The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans from the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion recommends 60 minutes a day of activity for kids aged 6+, focusing on three types of activity: aerobic, muscle-strengthening, and bone-strengthening. Other countries have similar guidelines. UK Canada Australia New Zealand
Here’s how Cosmic Kids yoga delivers against recommended physical activity guidelines.
1. Cosmic Kids yoga offers aerobic activity (in which young people rhythmically move their large muscles.)
A Cosmic Kids yoga adventure is designed to be a workout. It moves at a good pace to hold the attention of the kids and to make sure there is aerobic activity in the exercise. With the sequence of poses working to bring a story to life, there is a continuous flow of poses which means the heart rate stays in a healthy cardio range. In a Cosmic Kids yoga adventure, there is always plenty of hopping, jumping, running on the spot, swimming actions and dancing to be enjoyed – a varied blend of aerobic activity. One particular aerobic highlight kids love in all CK adventures…Monkey Jumps! They certainly get your heart going!
2. Cosmic Kids yoga offers muscle-strengthening activities – making muscles do more work than usual during activities of daily life. This is called “overload,” and it strengthens the muscles.
When we do yoga, we use our own body weight to achieve the ‘overload’ required to build and strengthen muscles. Scuttling around in crab pose has the arms and legs supporting the torso. Sailing along in boat pose has the muscles in the core contracting to hold up our legs, and upper body keep and stay balanced as we charge through the waves. Lifting high into Unicorn pose and taking big steps through the sticky mud involve strong lunges which the large muscles in our legs and bottoms (the quads and gluts) working hard. Yoga poses don’t just require us to use the big muscle groups; we have to use all the little ones too. The muscles in the feet, ankles and often hands and fingers have to work hard as we hold a balancing pose. The smaller harder to reach muscles in the upper back are activated with snake pose or an airplane pose. This is one of the reasons why so many sporting stars and athletes practice yoga – the poses build strength in the muscles around the joints which helps to prevent injury.
5H’s first yoga sesh of the year ????Thank you #cosmickidsyoga for the fun Arctic inspired yoga adventure with #joybobthepolarbear A photo posted by Hillary Even (@teachnunavut) on
3. Cosmic Kids yoga offers bone-strengthening activities – producing a force on the bones that promotes bone growth and strength.
Weight bearing yoga poses like surfer pose encourage the retention of calcium and increase bone mass. When we perform weight-bearing poses we hold the weight of our body up against gravity. Resisting gravity puts a mild stress on the bones. That stress encourages the bones to lay down the new growth – which is especially important in kids. Unlike other weight-bearing activities like running or skipping, yoga doesn’t include much in the way of impact, so it’s very unlikely to damage cartilage or stress the joints. Instead, it lengthens muscles and holds them there, creating good tension on the bone.