02x07 - Workin' It Out

[bunniefuu]

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] We need you

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] Come on!

When I need help, and I've got a question

there's a place I go for inspiration

Gotta get to the Web, check the girls' investigation

What girls?

[Izzie] SciGirls!

Whoo!

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] I need you!

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] Come on!

You've gotta log on, post,

upload, pitch in! Yeah!

Wanna get inside a world that's fascinating?

The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting,

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] We need you!

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] SciGirls!!

[breathing heavily] Oh, Jake wait up!

Oh here we go-- slo...win' down.

Ah, finally!

Jake, can't you just get a wheel

for your mouse to run on like everyone else?

Spinning on the little wheel is so boring.

I know, I tried it once.

Ooh, off he goes.

Izzie, if you can't keep up with a mouse, you're not much of a man.

I'm not a man at all, I'm a girl!

Still, he's a mouse!

Point taken, ohhh.

I'm a little out of shape.

I can see that; what kind of exercising are you doing?

You know, I climbed from level to level

on my Annoying Ants Game this week, and I uh,

ran an antivirus program on my computer.

So... none.

Okay, I may be spending too much time on my computer, it's just--

I'm with Fang-- I kinda think exercising is boring.

Fang loves exercising-- as long as there's the promise

of some trash he can eat at the end. [laughs]

[Izzie] Yeah, well that's not going to motivate me.

Maybe the SciGirls have some ideas.

Let me just jump on in here.

That doesn't count as exercising.

Yeah, I know, I know.

Oh, this looks about right!

Let's play; you guys are on a team, and we're on a team.

You're going down!

Watch for the arrows! They're clues

for the "Pick'M, Stick'M" game on the website.

We got a point.

Okay Errin, get the ball.

My name is Errin and

my favorite physical activities are dance and cheerleading.

I live in Columbia, South Carolina, so I get to be outside a lot.

My name is Naialah,

some of the activities I do

are hiking, camping, climbing trees,

football, basketball, gymnastics-- I do a lot of things!

My name is Jasmaine,

my preferred hobbies are basketball,

gymnastics, running, and walking.

I want to be faster with my running.

My name is Jekima. I like to learn about

what the body can do, all the interesting things,

and you just like, open your eyes to a whole new world.

[Errin] We are on a mission to ask the question, what are the best

kinds of activities to keep us fit, healthy, and strong?

[Jekima] Honestly, I'm not really good at sports,

but I think this investigation

will open me up to new activities that I can do

and I think I'll really enjoy them.

There's a professor at the University of South Carolina

who wants to create a new fitness program for kids,

so we contacted her to see if she wanted our help.

[all] Hi!

You finally made it!

I'm so excited that you're here.

So I'm Dr. Daheia Barr-Anderson.

The work that I do is around physical activity

and obesity prevention in youth.

My next project that I want to begin

is to increase physical activity in girls.

So with this investigation, I want us to focus on

gathering some information that I can use for my next program.

[Errin] Daheia explained that experts group physical activity

into different intensity levels.

You have sedentary, you have light, moderate, and vigorous.

[Errin] Sedentary would just be sitting down,

light would be when you're doing a little bit of movement,

not a lot, and your breathing is pretty normal,

moderate would be if you're doing more movement

and your breathing is heavier,

and vigorous would be if

you were doing a lot of movement

and your breathing is really, really heavy.

A great way to measure physical activity

is to use an accelerometer.

It's a little small computer, about the size of a pedometer,

and you wear it on your belt, and it allows you

to measure how physically active you are.

It's a great way for us to measure

how much physical activity that you're doing.

And not only measure the amount of physical activity

that you're doing, but measuring how hard you're working.

If you're interested in gauging

different aspects of physical activity,

and you don't have the physical tools to do so,

you can use self-reporting as a way to gauge

how hard you're working, how much you like an activity,

and it's really about your opinion

when it comes to the activity.

[Errin] We sat with Daheia and made a list of all the different types

of physical activities that came to mind.

Running-- running is really fun.

Gymnastics, hiking.

Something about biking that just makes you want to keep doing it.

Cheerleading... dance.Cheerleading, dance.

'Cause you need to be really flexible, right?

So what about yoga?Oh yoga!

Yeah, yoga would be great, right?

I like football, I like basketball too.

