the activity at the same time.

To put it simply, kids maintain a higher level of activity for a longer period of time while playing hockey. Additionally, the earlier a child becomes active and begins developing a wide range of skill sets — much like hockey can provide between skating, stick-handling and off-ice training — the greater potential they have for leading a healthy and active lifestyle for years to come.

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