Family

PHILADELPHIA — The Kuyat children — 11-year-old John and 9-year-old Anna — worked up a sweat the other day at the Upper Main Line YMCA.

The Broomall, Pa., siblings danced, kickboxed, biked and played tennis — an hour-long marathon that bested their dad's 45-minute routine at the Berwyn fitness center.

It wasn't always this way.

"It was a chore to get them to do 15 minutes" at the Y, David Kuyat said. "Now, I'm waiting on them."

What changed? A couple of months ago, the Y introduced video games.

Games such as Dance Dance Revolution and simulated bowling, baseball and kickboxing are enticing children, many of them out of shape, to get off their derrieres and move. Fitness centers and school gym classes are jumping on the DDR mat, the video bike, and the virtual tennis court with gusto.

The concept even has a hip calling card: exer-gaming.

"It's just another vehicle to captivate adolescents," said Fran Cleland, a professor of kinesiology at West Chester University and president of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education.

Cleland and other experts view the interactive consoles as the latest hook that might draw reluctant adolescents to participate in physical activity for the 60 minutes a day the Centers for Disease Control recommend.

"Children think of exercise negatively," said Lisa Hansen, codirector of the XRKade Research Lab at the University of South Florida in Tampa. "It's a major issue to get these children moving."

The reasons for today's sedentary American youth are varied: neighborhoods without sidewalks, stranger danger, time booked with extracurricular activities, No Child Left Behind, which cuts into school recess and physical education time, and video games.

The Nintendo generation has grown up playing, and socializing, via a screen. Fewer partake in simple, unstructured games. For them, exercise is a chore, not the delightful afternoon of tag or jump rope that occupied their parents and parents' parents.

Limited studies have found that "these exer-games burn calories, do raise heartbeats, and offer a physical benefit for kids," according to Hansen. But, she added, it is unclear whether active gaming offers the same benefits as traditional workouts.

Few people seem to take issue with children, who already spend up to 44-1/2 hours a week in front of screens, spending even more time that way.

"Another half hour or hour doesn't bother me if they're doing something physically active," said Michael Sachs, a Temple University professor of kinesiology.

But, he cautioned, "it's not a panacea."

Obesity continues to be a health concern for American children, and lack of activity is a major contributor to the problem.

The most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that more than 16 percent of 2- to 19-year-olds were obese — a rate that did not change significantly over the study period of 2003 to 2006.