Exercise methods help families get fit together

By Amanda Sivan Kaufman
With distractions like high definition 3D movies, mounds of work piling up on the desk, and that ever-growing, ever-neglected to-do list to try and tackle, many people today simply cannot imagine time to set aside for exercise and do not have money to afford a gym in the current economy. But that is OK, according to Plattsburgh State Director of Health Education Services Jerimy Blowers.
In order teach families how to become healthy together, small steps that can be accomplished in everyday tasks must first be made Blowers said.
“Parents lead by example,” he said. Without the guidance of parents, a long-term “lifestyle change” cannot be made within a family.
While Blowers recommends walking children to parks instead of driving them, kicking a soccer ball around, and interacting with them, some people do not have time to pause and do this.
There is more than one approach to getting fit and simply adding in an activity that a person enjoys is a step toward keeping the body in shape, he said, even if getting healthy is through a non traditional means—video games.
“A lot of kids at a young age are not very health oriented,” Marcus Hanson, a Plattsburgh GameStop employee, said. He regularly sees parents coming into the video game store to purchase health geared video games from Nintendo, such as Wii Fit he said. The company also produces a line of sports video games, weight loss and cooking coach video games, and began integrating walking through its hit line of Pokemon video games on the DS handheld system, through a pedometer accessory called the Pokewalker that allows a play to carry a Pokemon character with them on walks.
“[The Pokewalker] encourages people to move,” Hanson said, noting that the pedometer gives a point system known as watts to players for getting special characters and items in the game. 20 steps equal one watt, which is the same amount of steps required to burn a single calorie.
Blowers said that walking is often overlooked as a form of exercise and can be one of the most helpful and easiest to apply in everyday life, even if it means parking a little “farther from Wal-mart than what you normally would.”
Emily Richard recently bought the Pokemon games that feature the Pokewalker and thinks it is good for children to be encouraged to exercise in such a way. Other games, such as Wii Fit, she said seems to be aimed at older people who are better at video games than outdoor exercise.
“I don’t want to call my mom lazy, but [she doesn’t go outside] and she plays Dance Dance Revolution and everything,” Richards said.
Within Clinton County, steps have been made to help the community have more access to healthy activities that can bring families together.
The Eat Well Play Hard offered by the Clinton County Health Department award grants to seven different agencies, totaling $15,500. The awards were given to Peru Intermediate School, Beekmantown School District, and the City of Plattsburgh among other areas. The funding focuses on enhancing nutrition or physical activity within the community, a press release this past March stated. The funding will go toward things such as adding a vegetarian diet in cafeterias and expanding the Disc Golf course in Cadyville to a full 18-hole course.
Regular outdoor exercise is important to students such as Devin Brassard and Sean Bigdeli in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Bigdeli said that exercise should be part of a lifestyle, agreeing with Blowers’ statement, and that a mix of activities is best. Adding things like video games can be good, he said, but also dangerous because video games are “based more on assumption than on reality” and that may not have a good outcome on mental health.
“I’ve played [Wii Fit] but I wouldn’t call it enjoyable,” Brassard said, “it’s a whole lot of weird little mini games. As a gamer, a game of mini games isn’t much of a game. I know it’s healthy but you have to make sure you enjoy something if you want to keep doing it.”
If he ever has children he said he would stick to a more traditional means of getting them exercise and having them play outside.
“I would be like my mom and tell my kids to go play out in traffic,” Brassard said. “You’d stay in shape trying not to get killed.”