The alarming trend in teenage girls’ physical activity

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It is no secret, physical exercise benefits adolescent girls. However, the benefits go far beyond just a physical outlet. It’s about overcoming challenges and engraining long term habits, setting young women up to succeed and making physical activity a part of their lives.

Research shows that national participation in sport is low for girls and has been for decades. However, with physical activity proven to assist in academic achievement and cognition, finding alternative pathways to get girls active has never been more critical. As it stands, the current statistics are worrying:

Young males (15-17 years) are three times more likely to engage in one hour of exercise each day than females of the same age (Ref 1) . A major contributing factor to this substantial gap was young women feeling uncomfortable engaging in sports and restricted in traditional female school uniforms.

This is particularly important following the COVID-19 pandemic, which showed children were 73 per cent less likely to meet moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity guidelines compared to pre-pandemic (Ref 2).

The Solution

Thankfully, the decline in girls’ physical activity can be easily addressed. In 2022, MLC has developed a new health and fitness program that aims to foster a love of keeping fit and active in all students, regardless of their skill level.

The ground-breaking program has been developed in consultation with students after a survey revealed their appetite for gym-style activities. In particular, non-competitive activities such as Pilates, spin, yoga, general fitness, and group strength and conditioning classes were highly desired. Off the back of this, each of these classes is now on offer to MLC’s secondary students.

The Results

Although the program has just launched this year, the school is seeing significant uptake, with over 350 students attending the classes each week.

According to MLC’s Director of Sport, Michael Jenkins,

“Health and fitness plays a major role in ensuring our students maintain positive wellbeing, so we are thrilled to see the program make such an impact and hope we can inspire other schools to do the same.”

1 https://www.vu.edu.au/sites/default/files/girl-sport-uniforms-nationalstudy.pdf

2 https://www.deakin.edu.au/about-deakin/news-and-media-releases/ articles/lockdowns-meant-long-hours-of-screen-time-and-less-activity-forfamilies