Exercising Tips for Youth

1. Promote regular physical activity. Regular physical activity improves strength and endurance, helps build healthy bones and muscles, helps control weight, reduces anxiety and stress, increases self-esteem, and may improve blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
   
   
2. Plan regular physical activities as a family such as an after-dinner walk.
   
   
3. Limit television and computer screen time to a maximum of two hours per day.
   
   
4. Do not make physical activity a punishment. Try using physical activity to counter something your child does not want to do. For instance, make it the routine that your child can ride a bike for 30 minutes before starting homework after school. Your child will beg for 20 more minutes outside just to put off the homework.

—Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 2006, www.cdc.gov, and American Heart Association, 2006, www.americanheart.org.