fitness of the young geneation

[wiesiek]

I`m just listening radio report,
have to post essence of it :
Polish A.W.F.(Academy of Physical Education ) did general fitness test on population of 12y.o.
Some of the results :
- 80% unable to do simple rope jump
- just 14% was able to pass basic catch and throw test
- long jump average 3,5 m. ; 4 m. was in similar test 20 years ago!

Suppose it happens around the world.
Strange,
in the same time World records are broken every year in sports ...

[everything]

too much indoor screen time ... pretty soon hooked up to the "virtual reality" where the AI can give you the "dopamine hit" w/o needing as much fitness.

the 0.00001% of top athletes are by definition outliers so are not part of the "trend".

[wiesiek]

top athletes are machines to make money,
I just heard, that for ex,. our football team has 11 >scientific tutors<
but
I`ve been thinkin` more about mass media promotion of the body fitness- it is present all the time, looks that coca cola make better commercials...

[Quigga]

'Ingest our poison to stay healthy!'

Obviously it's just a lifestyle being sold. If it makes people happy to follow and try to embody that life style, unfortunately many end up being unhappy and disillusioned in later in life. It's not enabling people to live a more integrated and connected life.

But it is damn tasty tho from time to time. But even the idea of drinking 2l or more of softdrinks each day, or even a single day, makes me sick.

Re the children -

It's human devolution. I don't want to decide for others how to live their life, but it's easy to see that's not a good thing.

[wayne hansen]

I see some increadbly fit young people these days
Give them a couple of weeks practice on those polish tests and see how they do
How many kids practice long jump these days
Back in my day everyone did
So it’s an unfair test
I could never jump rope
Don’t know why just couldn’t get it
We always had a ball in our hand
This seems very unscientific to me
It’s like giving the kids an old dial phone and laughing at them because they can’t work it out
Give those people who did the test so well a game boy and see how they go

[wiesiek]

hmm, maybe I articulated it not so clearly, putting testing methods a side - given examples are just remembered examples,
but
whole broadcast pronunciation was about dramatic lowering of the physical ability of the coming generations.
In fact, when I walk thru the city I can see it everyday .
Q. is probably right - we are witnessing devolution of the human kind.

[Steve James]

Maybe if we compare children (?) from various generations, it's probably true that the overall fitness of today's 12 year-olds is less than that of 12 year-olds of 50 years ago. But, besides the advent of videogames and cell phones, 50 years ago we had physical education classes. Nowadays, phys-ed courses (and music programs) have been cut. Besides, though I don't know about Poland, in the US many of those who were kids 50 years ago are obese now. So, I don't think the physical fitness of today's 12 year-olds will have much effect on their futures.

That said, the present generation of young adults seem more interested in fitness than earlier generations. For ex., there are a lot more of them practicing martial arts. And, let's not forget that they are still breaking world records.

I don't think the difference indicates a decline. Let's face it, how many humans today would survive if they had to climb trees? Probably the majority of our current crop of 12 year-olds would do better than those who were 12 in 1970. Iow, it's a matter of necessity. Today's youth are no less capable than their predecessors. Though, in fact, today's 65 year-olds are way ahead of previous generations of the same age. Or, at least, they think they are. And there seem to be lots of elderly people who can still outperform people 30 years-younger.

[windwalker]

"The Army is giving new recruits who exceed body fat standards or failed academic entrance standards a chance to serve as the service faces a daunting recruiting crisis."

interesting thread

People may not know that those in combat arms often have the highest levels of intelligence and fitness among other attributes.
The training itself tends to weed out those who do not, giving those able to pass the training requirements in real time usage "war" a better chance before
the event itself weeds some of them out


a war, would tend to clear a lot issues

maybe soon..

[Quigga]

Well kids not being able to perform basic physical skills is worrisome to me, but also maybe none of my business

Ofc the information age has its own challenges and has given us new tools to face it with, and our new generations hopefully get more and more adapt at handling them

You wouldn't see so much harmful technological addictions in the 1990 to early 2000s. Now people die from playing video games literally for days, sometimes

Ignoring the physical body aspect during development is not wise

I climbed a rope as a 7y kid in gym class, was 3m or 4m or so

Jumped down from the very top and landed in a squat position without rolling or bouncing

That was cool lol

Perhaps we're just seeing different ends of the bell curve at play

[everything]

some report cards here https://www.activehealthykids.org/

unsurprisingly, the pandemic seemed to cause some downgrades

doesn't look like they looked at anything from too long ago, maybe 2014 at the earliest.