The more activities that you do, the more likely you are

to keep on being physically active,

'cause you're not doing the same thing over and over again.

So for our investigation, we need to decide

on or activities that we can do.

The activities that we chose were...

We chose these activities

because they're all really different,

they have nothing to do with each other, so we would

really get a feel for all the different types of activities.

Today we're at the USC campus, we're just planning

our fitness investigation that we could start activities.

Daheia told us about charts and scales that we can use

to measure how much we like the activity, and how hard it is for us.

[Jekima] We created two scales.

The first scale is the difficulty scale.

How should we divide the categories?

Zero would definitely be sedentary, 'cause you're not

doing anything-- normal breathing, normal heart rate.

through is light, through is moderate,

and through is vigorous.

Let's review the likeability chart.

We decided to create a likeability scale,

to see how much we liked an activity.

is you don't like it at all, right?

is like it a little bit but,

But no, you probably wouldn't do it like voluntarily.

could probably be

kind of like, but not passionate about it. Yeah.

And would probably be like stars,

you want to do it all the time. Passionate about it.

At the end of the investigation, we wanted to be able to pick out

the activities that are a lot of fun and also really good for us.

My name is Naialah, I'm years old, and have a pet cat,

his name is Kobe, he's really nice and cute and sweet.

So gymnastics has been a big part of my life.

I love it so much; I've been doing it for years.

I've lived in Turkey, Japan, Georgia, and South Carolina.

I love to hike; the outdoors is like a second home for me.

I love sneakers.

There are activities that we're going to be doing,

dance, walking, soccer, and yoga,

and each of them are minutes.

We're going to predict how difficult each activity is and how we like it.

We're also going to take a small camera with us

and stop every minutes to measure and record

our talk and sing tests and look back at them

to see how well we did.

If you are able to sing or speak very well,

then you know that you haven't been doing a lot of work.

But if you can barely breathe, let alone talk or sing,

then you know that you've been doing a lot of work.

Hey girls. [SciGirls] Hi.

I'm Kerry from the Children's Physical Activity Research Group at USC.

[Errin] Kerry is a friend of Daheia who uses accelerometers

to measure physical activity.

The accelerometer measures motion.

What we're looking for is the displacement of that box.

As it goes up and down it's going to measure the count,

so if we move slowly, it picks up few counts.

If we move fast, like hip hop dancing, soccer, running,

it'll pick up more counts.

So the more counts means you're more active,

you're doing a higher intensity activity.

Now it's time for hip hop.

I've actually never done hip hop dance, but I've heard it's really fun.

We went to Summit Parkway Middle School.

[SciGirls] Who's excited? [class] We are!

[Errin] Our instructor is Stacey, and she seems like a lot of fun

and we're really ready to get started.

Before we start dancing we were writing predictions

in our notebooks to see what we think about it,

how difficult it is going to be and how we like it.

We also have Daheia and Kerry joining us today,

and that's going to be a lot of fun, working out with them.

I am a good dancer-- I dance in my room and other places,

so I've got this hip hop thing covered.

The whole idea behind the fitness program

is that we can have a good time, we get exercise, we can be fit,

we can be healthy, and we can enjoy it,

'cause that's the whole key is, if you enjoy something,

you'll keep doing it and we want to be healthy for life.

So one day when you're my age, you'll still enjoy it.

Hip hop dance!

Let's do this.

[Naialah] Yes, we were all working hard, we were all sweating.

[Jasmaine] That was really fun 'cause you had your friend there

and other kids that were dancing.

And it was really fun to see them dance.

[Stacey] It's what you put into it, that's what you get out of it.

♪ ♪

minutes and I'm feeling sweaty.

I'm having a lot of fun and it's a lot of movement, bye.

"Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?"

[Stacey] Take your right, and we gonna step and throw,

step and throw. Go, step and throw.

My heart is b*ating really fast,

I'm sweating, as you can see,

absolutely the best activity ever.

[Jekima] It was really hard.

We were definitely sweating.

We never thought it would be this hard.

This is definitely an exercise.

I feel really fine, I feel energized, it's really fun,

I'm liking it, you guys should do it too.

[Stacey] Yes, come on, step out! There you go,

get out your comfort zone, you're good! Do it again!

Hip hop was easier than I thought,

so it was easy to pick up.

