4.5: Pump Up My Heart

National Health Education Standards (NHES)

• 1.12.1 Predict how healthy behaviors, such as staying physically active, affect overall health.
• 7.12.2 Practice a variety of healthy behaviors, such as physical fitness activities, to maintain or improve your health and the health of others.

Wellness Guidelines

• Increase how often you're physically active
• Decrease sedentary behavior (time spent sitting or being inactive)

Instruction: In a group, in pairs, or using a think-pair-share format, have participants discuss the questions below. Recognize anyone who has made progress toward their goals, and encourage anyone who wants to adjust their goal to seek one-on-one support.

Share: Let's talk about our SMART Goals (goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound).

• How is your current SMART goal going?
• What are some ways you could improve your progress? (Areas to Grow)
• What are some ways you're already doing well? (Glows)

GUIDELINE: Increase Frequency of Physical Activity and Decrease Sedentary Behavior

• Share: Which guideline do you think connects to today's lesson? Does anyone have a SMART Goal tied to it?

Instruction: Choose one activity.

1. Guideline Popcorn: As a group, quickly call out all 8 guidelines "popcorn style" — one person at a time, in no particular order.
2. Guideline Charades: Split participants into groups and assign each group a guideline. Each group must silently act it out while the others guess.
3. Two Truths and One Lie:
4. Truth 1: The average heart is about the size of your palm.
5. Truth 2: The heart is a muscle, and it makes a "lub-dub" sound.
6. Lie: The only way to find your pulse is by using a tool to listen to your heart.
7. Share: There are other ways to check your pulse, which we'll learn about today.
8. Questions to discuss and/or write about in a journal:
9. Have you ever heard the term "aerobic exercise"? What do you think it means?
10. What exercises do you do that make your heart work harder? How often do you do them?
11. Do you think it's important to do exercises that strengthen your heart? Why or why not?

• What aerobic exercise is, and why it matters for heart health.
• Worksheets
• Slide presentation

Materials

• Do Now
• My Heart in Action
• Check Your Pulse
• Pump It Up Dice
• Exit Ticket

[Sources: HHS, 2008; NIH, n.d.; American Heart Association, 2015; Merriam-Webster Dictionary, n.d.; WHO, n.d.]

Key Vocabulary

• Exercise: Body movement that uses energy and is planned, structured, repeated, and done on purpose.
• Physical Activity: Any movement made by your skeletal muscles (the muscles attached to your bones) that requires energy.
• Fitness: The ability to handle daily tasks with energy and without getting worn out.
• Heart: A palm-sized muscle at the center of your cardiovascular system, responsible for pumping blood through your body.
• Cardiovascular (Circulatory) System: The body system that moves blood and lymph fluid through the body. It includes the heart, blood vessels, and blood.
• Circulate: To travel a path that eventually returns to the starting point.
• Aerobic: Describes exercise in which your body's large muscles move in a steady, rhythmic pattern for an extended period of time (closely related to cardiorespiratory endurance).
• Cardiorespiratory Fitness (Endurance): A health-related part of fitness — how well your heart and lungs can deliver oxygen to your body during sustained activity.
• Intensity: How much effort, force, or weight an activity or exercise requires.
• Heart Rate (Pulse Rate): The number of times your heart beats in one minute.
• Resting Heart Rate: Your heart rate when you're not exercising and your heart only needs to pump the minimum amount of blood your body needs. For most people, this falls between 60–100 beats per minute.
• Maximum Heart Rate: The highest number of beats per minute your heart can reach, based on your age.
• Target Heart Rate Range: The heart rate range you should aim for during exercise to get the most benefit.

Activities

Do Now: Would You Rather

Instruction:

• Split participants into two groups, with one group standing on each side of the room.
• Read each question aloud, starting with "Would You Rather," and point to one side of the room for the first choice and the other side for the second choice. Have participants walk to the side that matches their answer.
• Play basketball or soccer?
• Go jogging or go swimming?
• Exercise with a friend or exercise alone?
• Exercise indoors or outdoors?
• Go running or lift weights?
• Exercise with music or without it?
• Exercise in the morning, afternoon, or at night?
• Use exercise equipment (weights, treadmill, etc.) or skip the equipment entirely?

Share:

• Why do you think we played this game? To find out what kinds of physical activities you enjoy and how you like to exercise!
• Exercise is body movement that uses energy and is planned, structured, repeated, and done on purpose (HHS, 2008). It can be fun and can happen almost anywhere. As the game showed, many different activities count as exercise.
• Physical activity is any movement made by your skeletal muscles that requires energy (WHO, n.d.).
• Physical activity is a key part of fitness. Fitness is the ability to handle daily tasks with energy and without getting worn out (HHS, 2015).

