PE Fitness Homework

Purpose of Event:  The purpose of the activities is to get the students moving outside of school and to teach them about different aspects about healthy living.  With these assignments we are also attempting to get the community involved as well.

Description of Idea:  These assignments are designed to ensure the students are exercising outside of school.  Each assignment focuses on a different fitness component to improve their overall fitness levels.

This is a homework assignment that gives students a health related topic with questions about that reading.  Along with the reading the students must complete a 30 minute workout and encourage their family to complete it with them.  This is done to attempt to get the community involved in fitness as well.

Name:_______________________________________Period:_____Date:__________

Fitness Homework Tracking Sheet

Directions:  All students must complete five of the six categories during the week.  List the category letter and the date you did each activity.  You must also describe the activity you completed.  Categories are on the next page.  A parent must sign the sheet.

Date

Category

Activity

Parent Initials



Get Off The Couch

Did you know???

  • Kids and teens ages 8-18 spend an average of 4 hours a day in front of some type of screen media (TV., DVD, Computer etc.) Not counting school work.
  • The more TV you watch the more likely you are to snack.  The average person consumes almost 200 extra calories for every hour of TV watched.
  • Advertisers use kid/teen programming to promote fast food restaurants and many other extremely unhealthy foods.  (Which makes you more likely to want them)
  • Too much television takes away from valuable physical activity time, which over time will get you into a lazy routine and you will never want to workout.

On average how much television do you watch per day?____________

Why do you think a lot of teenagers spend so much time watching television or in front of the computer?  Explain your answer.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here is an idea to get both TV and Exercise.  The Couch Potato Workout

Here is what you do:

  1. Choose a show
  2. Watch it
  3. During each commercial do an exercise (there will be at least 3)

Here is your workout:

Do as many reps as you can during the commercials for each exercise

Commercial #1 - Incline Push Ups (feet on the couch, hands on the floor)

Commercial #2 - Regular Push ups

Commercial #3 - Decline Push ups (hands on the couch, feet on the floor)

Commercial #4 - Curl-ups

Commercial #5 - Sit ups (chest touches your knees)

Commercial #6 - Chair dips (hands on the edge, dip down until you but almost touch the floor and back up)

Repeat

Do this work out 3 times on 3 different days--check off each day and write in your reps

Day 1        Incline PU        ____        Day 2 Incline PU        ____        Day 3 Incline PU        ____

        Decline PU        ____                Decline PU     ____                Decline PU     ____

        Regular PU    ____                Regular PU    ____                Regular PU    ____

        Regular CU    ____                Regular CU    ____                Regular CU    ____

        Regular SU    ____                Regular SU    ____                Regular SU    ____

        Dips                ____                Dips                ____                Dips                ____

Nutrition

Why is Proper Nutrition Important?

Are nutrition and health related?  Is healthy eating important?  Of course!  Like a finely-tuned racing car, your body needs the right fuel (food) and regular maintenance (exercise, lifestyle and mental attitude) to achieve its true health potential.  Nothing is more important than healthy eating!  Put in the wrong fuel or let it go without regular use and there’s no way it can deliver its full power and performance.  Without healthy eating, you body’s engine will cough, splutter and eventually stall.

Maintaining a balance diet by healthy eating can:

  • Give you vitality and energy for life
  • Help you stay at a weight that’s right for you
  • Boost your immune system
  • Improve sports performance
  • Delay the effects of aging
  • Keep you active and fit into old age
  • Help beat tiredness and fatigue
  • Protect teeth and keep gums healthy
  • Enhance your ability to concentrate and possible alter mood
  • Ward off serious illnesses like heart disease, certain cancers, mature-age onset diabetes, and gallbladder disease

A healthy lifestyle must be reinforced at home as well as at school.  That is why it is so important to start positive exercise habits at a young age and that is the main reason we have fitness homework.  Hopefully these fitness homeworks will be motivating for the entire family and will help every student.  

Assignment:  30 minute Muscular Endurance workout.  What did you do?____________

Parent Signature (required):__________________________________________________

  1. Which fact from above stood out to you?  And why?

  1. What physical muscular endurance activity benefits you the most and why?

  1. Why is it so important to eat healthy balance meals?

Fitness Homework - Cardiovascular Exercise

Types of Cardiovascular Exercise

There are many types of cardiovascular exercise.  Cardiovascular exercise is something that involves using the larger muscles like your legs.  So as you can imagine there are many different ways to do this.  They can be divided up into a number of different categories.  Indoors and outdoors exercise and with or without special exercise equipment.

Outdoor Cardiovascular Exercise

This includes running, walking, jogging, bicycling, jump-roping, swimming and some types of skiing.

Indoor Cardiovascular Exercise

The indoor types of cardiovascular exercise include using treadmills, stationary bicycles, stair climbers, rowing machines, elliptical trainers and ladder climbers.

You may have noticed from the list above that for the most part the types of cardiovascular exercises you can do outside tend to be the ones that do not need any kind of special of special equipment.  That is true for the most part.  However, even running or walking you should make sure that you wear the right kind of shoes - or you may injure your feet.  Also, when bicycling you should wear a helmet, and of course, you need a jump rope to be able to go jump-roping!  

For the most part though the indoor equipment is kind of expensive stuff.  You may want to try some yard sales to see if you can find some of that equipment cheaper there first.  But, overall there are still many different types of cardiovascular exercise.  What is best for one person may not be for another, depending upon your needs.

Assignment:  30 minute cardiovascular workout of your choice.  Activity:______________________________________________________

Parent Signature (required):__________________________________________________

  1. What makes an exercise a cardiovascular exercise?

  1. List three indoor cardiovascular exercises.

  1. List three outdoor cardiovascular exercises.