The physical condition of the young people is not any more what it was...
A regular decline since 30 years

What the index of body mass ? The IMC make it possible to estimate if somebody is too thin, of stoutness normal, in overweight, or obese. This index is calculated by dividing the weight (in kilogramme) by the square of the size (in meter). For the adult between 20 and 65 years, it is preferable IMC to have included/understood one between 18,5 and 25. Below 18,5 one speaks about thinness, with the top of 25 of overweight. From 30, one speaks about obesity. IMC = WEIGHT/SIZE WITH THE CROSS-SECTION

There is little, the children played outside (thus, ran much) and consumed to taste it of mom. But it is past. Today, television and video games made them lose the taste of the effort. Nibbling made the remainder. Lucid observation of a professor of sport...

My experiment of physical professor of education brought me to an at the same time astonishing and foreseeable observation however if one observes the transformation of the ways of life, but for as much indisputable on the evolution of the physical condition of our children.

Each year, whereas I used my scales of the preceding school year to carry out the evaluation of the cycle of race to foot, I regularly realized of the inadequacy of those Ci. Indeed, the number of notes below the average challenged me, the more so as those were established in a statistical way by taking of account the unit of the results obtained by the school population of my establishment the previous year. The problem could not thus be at this level, because I took well into account the characteristics of the pupils whom I had to evaluate.

Initially, my reaction was to associate that a momentary event, a bad year to some extent. Then, with the passing of years, force was to note with each time the phenomenon was repeated and that it was due neither randomly nor to an age group weaker than the preceding one. The idea to analyze this situation discovered without really wanting it seemed to me then an obviousness, the more so as after 24 years spent within the same school establishment, I had at my disposal an incomparable tool of observation. The characteristics of the population did not vary in nearly a quarter century! Same rural and wine origins, great stability which makes us find the children of our pupils generation after generation. One can thus reasonably think that the noted phenomena have been highly likely to reflect rather well the evolution of the physical condition of the pupils generally for these last years.

Which were these observations?
A general physical formal requirement which worsens year after year, reflection of a health and physical which regresses. Twenty years ago, to have the maximum note (20/20) among boys for example, it was necessary to traverse 5 000 m in 20 minutes, that is to say 15 km/h. Même if excellence must remain rare, a certain number of pupils were however able to carry out this performance. Today while running to the same pace during 8 minutes, i.e. 2 000 m one obtain, 19,5/20, and those which obtain this note today are not legion! This variation is enormous, I have to begin again to me there on several occasions in my calculations in order to be quite certain not to have been mistaken. There is thus there indisputably a fall of the physical condition of the children. Those being less and less able to support an effort of average intensity (80 to 90 % of the VO2 max approximately (1)) during a given time. Moreover, the tests of evaluation of the latter, which we systematically carry out at the beginning of schooling, know year after year a regular and inexorable fall of the average results, undeniable reflection of a state of form which worsens.

Coordination and flexibility in fall
This situation, alas, does not apply only to the activities strongly requesting the physical condition. The driving coordination of the children is it also in strong fall. This is noticed with the obviousness in the sports engaging the gestural skills where the same report can be made. When it was a question before of teaching handball for example, one noted a large address of the boys accustomed to the countryside, from their way of life, with launching, to catch thanks to the plays which they practised spontaneously. Only, the girls were to be the subject of a work of driving education very particular in order to allow them to make up for this lost time primarily due to the differences in education. Today, it is not rare to find a number, which goes unceasingly growing, boys presenting of big problems of coordination and not knowing more to launch or catch a ball following the example girls a few years ago. The work of driving education reserved before to a sedentary minority is now a peremptory necessity for the majority of the pupils of a class of sixth.
Lastly, these regressions are also accompanied by harmful effects on qualities like the flexibility, the agility and the tonicity of our dear fair heads. That is noted particularly in sporting gymnastics where it becomes rare to see a child realizing easily what there is little was very ordinary: to go up on an asymmetric bar, there to balance themselves, turn around or to balance arms tended on parallel barses... The gestures acquired before naturally by a child who could go up to the trees, to cling to the branches, to jump a brook are from now on synonymous with exploits for the young people of today. Their lack of muscular tone, the absence of taking risk and the overweight are handicaps well too large when it is a question of evolving/moving in a space which are not connected any more with that of simple land.

