Good Health Magazine : FITNESS : HOW TO DEFINE A ‘FIT’ CHILD?

Despite widely publicized measurements of physical fitness, efforts to improve fitness scores have been held back by disputes over the very definition of childhood fitness.

Indeed, educators, parents, recreation leaders, pediatricians and fitness instructors cannot agree on what defines a “fit” child, what kind of tests should be used to measure fitness or where fitness should be taught, says Michael S. Willett, manager of the Chrysler Fund/AAU program, one of the largest ongoing studies of American children and fitness.

A minority of health experts even believe that fitness--as it is defined by the current fitness tests given to children--may not be an indicator of good health. But Willett and a majority of child-health experts disagree. Many believe that fitness tests have recently been refined so that scores reflect a child’s health status--not athletic ability.

Many popular fitness measurement programs, such as the original President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports fitness-awards program, have been criticized for measuring athletic prowess rather than such health-related attributes as stamina, strength and flexibility. In recent years, the President’s Council tests have been modified to emphasize fitness rather than athletic skill.

“(The Presidential Fitness test) was completely dependent on agility, leg power and natural speed,” says Kenneth Cooper, a Dallas-based aerobics expert. “We have tried in recent years to bring some sense into fitness testing.”

In Cooper’s Fitnessgram program--a test that he designed in 1982 and that is now used by many public schools--endurance, body strength, flexibility and body fat are measured. “Those are all health-related compared to the high jump and the long jump,” Cooper says.

Fitness testing that measures a child’s health status, not his or her athletic ability, has not been perfected, says Vern Seefeldt, director of the the Youth Sports Institute at Michigan State University.

“We got started looking at health-related fitness but never measured the true indicators of fitness,” Seefeldt says. He advocates measuring a child’s blood pressure and blood lipids (fat in the bloodstream) as a good monitor of health-related fitness.