[Stacey] Take a breath of air in, let it go.

Yeah, good job guys!

Thank you for participating today.

We appreciate you so much, appreciate your energy.

You all did great, you looked like you were having fun!

Hip hop dance was harder than I thought it would be,

but it was still a lot of fun.

More fun. More fun. It was fun.

It was harder than I thought it would be.

I said it, I said it's really hard, and it was,

but it was really fun at the same time.

So it was hard, but it was fun.

Give me , give me ! Awesome!

You guys are a blast.[all] Bye.

Bye girls, you all have a good one.

Hi, my name is Jasmaine, I'm in th grade

and my favorite hobbies are gymnastics, cheerleading

and running and basketball.

♪ ♪

That's how I get my daily workout. See you later.

[all] Walking! Walking!

We're about to walk along the Congaree River

and see how it affects our breathing.

[Jekima] I think it will probably be a ,

which is going to be light and moderate,

so it won't be that hard, it'll be just easy walking.

On a scale from to , I said that walking would be a ,

'cause it's easy and it's not as hard as other activities.

Does it feel good? Is it comfortable?Yeah.

Okay, you don't even notice it's there, do you?

You're all prepared to do your self-reporting at minutes,

at minutes, and at the very end?Um-hm.

I think that's it, you're ready to go, come on, let's go.

We're going to do a -minute warm-up,

and then we will walk for minutes at a nice brisk pace.

And then a -minute cooldown. Sounds good?

Okay.Ready to go?Let's go.

I predicted that walking

is going to be about a .

I'm thinking it shouldn't be

too much work, but it'll, we'll really get moving a little.

You can take the water, you can just carry the water with you.

Come on, catch up.

[Errin] I think everyone enjoyed it,

but it wasn't their favorite activity.

It was really warm out, and also we had a lot of snacks

before we got started.

[Daheia] Come on, let's do it! When we get to the bridge,

we're going to the end of that bridge, okay?

[Errin] It was kind of hard for me. I stayed with Jekima in the back

because she wasn't feeling too well.

I ate too many snacks and drank a lot of water

and I wasn't feeling too good, so I had to sit out for a while.

[Naialah] You could tell our breathing picked up,

we were kind of in mostly light, moderate.

[Daheia] Okay, and now your sing test.

[breathing rapidly] ♪ Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are. ♪

[Naialah] Towards the end our breathing started to pick up and we

started to see that walking can be like a physical activity too,

instead of just something that you can do leisurely.

[Daheia] Great job, alright, we are at the end ladies.

Take a nice, deep inhale.

Come on put your water down.

And an exhale.

Not everybody was tired, but you could tell

it was a lot harder than we predicted it was going to be.

Hey Jekima, how are you feeling?

Feeling better, just remember not to eat too many snacks.

Okay.

Okay, we just have to find something you love to do.

So let's try a few of my favorites.

O...kay!

Bounce this on your chin-- great for your core.

Ah...[bop!] Ahh!

Next!

I think you're going to like this one.

Let's try Fang arm curls.

Yeah, it's not bad, not too bad.

[giggles] Fang, no!

No on this one?

[giggling] "Yes," which means "no."

This is a sport I like to call extreme Cheesy Poof catch.

Does anyone else play it but you?

Not yet, but they will. Ready?

I guess so.

[Pop! Pop! Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.]

Ah... ahh!

Tell me you love it, right?

No.

If you don't like it, you won't do it.

Cheesy Poof fail.

Hey, what's going on?

My name is Jekima, I'm years old,

and I will be showing you my life.

You're a really bad camera girl.

I like playing out here 'cause it's really pretty

and I love photography, so it's great for taking pictures.

Hey!

Hey again.

And I will show you my beautiful flute playing. Right!

Okay, bye you guys.

Soccer!

We went to the soccer field at our school

and invited a bunch of friends to play with us.

And you are going to do something called tunnel passing.

You all know what to do, right?

[Errin] We also asked a group of high school soccer players

to lead some drills for us and teach us what we needed to know.

[woman] There you go.

[Errin] We did a lot of passing and kicking drills,

also practiced sh**ting goals.

It was a little harder to be out there

because it was really warm.

It wasn't that hard, it was just a lot of running around.

I would say it would fall in the moderate category.

