The importance of physical activity

We finished unit 1 talking about the importance of physical education and the main problems we had to face nowadays regarding exercise.

Physical activity is very advantageous due to its benefits related to health thus we should promote it not only inside the school but also outside it. All children should accumulate at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day. At first, people may think that this is too much and that we do not have enough time to achieve this, however, it is very easy to accomplish indeed. For instance, parents might avoid overusing the car. Moreover, 60 minutes per day is only the minimum dose of physical activity, nonetheless, greater amounts of time provide more health benefits and parents should take this into account. I am an example of this.

I have been asthmatic since I was a baby and I took lots of medication due to this fact. I have been always fond of sports and I have practiced many of them. Nevertheless, my commitment with sport increased when I joined in a basketball team which involved more hours of training and also matches. I remember my first trainings when just after jogging I could hardly breath and how these episodes were progressively disappearing. After some years of playing basketball my asthma almost vanished. The more physical activity I performed, the less amount of medication I had to take.

In addition, there are also some other benefits resulting from exercise. Some of them have been summarized in this video:

Given the lack of exercise, people nowadays have to face new problems which have appeared recently such as obesity. Given our sedentary lifestyles, children not only do not benefit from exercise but they also can suffer the shortage of it. This has lead to worse effects like the reduction of the life expectancy, a fact that this shocking video shows perfectly.

Once we know all the advantages of physical activity and all the terrible disadvantages of not practicing it, why we do not give it the importance that it has?