Avery Faigenbaum y Cinco Preguntas con Revista Clinica de Medicina Deportiva

December 10, 2013 by 2 Comments

You read that right.

Like the NBA teams that don a Spanish jersey for an evening, at CJSM we are getting our Spanish on.

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Drs. Avery Faigenbaum and
Provincial Senator Cristina diRado
in Mar del Plata, Argentina

Our good friend and contributor to these blog pages and to the journal, Dr. Avery Faigenbaum, has agreed to sit with us for “5 Questions with CJSM.” We have been trying to catch up with him since his trip to Argentina this summer where he was lecturing on Exercise Deficit Disorder (EDD) and working on his own Spanish skills.  I’m know he’s a lot better in that area than I am.

Dr. Faigenbaum is a professor in the Dept. of Health and Exercise Science at The College of New Jersey.  He has written about EDD in youth (“Thinking Outside the Sandbox”) and about the benefits and safety of resistance training in youth.  He has lectured widely:  I’ve heard him speak in various settings in the United States, and he’s set to speak to the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2014 on EDD. Catch him if you can, you’re sure to learn a lot and be entertained as well: his energy is infectious.

And here’s just a taste of what you’re in for if you do get to see him:

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Avery Faigenbaum: Five Questions with CJSM

1) CJSM: With the recent award of the 2020 Olympic games to Tokyo, can you comment on any evidence out there that such events stimulate activity in young fans/viewers?  Is there a ‘trickle down’ effect for youth athletics/exercise from events like the Olympics?

AF: Last summer James Bond and the “Queen” opened the Olympic Games in London by jumping out of a helicopter. This was followed shortly thereafter by stellar performances from world class athletes including sprinter Usain Bolt, swimmer Michael Phelps, boxer Nicola Adams, and 23 year old Rosannagh MacLennan who started jumping on the trampoline at the age of seven. But in stark contrast to these remarkable feats of athleticism, physical inactivity among the world’s population is now recognized as a pandemic. Read more of this post

Filed under Epidemiology, Exercise Medicine, General Interest, Public Health in Sports and Exercise Medicine Tagged with , , , , ,

Exercise Deficit Disorder in Youth: Thinking Outside The Sandbox

June 19, 2013 by 19 Comments

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Avery Faigenbaum, Ed.D, FACSM: Jersey boy energizes the crowd

As a pediatric sports medicine specialist, I typically spend my days ministering to the maladies of the active child or adolescent; but as a public health advocate, I worry more about the other end of the spectrum:  the growing (pun intended), global pandemic of childhood underactivity and obesity.

The global problem of underactivity in youth is being investigated by many people.  One of the leaders in this field is a Jersey boy; no, not Jon Bon Jovi…… I have been a big fan of Dr. Avery Faigenbaum, from the College of New Jersey, for some time.  From his work investigating the safety of resistance training in children to his new focus on “Exercise Deficit Disorder” (EDD), his work has been an inspiration to me.

Last summer, I had the pleasure of working with him here in Columbus, Ohio, and we even got to record a session of Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s “Pediacast” where we discussed the problem of EDD.  This summer, I got to catch up with Dr. Faigenbaum at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting in Indianapolis.   Though he could probably bench press three of me, I successfully arm-wrestled him into doing a guest blog.  Just in time:  Dr. Faigenbaum is heading to Argentina in July as a guest professor.

And so before he can run away, it is with great pleasure that I present to the readership Dr. Faigenbaum’s blog post:  “Exercise Deficit Disorder in Youth:  Thinking Outside the Sandbox.”

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The pervasive reach of physical inactivity has now spread worldwide and some authors have appropriately described this issue as a “pandemic” (4). Levels of physical activity among modern-day youth are down while time spent watching television and surfing the Internet are up. Researchers from Canada recently assigned a letter grade of D- to physical activity levels in 5- to 17-year olds (1) and findings from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance survey indicate that one-third of high school students in the United States played video or computer games for 3 or more hours on an average school day (5). The decline and disinterest in physical activity appears to emerge early in life, and by the time students enter high school their sedentary habits are difficult to break. As a professor of pediatric exercise science, I am deeply concerned that regular physical activity has become a neglected dimension of health that has yet to garner the medical power and political clout of other pediatric and adolescent health issues such as cigarette smoking or super-sized beverages.

Read more of this post

Filed under Exercise Medicine, General Interest, Public Health in Sports and Exercise Medicine, Youth Sport Tagged with

ACSM Annual Meeting in Indianapolis

May 30, 2013 by

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Vintage Indy 500: Dan Gurney

Indianapolis:  home of the Indy 500, that just took place last Sunday, and this week home of the 60th Annual Meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).

I’ve already enjoyed a couple of great days here, and I wanted to share some of the high points.

First, I attended a session on exercise therapy and youth, cleverly entitled, “Linking Health Care with Fitness Care in Youth to Prevent Generation XXL.”  The session was organized as a series of talks given as part of ACSM 2013 and the concurrently run 4th World Congress on Exercise is Medicine.  Among the speakers was Avery Faigenbaum, EdD, a professor of pediatric exercise science whom I have heard speak on several occasions over the years.

He is always a scintillating speaker.  Much of his work over the years has involved demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of resistance training in youth.  His talk here  as part of this session took on a different subject:   “Exercise Deficit Disorder in Youth:  Challenging Traditional Dogma.”  If you have not heard of “Exercise Deficit Disorder” (EDD) before, you will be hearing more about it in the future.

Read more of this post

Filed under Concussion in Sport, Evidence-based Medicine in SEM, Exercise Medicine, General Interest, Physical activity interventions, Youth Sport Tagged with ,

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