Alright, it's Errin, we've been doing minutes of soccer

and I'm feeling really good.

I feel really good, not much time has passed,

but I guess it's been longer since we're having fun.

I'm sweating, but I'm not breathing really hard.

Soccer, I really liked.

Soccer was a lot of starting and stopping,

so it was a little burst of energy, activity.

Only thing that was bothering me was the heat.

We're atthe -minute mark

and mybreathing, it's picked up

a little more,but it's still not that bad.

It's a lot of fun, we're having a lot of fun.

As we were playing, not all of us were really good at it,

but that wasn't really important, it was just important

that you were staying fit and active and you kept going.

Thank you guys so much for helping us, we had a lot of fun.

Yeah, we really appreciate it.Yeah we had fun today.

It was nice meeting you guys.Nice meeting you too.

Hi, I'm Errin.

There's my piano, my keyboard,

and I love to play keyboard.

This is my bookshelf, and I love to read

because I get to learn new words and go to like, different places

and see the pictures in my mind, and I also like to write.

These are my stuffed animals, and I think most of these I got from my dad,

so I really like, so I really love them. Bye!

[Errin] Now it's time for yoga.

Nice to meet you Jasmaine.II'm Jekima.

Our instructor's name is Keira and she's very calm

and very, very serene, so I think

it's going to be nice working with her.

[Jekima] This is going to be pretty hard.

It might look easy, but the poses seem really hard.

I'm not sure about it,

I'm not really into yoga,

I'm not sure how it works and I'm just waiting to

see what we're going to do.

[all] Yoga!

Just grab your mat

and make sure the edge is at the front

and just roll it out.

Keira says we're going to be doing a yoga-style called

"vinyasa" and it's all about combining breath and movement.

So everybody take your right thumb

and put it in your belly button.

Umhm, put your left hand up by your heart, okay?

And so just take a big breath in [all breathe deeply]

and a big breath out.

[Errin] We really had to work on balance and like, concentration

to make sure we could hold the poses.

Some poses where we were almost upside down.

[Keira] It's super long, try to touch the person

across from you, and release.

Okay, so just take a few minutes, take some breath here.

Notice if maybe you started to get a little bit warm, right?

It's important to get warm.

[Jekima] We were really all shocked

about how hard it would be.

It's been minutes, and I'm feeling really good.

I'm sweating a little, but I think it's just because it's hot.

minutes past, and it's getting really hard,

'cause I'm trying to maintain my balance.

[Keira] Now, when you windmill up,

put your hands on your hips for a moment.

[Naialah] It's a lot different than I expected it to be because

I was working a lot harder than I thought I was going to be.

[Jasmaine] I've never done yoga before,

so some of the poses were really hard for me.

[Keira] Inhale, come on. [all inhale]

Exhale, take it down.

This is really hard.

Uh, it's really hard!

I'm sweating a lot, my muscles hurt already.

One of the poses is the tree pose, and it's really hard

because it required a lot of balance.

So we were all really happy when we finally were able to do it.

At the end of our yoga class, we say the word "namaste,"

and it means that the light in me honors the light in you.

We'll say it together, let's take

a big breath in. [all breathe deeply]

[Keira] Namaste. [SciGirls] Namaste.

[Keira] Peace. [SciGirls] Peace.

After we finished all the activities,

we took our accelerometers to Kerry.

Hey ladies. Hi Kerry.

Alright, I've downloaded your data and we have the information

to look at from the accelerometers.

Take a look at these and see what you think.

Again, this is the accelerometer data,

so it might be a little different than what you thought,

based on your difficulty ratings and your likeability.

What we found most surprising in the data

was that the accelerometers didn't really pick up

everything we were doing.

[Kerry] What do you think Errin,

you have the walking, what do you think?

[Errin] I actually thought I would have been more toward vigorous.

We definitely walked in the vigorous a lot,

then the same with moderate.

I think what was surprising to me

was kind of the hip hop and the soccer.

Did you think you would be in moderate,

or did you think you would be

a little bit higher or lower? [SciGirl] Lower.

[Kerry] I saw you do the hip hop

and it's a little bit more about what you put into it.

So everybody could do the moves,

but some people will be a little bit more active in them,

which may increase their intensity.

[SciGirl] In soccer, most of the time we spent in light actually.

[Kerry] Did you do a lot of start and stop for the soccer?

