Establishment of a School Implemented Exercise Program to Prevent Injury and Promote Health among Youth: Is There a Link between Balance and Physical Health?

Husky Move is a program which values school based participation in physical activity in order to improve physical performance, overall health and quality of life. Physical activity in children provides many benefits such as directly preventing significant medical expenses and reduced productivity that occurs in old age including the lessening of suffering from obesity and diabetes in adulthood. Children entering adolescence typically experience lack of competency in fundamental movement skills (FMS) especially in low resources communities. Husky Move aims to increase competency in FMS in low resourced communities. This paper will include an evaluation of the data measured before Husky Move and noting the physical attributes of the children before Husky Move commences. Evaluation of the effectiveness of integrating Husky Move into the school day will be essentially discussed. The program records data results by parameters such as BMI percentile, % body fat, FMS performance, balancing and landing technique four times per academic year. The data my paper will focus on is the data received from the BESS test which we will collect in April among all students that we have worked with. I will analyze this data and try to draw conclusions and discuss on the program’s effectiveness as well as students overall physical improvement from it