Good to Know: My Heart in Action

Share:

• One of your body's systems is the cardiovascular (circulatory) system, which moves blood and lymph fluid throughout your body. It includes the heart, blood vessels, and blood. Circulate means to travel a path that returns to its starting point.
• The pump that keeps your blood circulating is your heart — a palm-sized muscle at the center of the cardiovascular system.
• That name makes sense once you break it down: cardio means heart, and vascular means veins/vessels.
• Blood circulating through your vessels carries important nutrients to the rest of your body. For example, it carries oxygen from your lungs to your tissues, including your muscles, so they can do work.
• Does anyone know the two types of blood vessels? Veins carry blood toward your heart to pick up more oxygen, and arteries carry blood away from your heart, delivering oxygen to the rest of your body. A helpful trick: "Arteries" starts with A, and blood moves AWAY from the heart in arteries.
• Your heart is a muscle, just like any other muscle in your body — for example, your bicep.
• If you exercise your bicep regularly, what happens? It gets bigger and stronger, and you can lift heavier weights.
• Exercise has many benefits — one of them is making your cardiovascular (circulatory) system stronger and fitter.
• The exercises that specifically strengthen your heart are called aerobic activities.
• Aerobic exercise happens when your body's large muscles move in a steady, rhythmic pattern for an extended period of time (this is closely related to cardiorespiratory endurance) (HHS, 2008).
• Can anyone name some aerobic exercises?

Aerobic exercises include:
Brisk walking, running, hiking, skateboarding, rollerblading, bicycle riding, swimming, martial arts, sports (football, soccer, basketball, baseball, softball, tennis), house and yard work, and dancing.

• Cardiorespiratory fitness (endurance) is a health-related part of physical fitness — it's the ability of your circulatory system (heart and blood vessels) and respiratory system (lungs) to deliver oxygen during sustained physical activity (HHS, 2008).
• For an exercise to build cardiorespiratory endurance, experts recommend working at a moderate to vigorous intensity — roughly 50–85% of your estimated maximum heart rate (HHS, 2008). On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being as hard as possible, this intensity level would fall between about 5 and 8.
• Intensity is how much effort, force, or weight is required to do a physical activity or exercise (HHS, 2008).
• Today, we'll learn more about the heart and the exercises that help keep it strong.
• Just like your bicep, your heart needs regular exercise to grow stronger, so it can keep circulating blood and pumping efficiently your entire life. If your heart becomes weak, it can develop disease or even stop working altogether (heart failure).
• Optional: Play this video on the heart: youtu.be/ruM4Xxhx32U

Set Up:

• Before the activity, drill a hole in a tennis ball.

Instruction:

• Dunk the tennis ball (with the hole) into a bucket of water until it fills up.
• Once full, squeeze the ball with your fist, holding it with the hole facing upward.
• Explain that each squeeze represents the heart contracting — pushing blood (represented by the water) out of the heart.
• When the ball is empty, relax your fist and let it return to its normal shape. This represents the heart refilling with blood from the lungs before pushing it back out to the body.

Real World Relevance: Check Your Pulse

Share:

• Has anyone ever actually heard their own heartbeat? What did it sound like? Let's find out!

Instruction:

• Split participants into pairs. Give each pair an empty paper towel tube to use as a makeshift "stethoscope" (a tool used to listen to sounds inside the body).
• Have one partner hold one end of the tube against their chest, over the heart, while the other partner places their ear against the opposite end.
• Have partners switch roles.
• Ask them to describe what they heard. They may need to shift the tube slightly to find the heartbeat.
• Explain that the "lub-dub" sound comes from the heart pushing blood out and then refilling.
• Optional: Play this video to learn more about the "lub-dub" sound: youtu.be/-4kGMI-qQ3I

Share:

• When we're not moving, our hearts don't need to work very hard to deliver oxygen-rich blood to our muscles and other tissues.
• But when we exercise, the heart has to work harder to deliver oxygen to our tissues — one way it does this is by beating faster, so blood moves from point A to point B more quickly.
• When you exercise, your body needs more blood and oxygen, so your heart speeds up to keep up with demand.
• As a result, a faster heart rate is one sign that you're exercising. Other signs include faster breathing and changes in your skin, such as flushing (turning pink) or sweating.
• Your heart rate (or pulse rate) is the number of times your heart beats in one minute (American Heart Association, 2015).
• This rate can change depending on your weight, age, activity level, and stress level.

Share:

• Now let's practice finding and counting our heart rate.
• You can check your pulse at the neck, wrist, or chest — we recommend the wrist. You can feel the pulse on the artery of the wrist, in line with your thumb. Place the tips of your index and middle fingers over the artery and press lightly. Don't use your thumb — it actually has a faint pulse of its own! (CDC, 2015).

*Image from: Kaiser Permanente. (2017). Taking a pulse. Retrieved from: healthy.kaiserpermanente.org.../hw201445.