[SciGirl] Yes. [Kerry] So that might have changed the data

a little bit, whereas if you were playing a soccer game,

the activities might be a little bit more intense.

What about the yoga Naialah?

[Naialah] The yoga in the light, we spent like minutes.

[Kerry] So it's surprising to you then? [Naialah] Yeah.

[Kerry] You thought you'd be higher? [Naialah] Yeah!

Most of the time, we were in the light.

The accelerometers couldn't really pick it up

because it's supposed to be an up-and-down motion.

[Jekima] So all of that was really shocking.

We thought we were really working hard.

But we were working hard; it was just the accelerometers

couldn't really pick it up.

The activity monitor may not have picked up that information,

whereas your difficulty rating, of course,

will give us more information about that activity.

So we have to kind of combine data sources

to understand these different activities.

Hi, I'm Daheia, so let me show you a cheer

from when I was in high school.

Who are you yelling for?

This is the way I get into my office every day.

Let's hear it for.

What kind of scientist am I?

I would say I'm passionate, I do a lot of community-based work.

Say hi Camilla.

This is Kyndall.

This is the reason why I'm so interested

in increasing physical activity in girls.

See you later. Bye!

[Naialah] After Kerry showed us our data, we went back to Errin's house

and we looked over

and we analyzed our data a little bit more.

So with the accelerometers, we noticed it can pick up

everything that we were doing, but with the self-reporting,

we still had our own opinions.

We're going to compare the likeability of the activity

to the difficulty of the activity and make a graph. [SciGirl] Okay.

[Jekima] What did you guys like most, which activity?

I liked hip hop and soccer.

I also liked hip hop and soccer.

My favorites were hip hop, soccer, and yoga.

Mine was hip hop and soccer.

[Jekima] How about the difficulty?

The hardest for me was soccer, dance, and yoga.

The hardest for mewas soccer and dance.

The hardest for me was soccer.

My hardest was soccer, dance and yoga.

So we put it together, we got the whole picture

and we got to really find out how hard

and how much we liked an activity.

As we were looking over our self-report data,

we noticed a pattern.

Notice that the ones that we really enjoyed

were actually the ones that we did the most activity in,

that we pushed ourselves in.

We put the activities in the upper-right part of the graph.

These are the activities that we want to focus more on

because they're more difficult,

and we liked them more.

After making our charts and graphs at Errin's house,

we went to USC to show Daheia and Kerry.

Are there any big-picture messages

that you can conclude from all that you collected?

We were like, pushing ourselves, but we were also enjoying it,

but we're trying our best, so...

So you enjoyed it,

and you also pushed yourself to try your best.

I think those two things are most important

when we think about being active--

finding something fun that you want to keep doing

for the rest of your life.

So you're doing something that you really enjoy,

that you may continue to do in the future,

but then it's also very challenging.

And so it's allowing you to get the amount of physical activity

that you need for better health.

Do you think this is going to help you with your new work

that you're going to be doing with the girls?

Yes, you all have done a wonderful job in terms of

really helping me with the next steps with my program.

I think we both really enjoyed

this experience of working so closely with you.

, , , , , .

[Jekima] Being active gives you a lot of energy, it's fun

and it helps you have a longer life.

And don't go higher than right here.

[Errin] During this experiment, we realized

that if you push yourself to try new things,

you might find out that you actually like them.

I hope kids learn from this investigation

so they can take that and do many activities that they like.

The work that we did with my team was really fun

and we all worked together, we tried our best,

and we came up with a great product,

and we came out with a great presentation too,

which was a cheer with us and Daheia.

Investigation. Ready?

We did investigation, which was really fun,

now we're playing soccer, in the burning sun.

We did a little walking, did a little dance,

Now we're heading home to do a yoga stance!

Got your clues? Head on over to the Web and play

"Pick'M, Stick'M" at pbskidsgo.org.

[dance music plays]

Ooh, Ooh, yeah!

[laughs] Nice moves.

I'm psyched we finally found an exercise that you like to do.

Uh, uh, uh, less talking, more dancing.

I'm on it.

Ha, ha, Jake.

You're not going to get bored?

Nope, not bored, and as long as you keep dancing like that,

not gonna get bored!

Rock on! Here we go, yo!

Uh, uh, yeah!