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Tag: exercise
How Running Got 6,000 Homeless People Back on Their Feet
Hector Torres’s world was shattered when he learned his 29-year-old son had died. The former Marine and avid runner was driving home from work when he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed. The loss sent Hector into a grief spiral as he abandoned his life as a truck driver in Connecticut to wander the streets of New York City without a home.
“In the process of losing my son, I lost reality,” Torres says. “For about a month, I was wandering the city not knowing where I was at.”
Ten months later, Torres began to piece his life back together. While residing in the New York City Rescue Mission, Torres became a member of Back on My Feet, a nonprofit that combats homelessness through running programs. Founded in 2007, the organization works with shelters in 12 cities nationwide to recruit members interested in changing their lives for the better. Teams meet three times a week at 5:45 a.m., and members who maintain at least a 90 percent attendance record for the first 30 days become eligible for job training, financial aid and other life-building opportunities.
“Nobody runs alone,” says executive director Terence Gerchberg. “The point of this group is not to outrun somebody; it’s to uplift somebody. It’s meeting people where they are.”
Watch the video above to see how running transformed Torres’s life.
Upstanders: A Warrior’s Workout
Former pro football player David Vobora gave up a lucrative career in private fitness to work with wounded warriors. His workouts have brought them new strength and inspiration.
Upstanders is a collection of short stories celebrating ordinary people doing extraordinary things to create positive change in their communities produced by Howard Schultz and Rajiv Chandrasekaran. These stories of humanity remind us that we all have the power to make a difference.
With Books in Hand, These Students Are Going on a Ride
There’s a movement traveling through school classrooms across the country. Literally.
Stationary education is becoming a thing of the past as schools are discovering the benefits of blending exercise and learning. Through the Read and Ride Program, health- and grade-boosting exercise bikes are becoming fixtures in schools — and they’re proving their worth.
It all began five years ago at Ward Elementary School in Winston-Salem, N.C. Instead of desks, Ward has an entire classroom filled with exercise bikes. Periodically throughout the day, teachers will bring their students to the room to ride and read.
Not only does the program encourage and promote reading at a young age, the exercise factor improves students’ brain functioning, too. In 2010, Ward Elementary students who were in the program achieved an average 83 percent reading comprehension, while those who weren’t averaged just 41 percent, reports Fast Company.
Due to these standout results, solo exercise bikes are being added to classrooms to use as a “reward” for students or to just allow them to release some excess energy.
“Riding exercise bikes makes reading fun for many kids who get frustrated when they read,” program founder Scott Ertl tells Fast Company. “They have a way to release that frustration they feel while they ride.”
Looking beyond the educational benefits, the bikes also provide great exercise for kids who are confined in a classroom for six hours a day.
“Many students who are overweight struggle with sports and activities since they don’t want to always be last or lose,” Ertl explains to Fast Company. “On exercise bikes, students are able to pace themselves and exert themselves at their own level — without anyone noticing when they slow down or take a break.”
Since 2009, the Read and Ride program has gone national with chapters in 30 other schools. Russell Jones Elementary in Rogers, Ark., is one of those schools. In 2011, students who were a part of the program had an average growth rate of 113 points, whereas those who weren’t scored an average of 79 points.
They say that reading can take you anywhere, so the only question is: Where do you want to go?
MORE: When This School Got Rid of Homework, It Saw a Dramatic Outcome
Why is This Man Making Homeless People Do Push-Ups?
Boot-camp workouts, which include grueling regimens of push-ups, squats, sprints and more, are a privilege usually reserved for people of means. But in Denver, one volunteer is bringing the benefits of good health and strenuous exercise to homeless people.
Mark McIntosh, who was a sports reporter for many years on Denver’s CBS affiliate and currently works as a life coach and motivational speaker, is leading homeless men in workouts that he hopes will be life-changing.
McIntosh calls his boot-camp program A Stronger Cord. Participants once lived at Denver Rescue Mission’s Lawrence Street Shelter and through good behavior, earned individual rooms at a former motel turned shelter, The Crossing.
On the night that Jennifer Brown of the Denver Post visited them, they were grinding out sit-ups and running laps. “A sweat a day keeps the doctor away,” McIntosh tells Brown, “and the surgeon and the shrink.”
Several of the participants say that exercise helps them ward off depression and prevents them from returning to drugs and alcohol. Gulf War veteran Darwin Ben agrees. He has suffered PTSD since serving, and he says, “My life has been an up-and-down roller coaster ever since.”
McIntosh continues, “The physical piece is important — you get the endorphins going, but it’s also the teamwork. All men, when we are bummed out about life, we tend to go into our caves. This brings us all together.”
A Stronger Cord seeks volunteers to help lead the workouts indoors and outdoors (yes, even in the winter) near The Crossing and in downtown Denver. McIntosh hopes to expand the program through city funding, donations and more volunteers.
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How Can Exercise Boost Student Achievement?
Children — especially young children — need to move. But with recess being cut back or even eliminated in elementary schools in favor of academics, kids are being forced to sit much more.
Too much sitting isn’t just bad for anyone’s health, but for youngsters, a lack of movement can negatively impact learning. TIME magazine reported children who exercised more tend to have better grades, higher test scores and performed better in math, English and reading.
That’s why several schools are finding ways to fit in exercise in the classroom. A school in Charleston County uses gym equipment in class; schools in Texas saw that standing desks improved student concentration; in Pennsylvania, a fifth-grade teacher ditched desks for yoga balls and found that it increased her students’ attention spans.
