Wearing chest straps, syncing heart rate devices, and calibrating pedometers can be extra work and very time consuming for your students. Tracking MVPA and activity time is important for measuring growth, but how can you get your students excited about wearing heart rate monitors and pedometers? We asked Minnesota State University – Mankato Physiology Professor, Dr. Jessica Albers, to give us her insight on how to get your students excited about aerobic exercise and track their improvement.
1. Explain what they’re tracking
A deeper understand of what students are tracking and why they’re tracking it can be a great motivator. We asked Dr. Albers how she would explain MVPA and heart rate to an elementary student, see her response:
2. Long-term benefits of a healthy heart
It’s hard to get students excited about long-term health benefits. See Dr. Albers recommendations and tips for talking to your students about their long-term health here:
3. Visually tracking growth
When students are able to see their MVPA minutes increase or heart rate fluctuates, it’s a great visual motivator. Dr. Albers discusses that training with heart rate monitors can get your students to think about their activity level intensity, even outside of PE.
4. Preparing for fitness testing
We asked Dr. Albers how using pedometers and heart rate monitors can prepare students for fitness testing.
5. Muscles won’t work without oxygen
Dr. Albers explains how you can motivate athletes to care about heart rate when they participate in anaerobic activities.
The ability to efficiently and accurately track MVPA and/or heart rate is key to getting students excited about exercise and tracking their progress throughout class and over time.
Gopher offers a wide variety of equipment to that makes tracking activity time easy and hassle-free for teachers and students. Our line of FITstep™ Pedometers track steps, activity time, and MVPA. The FITstep™ Pro Pedometer uploads data into the FITstep™ Software, allowing you to organize data and print reports. It’s a great way to track your student’s growth throughout the year. Click here for all Pedometer options.
If you’re looking to track heart rate, the Optic™ Strapless Heart Rate Monitor instantly gathers student heart rate data and continuously tracks and displays it in real-time. Use the AssessPro™ iPad app to collect heart rate data and email reports. Click here for all Heart Rate Monitor options.
