Active Children Are Healthy Children
nature’s gym
Every community has numerous outdoor gyms; they are called trails. If kids can find these trails and get to the trails, they will walk on them, play on them, run on them, ride bikes on them, inline skate on them and even play hide-and-seek on them. Trails are free, they’re fun, they’re safe, and they’re ubiquitous.
Trails Are Hidden Treasures
Go into any community and interview the locals, young and old alike. Ask them how to get the Cheshire Rail Trail, the Tammany Trace, the Santa Ana River Trail. Don’t be surprised to be met with a blank stare and shrugged shoulders. Trails, one of our nation’s greatest resources and a frontline soldier in the battle to fight obesity, are like lost treasures. They’re extremely valuable, yet relatively unknown by most community members
Let the Children Lead the Way to Our Trails
So from this day forward, Trailsnet is going to be the premier website for helping children find trails so that we can begin to eliminate the epidemic of childhood obesity. Trailsnet wants to end childhood obesity one trail at a time. Stay tuned for further details about Trailsnet’s efforts to fight childhood obesity and eventually all obesity. But in the meantime, here’s some important information to share:
The Role of Physical Activity in the Fight to End Childhood Obesity
*Approximately 50 percent of children walked or bicycled to school in 1969; today, fewer than 15 percent of schoolchildren walk or bike to school, according to the Safe Routes to School Partnership.
*Only 3.8 percent of U.S. elementary schools, 7.9 percent of U.S. middle schools and 2.1 percent of U.S. high schools provide daily physical education for students, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
*52 percent of adults do not meet minimum physical activity recommendations.
