Playstation weigh station

REMEMBER PHYS ED classes? Kickball, capture the flag, rope climbing, that sort of thing? West Virginia announced plans last week to add a decidedly 21st century element to such staples. With a higher percentage of obese residents than all but two other states, West Virginia is turning to an unlikely ally: video games.

The state plans to incorporate Konami’s “Dance Dance Revolution” game into PE and health classes in all 765 public schools within two years. The effort will start with West Virginia’s 103 middle schools, whose students unfortunately are showing too much middle.

For those who have never wandered by a video-game arcade and seen it in action, “DDR” involves a lot more than twitching your thumbs. The game requires players to stand up -- yes, actually get out of the chair -- and stamp their feet rapidly on different spots on a pad, matching a pattern of dance moves displayed on the screen. The better you get at it, the faster you hop, shuffle and twirl.

Whether the game will help obese kids slim down remains to be seen, but there’s no question that it can make them break a sweat. In one study, researchers at Penn State University invited 35 8- to 14-year-old kids to play the game for up to 45 minutes. All but two played for the full time period, driving their heart rates up to 145 beats per minute -- “a darn good workout,” the kinesiologist in charge said.

As with adults, the hardest part isn’t getting overweight children to lose weight, it’s stopping them from putting the pounds right back on. That’s because they quickly lose interest in standard routines like walking, jogging and jumping rope. Bad weather and risky neighborhoods also pose hurdles for exercise regimens that require kids to go outdoors.

“DDR” is immune to some of these problems but not all of them. Video-game players typically lose interest in a title after playing it steadily for several weeks, and new versions may not appear for months or years. Still, the appeal of “DDR” is that it taps into something that many kids are already doing, rather than prodding them to adopt a new pastime.

Of course, video-game playing is one reason so many kids are out of shape in the first place. According to the Mayo Clinic, the obesity rate for U.S. adolescents has more than doubled over the last 30 years, and more than tripled for children ages 6 to 11. The most common factors, the clinic said, are too much time spent staring at a screen combined with too much junk food. It would be a nice irony if “DDR” proved to be an effective way to rouse kids from their sedentary lifestyle. And once they get nimble feet, who knows what else they’ll discover? Maybe they’ll want to play kickball.