"If you have to sit for a long time, you should do more physical activities at work or school to counter the harmful effects of sedentary behavior."
The World's First Report on Physical Inactivity of Teenagers (hereinafter referred to as the Report) shows that four out of every five children in the world do not exercise enough, which affects their health. This problem is particularly serious among girls.
For children who often sit at their desks and study, exercise is even more necessary.
To cultivate children's sports hobbies and interests, I first recommend children to learn swimming.
Li Meijin, a professor of criminal psychology at the People's Public Security University of China, said: "Before the age of 12, children must have two sports specialties, physical strength, not just sitting and playing the piano. One is running and the other is swimming. "
The benefits of children learning to swim
1. Swimming can exercise children's endurance and courage.
As for children learning to swim, Professor Li Meijin clearly suggested that children learn to swim. Swimming can exercise children's endurance and courage, learn to control the outside world and cultivate their survival skills.
Children will be a little scared when they start swimming, so they must overcome this fear when learning to swim. When the child says to you, "I learned to swim today. I was scared when I got into the water. I drank a lot of water and felt very uncomfortable ..."
At this time, you must tell your child to remember this experience. No matter what happens in the future, even if you think you can't live any longer, the feeling of drowning. As long as you stay calm, find a way, or flutter a few times, you can survive. So no matter what difficulties you encounter in the future, you must persist and don't give up.
This kind of training is good for children's future work and life. Especially when you encounter difficulties, don't give up easily. As long as you stick to it, you will get something.
Swimming can make children happier and smarter.
Why do children who love sports do better in school?
Professor Hong Lan, a brain scientist, pointed out that exercise stimulates the body to secrete a variety of positive substances, promotes neuronal connection and promotes brain development. Swimming can promote the secretion of a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which is a pleasant chemical related to learning and happiness. It can improve mood, happiness, attention, hyperactivity, poor memory and poor self-control ability. Moreover, water also has a massage function. Studies have shown that the obvious feature of emotional tension is that the whole body is tense and stiff. When swimming, due to the characteristics of water and the coordination of swimming movements, the respiratory center of cerebral cortex is highly excited, which invisibly distracts other attention, so that muscles gradually relax, thus regulating tension.
Swimming can shape a child's figure.
First of all, physically, children who often swim will be well-proportioned, streamlined and beautiful. The reason why swimming can make children fit is mainly because the resistance of human body in water is actually about 12 times that on land, and the influence of resistance can be felt in all parts of human body in water. It can help promote the burning of body fat and mobilize the muscles of the whole body, so we will find that swimmers have obvious muscle lines.
Swimming can make children lose weight.
Experiments show that the heat consumed by people running in a standard swimming pool for 20 minutes is equivalent to running at the same speed on land 1 hour, and staying in water with 100 minutes is as high as 100 kcal, which is equivalent to the heat emitted by air running at the same temperature 1 hour. It can be seen that water sports make many children who want to lose weight get twice the result with half the effort.
5. Swimming increases children's vital capacity.
Swimming is very effective in improving children's vital capacity, and it will also help children learn how to breathe in more fresh air and discharge more carbon dioxide. Compared with runners, swimmers have higher vital capacity, more stable heart rate and lower blood pressure. When a child is swimming, the pressure on his chest is relatively large, and then cold water stimulates muscle contraction, and the child will find it difficult to breathe. Therefore, swimming can force people to breathe hard, increase the depth of breathing, and make the amount of oxygen inhaled meet the needs of the body. In other words, every breath a child takes underwater is a deep breath. It can be seen that the lung capacity of children who insist on swimming for a long time will naturally increase. Especially for children with asthma, practicing swimming is helpful to the therapeutic effect.
6. Swimming can make children grow taller
Many parents think that letting children practice basketball and skipping rope can make their children grow taller. In fact, if children insist on swimming, height will no longer be subject to congenital factors and genes, and it is no longer a dream to have the height of basketball players. Research shows that the pressure on the leg joints is almost zero, which is similar to weightlessness, because the human body is always horizontal or highly close to horizontal when swimming. In addition, the legs are kicking almost all the time when swimming, which means that a force has been stretching the joints of the legs, which leads to the continuous growth and development of human bones and even greatly delays the closing of the epiphyseal line, so the height of swimmers is often second only to basketball and volleyball players.
The best age for children to learn to swim.
Seeing this, we all know that swimming has many benefits, and we all hope that children will start learning to swim as soon as possible.
In fact, children learn to swim, not as early as possible, but with age restrictions. According to the regulations of American Academy of Pediatrics, children under 5 years old are not suitable to learn swimming in principle.
There are three reasons for this conclusion:
The low gravity environment in water is not conducive to the growth of children's bones;
Children's nervous system is not perfect, and it is not safe to learn to swim;
High-intensity training in swimming is also easy to damage children's health.
Su Yi, the national intermediate coach of the national first-class swimmer and now a swimming teacher at Beijing Haidian Foreign Language Experimental School, believes that the advantage of being young is that the body ligaments are very soft and flexible; The disadvantage is that the attention time is short and the understanding is biased. For example, some terms in training, such as "handspring" in breaststroke, are too young to understand, so it is difficult to concentrate on training and learning, but it will be slow to learn. If he is too old, such as adolescence or adulthood, he may have a good understanding and concentrate for a long time, but his ligaments and bones have been shaped. He knows some movements, but he can't do them.
Therefore, a more pertinent suggestion is that if you want your child to learn swimming formally, it is best to wait until the child is 5 years old. Usually around 7-8 years old, this age group learns the fastest. This age happens to be the best age for children's flexibility and coordination. Children can concentrate and keep up with their understanding. Of course, if you want your child to learn to swim, it doesn't mean that you have to wait until you are 5 years old. You can let your child do some preparatory work in advance.
Children aged 3-4 can have more contact with water. Accompanied by parents, let them play in the water more, and let them like water first.
Children aged 4-5 can try to learn swimming according to their own situation, but the progress is slow because of their weak self-care ability.
Children aged 5-6 are psychologically stable and can study with goals. They can learn to swim by taking swimming lessons.
Swimming is not only a survival skill, but also an aerobic exercise with certain technical content. Like running, skipping rope and many ball games, it can accompany children for life. If we can be consistent in the process of growing up, children will benefit for life. Therefore, parents should first adjust their understanding and expectation of swimming, and don't put pressure on children or coaches. Usually, children can be familiar with and like water, and when the sense of water is basically formed, it will be better to give children lessons to learn movements.