Interviewing a Physical Education Coach

04/19/2017

We interviewed a kinesthesiologist who is currently teaching fitness classes at Carnegie Mellon University but has also worked with children in the past. She created her own six week course that revolved around getting children to be more active; ages ranged from kindergarten to eighth grade.

She told us that a great way to get children to be active and also pay attention to the signals their bodies are indicating to them is to do interval training. One example of this could be to do some high intensity workout (ex: sprint to the other side of the gym) and then take a break. Do this multiple times and check on them to see how they are doing. This will help them understand their own limits and give you a chance to check in on them and make them more aware of how they are currently feeling.

This is especially applicable to children with asthma. If they are pushed but guided, they can start to recognize when their asthma is going to come. Doing this periodically will help the children slowly learn the triggers and how to deal with them. This may also help these children realize that the triggers for asthma may not be from the sport they are playing but from other factors.

A great way to help children manage their exhaustion or asthma problems is to teach them how to breath deeply and calm themselves. Simply doing a six second inhale and a deep exhale can help anyone return to a normal state.

The key point to teach children:

“When having an attack I need to calm down”