The way of life rocked
How to explain these transformations which affect our younger generations? These deficits find their explanations in the evolution of the ways of life and the food practices. Indeed, the multiplication of the electronic plays, the hours increasingly more last in front of the small screen or the computers have a disastrous effect on the physical condition of our children, even rural, who can less and less use their body. With the place, once the time devoted to the finished school work, to leave in order to find the buddies for a part of football on the place the village, to play the cow-boys and the Indians or the gendarmes and the robbers as did it the preceding generations, it is in front of "the game-servant boy" or computer, television screen whom they pass the essence of their leisures. These activities being often coupled with an inopportune nibbling.

Nibbling and badly puffs out
Moreover, it is necessary to see in the modifications of the behaviors as regards nutrition the second reason of these transformations. Those have a spectacular impact involving an overweight more and more generalized. It is frequent to note today that the goûters children them also knew surprising evolutions. The gourd of water or syrup left the place with the quill of drink gasified with cola and its 25 sugars. The good old man sandwich is nothing any more but one memory vagueness. He is so much more convenient for the parents to give their children of what to buy something with the distributor or to slip into the portfolio one of these many goûters done everything (when it is not a package of cake aperitif!) rather than to prepare in advance at the house.
The devastations made by these modes of food whose dietetic virtues do not delude anybody in spite of the efforts made by their originators in term with communication, are noted with the daily newspaper when one is immersed in the educational circle. There is 15 to 20 years, this phenomenon was still marginal. One or two children maximum for a class of 25 pupils was concerned with these problems of weight. Nowadays, for the same number, it regularly touches 4 to 5 pupils reached of more or less severe obesity, and nearly a third of the population of my establishment as a whole is affected of a visible ponderal overload.

A fast phenomenon
This degradation is all the more remarkable and spectacular when it is given to me to observe the children of the pupils whom I could have in the past. There, not of genetic justifications to these phenomena! The atavism does not exist, when the parents, sportsmen highly skilled and sharpened at the age of their offspring can only note the deplorable physical condition their small children and hold a desperate speech whereas they are all the same the first concerned and responsible for this regression.
I have myself three children of 7, 9 and 14 years and at the time one Saturday been occupied by the primary school, I brought my 9 year old son, provided education for in CM1, with me classifies some with pupils of sixth 11 years old. It was at the beginning of year, a test on 2 000 m was envisaged this morning. It realized, without any drive, the best time of the class, relegating the second to several lengths and yet this one belongs to the whole better of all the classes of sixth. It is not normal that a child of primary education, even wire of professor of sport, is at this point above the level of two years old pupils more than him!
Which lesson can one draw from this report? Eh although a healthily nourished child (food resulting mainly from biological agriculture or our own production) and having a regular physical activity without being inevitably intensive (practical football in club, life in the countryside) has a physical condition largely higher than the whole of an age bracket which is higher to him two years. And at this age, the differences in one year to the other are significant, which locates the variation still better than that represents. Moreover now, that it is in the boys or the girls, a child who has a physical practice whatever it is apart from at his place (club or association) has a level of condition which is noticed immediately.

1. The VO2 max is the maximum consumption of oxygen (VO2 max, V = volume, O2 = dioxygene and max = maximum), also known like aerobic maximum capacity, is a key word very employed, in particular in the sports of endurance. To know some more: http://perso.club-internet.fr/theulle, excels site carried out by three pupils of first.

Extrait of Bio contact n°134 (March 2004) Sport