MORE: It’s Not a Stretch to See That This Yoga Teacher Makes a Difference to At-Risk Teens
And as Fast Company reports, Ward Elementary School in North Carolina has a Read and Ride program where students can hop onto exercise bikes while they read.
Incredibly, the bikes have not only helped burn excess energy, it has also boosted academic achievement. According to Fast Company, “students who had spent the most time in the program achieved an 83 percent proficiency in reading, while those who spent the least time in the program had failing scores — only 41 percent proficiency.”
The program was started five years ago by Ward Elementary counselor Scott Ertl and has expanded to 30 other schools. We previously reported that Ertl is an advocate of physical movement in the classroom and is also the inventor of Bouncy Bands that allows fidgety students to bounce their feet and stretch their legs while quietly working (and without distracting their classmates) at their desks.
“Riding exercise bikes makes reading fun for many kids who get frustrated when they read,” Ertl tells Fast Company. “They have a way to release that frustration they feel while they ride.”
DON’T MISS: A Simple Solution For America’s Achievement Gap
A Simple Solution For America’s Achievement Gap
The difference in achievement between high and low-income students at every education level is staggering.
So what are educators to do? Despite providing all children with the same teachers and curriculum, they can’t do anything about the circumstances that kids are saddled with before and after the bell.
One way to narrow this so-called achievement gap? Exercise.
Back in 2012, using physical activity to help low-income schoolchildren gained popularity after a study showed that it could be of significant help to them. Short, 12-minute bursts of exercise like those used in the study could have the obvious effect of releasing the extra energy that little kids seem to harbor.
But would exercise help college-age low-income students as well? Further research was performed by Michele Tine, an assistant professor of education at Darthmouth College in New Hampshire.
Sure enough, a little bit of physical exertion helped focus that age group too, regardless of income. A test measuring students’ ability to focus on stimuli while ignoring distractions found that scores shot up for all who did a workout beforehand, while remaining unchanged for the control group. Tine’s results were recently published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Despite benefiting everyone, physical activity before class proved the most effective for low-income students. The result was not a slight bump, though – rather, those same 12 minutes of aerobic exercise that helped disadvantaged little kids effectively eliminated the achievement gap between low and high-income students. The low-income students were able to maintain their gains for a sustained 45 minutes after exercise as well, making this an effective technique for improving scores on actual tests as well as performance in the classroom.
Thanks to Tine and her team, the permanent roadblocks preventing so many from academic excellence can now be broken down with a few minutes of jumping jacks or jogging in place.
MORE: Delaware Pushes to Get More Low-Income Students Enrolled in Higher Education
These Coaches Make Recess Work for Kids
Recess can be chaos.
As a result, disciplinary problems can lead schools to reduce playground outings significantly — if not eradicate them altogether. Just look at Seattle, where a new report from KUOW found that schools serving the poorest students might offer 15 minutes of outdoor play a day. And that’s if the kids are lucky.
The adults say it’s just too much trouble to let the children play on their own. But that’s backwards, experts say.
Nationally, almost 18 percent of kids ages six to 11 years old are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Factor in adolescents, and the number of overweight or obese kids rises above one third. Physical activity during recess can help combat this. And adding to the importance of recess are studies that have found it can improve academic performance.
“Those students are the ones we also know have higher rates of obesity, and for whom academic achievement in school is even more important,” pediatrician Paula Lozano told the Seattle station, speaking about kids from low-income areas.
Across the county in the Bronx, New York, the group Asphalt Green may have a solution — turn recess into structured exercise time. Don’t call it physical education, like the dreaded gym class. This is supposed to be all fun and games, just with a very serious mission.
The nonprofit works with some 27,000 kids and can squeeze fitness fun into any hallway or corridor, a big plus for city schools often strained for space, organizers told the station. “Any space you give us, we can be active in,” says Arlen Zamula, the program’s Associate Director of the Recess Enhancement Program.
Asphalt Green’s programs may not look like the free-for-all tag games of yore, but organizers say they’re helping kids have fun while practicing fitness — and hopefully learning a truly life-long physical lesson in the process.
The Surprising Secret to Get Adults Moving
Going down the slides, swinging on the tire swing, and twirling around on the merry-go-round is just child’s play, right? Turns out that frolicking on the playground isn’t just good for kids, but adults, too. But how do you entice grown-ups to be more active?
In a small study, researchers from the USDA found an interesting way to get adults to move: By getting rid playground benches. That’s because it eliminated the temptation to sit, Reuters reports. The study, which was published in Preventive Magazine, was set up by USDA supervisory physiologist James Roemmich who wondered what parents would do after the eight picnic tables at a Grand Forks, North Dakota playground were temporarily removed. According to the report, researchers found that in the single week after the benches were taken away, parents were 23 times more likely to engage in moderate to vigorous activity, such as pushing children on swings, socializing with other parents, and throwing Frisbees and footballs.
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Fortunately, the on-the-go adults did not deter the kids from acting like, well, kids. The study also discovered that removing the benches did not affect how long children stayed at the playground — nor did it stop them from playing like they normally did. “That’s because children are already very active when they’re at the playground, running from swings to slides, climbing and jumping,” Roemmich said. “Increasing their activity level is more challenging.”
While it’s unlikely that your local park will rip up all the playground benches after this study, it certainly does suggest that simple steps like this could help reduce the obesity epidemic that’s afflicting this country.