Taking the pulse of gym class

Desperate to combat childhood obesity, gym teachers are turning to a technological solution: They're strapping wireless pulse watches, pedometers, and heart monitors onto kids to see how hard their bodies are working when they're running on the track, pedaling stationary bikes, or even dancing along to exercise video games.

The data, downloaded into a computer and adjusted for age and weight, are used to track progress through the term. Often students are graded on how much they improve, not how they measure up against their classmates.

Frequently called ''New Physical Education," the idea is to teach children the science of fitness and how to remain active the rest of the day.

''Everybody associates PE as just kids playing dodgeball and not learning anything, so the goal is to teach people to live a healthy life," said Susan M. Flynn, an assistant professor of physical education at Purdue University.

About 30 percent of the nation's 22,000 public secondary schools have adopted New Physical Education principles, said Phil Lawler, who was one of the movement's pioneers when he was physical-education coordinator for the Naperville, Ill., school district.

''Unfortunately, we created a bad reputation in PE the way it was structured in past years. Think of kids being picked last and performing skills they weren't talented in," Lawler said. ''If you teach health, you're now meeting the needs of every child."

In Amesbury, school officials say new heart monitors and nutrition counseling have been in use since 2004. Teachers say more than half the students have improved their exercise or nutrition habits as a result, and they've seen some lose weight. In a typical gym class students are asked to keep their pulse rates between 75 to 85 percent of their maximum rates for 20 minutes.

During class, the Amesbury Middle School gym looks like a health club for teenagers. One recent morning, instructor Judy Burke moved around the gym floor, grabbing wrists to spot-check eighth-graders as they skipped rope, pedaled an exercise bike, or danced to pop tunes.

''Students love technology. It shows them results, and they can see where they're at," she said.

Pedaling a stationary bike, JoJo Lannon, 14, watched her pulse on the screen of a PC on an adjacent metal cart to see if she was doing as well as the day before. ''I want to see if it was good or just a one-time thing," she said.

Schools provide the equipment which they can do because costs are so low. Only a generation ago, wireless pulse watches, for example, could cost more than $500 each and were the province of elite athletes. Now, at less than $100, the watches can be provided en masse, and some schools get federal grants to pay for them.

Polar Electro Oy, a Finnish maker of heart-rate monitors that dominates the US market, said sales to schools rose 12 percent last year.

New Physical Education has also gotten a push from No Child Left Behind, the 2001 law that encouraged school districts to adopt measurable standards to tell whether students are making progress in a given subject. Few people were thinking about gym classes at the time the law was drafted, but these devices ''give them direct, measurable areas that they can translate into report cards," said Nicole Chamblin, Polar's marketing manager.

Studies are starting to show New Physical Education works. ''Children enrolled in fitness-oriented gym classes showed greater loss of body fat, increase in cardiovascular fitness, and improvement in fasting insulin levels than control subjects," reported a University of Wisconsin study of 50 overweight middle-school children published in October.

The programs, however, have run into some resistance from traditionalists who see gimmicks in some of the new lesson plans and skeptical federal studies that question whether teachers are making the best use of the new devices.

In Ridgewood, N.J., elementary teacher James Ross said he doesn't have time to put heart monitors on students since he sees them only twice a week for about 35 minutes. He said ballgames teach skills such as teamwork, cooperation, and responsibility -- lessons often lost when gym involves fewer games and more cardiovascular workouts. ''Fitness is a necessary component to all of this, but not the sole focus," Ross said.

But in Amesbury, where 35 percent of the students are overweight, Catherine Hill, who teaches what used to be called Home Economics but is now termed ''family-consumer science," said the programs have already helped some lose pounds. Many were put off by traditional gym programs, she said, but not by the new technology, such as video games that direct dance steps.

''They love PlayStation 2," Hill said. ''You don't have personal trainers and all that humiliation."

Ross Kerber can be reached at kerber@globe.com.