Levels of physical activity of a sample of 10-13 year old New Zealand children

Aims. To determine what proportion of a sample of 10 to 13 year old New Zea land children attained the Ministry of Health's physical activity guideline s. These guidelines recommend that children accumulate a minimum. of 30 min utes of moderate intensity physical activity on most, preferably all, days of the week. Methods. The heart rates of sixty 10-13 year olds were monitored at one min ute intervals, for twelve hours on three week days and one weekend day. For each day, the number of minutes when the subject's heart rate exceeded 139 beats per minutes (bpm) was determined. The proportion of subjects who acc umulated at least 30 minutes of heart rates > 139 bpm. on three of the four recording days was determined. These subjects were deemed to have met the physical activity guidelines. Results. 53% of subjects met the minimum physical acivity guidelines. Boys spent significantly more of their time with their heart rates elevated abov e 139 bpm than girls. There was no significant difference between the numbe r of children achieving the recommended guidelines and their school's decil e ranking. Conclusion. There are indications that children's lives are becoming more s edentary due in part to the popularity of passive forms of leisure and the reduced incidence of active forms of transportation like walking or cycling to school. The low proportion of New Zealand children meeting the minimum physical activity guidelines is a cause for great concern.