UCLA health services professor Antronette Yancey created Instant Recess program for 10-minute exercise breaks
By Neil Paik
Jan. 3, 2011 3:35 a.m.
Clad in bright purple Nikes and sitting on an inflatable exercise ball, former athlete and UCLA health services professor Antronette Yancey organizes her campaign to get Americans moving.
In the midst of what many call an obesity epidemic, Dr. Yancey has created the “Instant Recess” program, designed to integrate short bouts of exercise into the lives of everyday Americans.
“Instant Recess: Building a Fit Nation 10 Minutes at a Time” is the title of Dr. Yancey’s new book, targeted toward both adults and children who live sedentary lifestyles. The program’s 10-minute-long instructional techniques are meant to be used as exercise breaks during a long workday or at home.
The program, introduced in book and DVD format, is mostly composed of basic movements that the average American can easily perform, but much of its appeal lies in its incorporation of sport and dance techniques. The DVDs have routines from such notable athletes as Lisa Leslie from the Los Angeles Sparks and NFL player Allen Rossum.
Other routines borrow from cultural dance techniques. One of the most recent videos depicts Native American tribal dancing and integrates it into the 10-minute workout.
The point of having these cultural elements is to build enthusiasm for exercising, something Dr. Yancey says is largely absent in America today.
While the minimum recommended amount of exercise for adults is 30 minutes a day, five days a week, Dr. Yancey said the average adult receives less than one-third of that. And only 5 percent of adults actually meet the minimum requirements.
“Physical activity has become too medicalized,” Yancey said. “People (are) thinking “˜how high does my heart rate have to be?’ … If we could just get people started moving again then maybe we can move them toward getting a larger dose of the activity.”
What is perhaps most compelling about Instant Recess is that Dr. Yancey and her associates are actively integrating the program into companies like L.L. Bean to improve employee wellness and schools to improve young people’s lifestyles.
Health services graduate student Denise Woods has been working with Dr. Yancey to incorporate the Instant Recess techniques into K-12 schools throughout Los Angeles.
“It’s really a type of snowball effect that we’re trying to create,” Woods said. “We’re trying to get the kids more active, and it spreads to the teachers, and then the kids take it to their homes … (then) everybody wants to get involved.”
Although the products are new, the idea behind Instant Recess has been years in the making.
Dr. Yancey has been involved in the health services industry for decades. She served as the director of Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion for Los Angeles County years ago and addressed the issues of a large sedentary population with a considerably inadequate budget.
The solution was coming up with something that didn’t require a lot of technical expertise or funding but would have a multiplier effect that spread throughout the county. For Dr. Yancey, the solution came in the form of Instant Recess.
“We have what we call an organizational wellness approach that tries to integrate healthy practices and policies into the normal routine,” she said. “(We) create materials that are really engaging, appealing culturally (and) that address different groups.”
Dr. Yancey said her ideology circulates around stigmatizing unhealthy behaviors rather than stigmatizing the unhealthy themselves.
“I might be eating the same things as someone else and they may be obese and I’m not,” she said. “It’s part of the culture. Our workplace culture doesn’t support physical activity.”
Woods said the main goal is to get Instant Recess recognized at the state level and have legislation passed in the next couple years that incorporates some form of the program into the traditional school day.
