Many people ask the four students about the strange things strapped to their arms. The West Mifflin Area High School 10th-graders tell them the contraptions are armband health monitors they're using to take the Fitness Challenge.

	Robert J. Pavuchak/Post-Gazette
	West Mifflin Area High School sophomores, from left, Kira Ripper, 15; Rob Pristas, 16; Jessica McClaren, 16; and Mark Glaser, 16; compare armband monitors they are using to record physiological variables as part of the Athletic Training Network Fitness Challenge.

Mark Glaser, Jessica McClaren, Rob Pristas and Kira Ripper are wearing the monitors, made by Pittsburgh-based BodyMedia, almost round-the-clock during the Fitness Challenge developed by the Pittsburgh-based Athletic Training Network.

West Mifflin Area is one of several school districts in Pittsburgh participating in the first phase of the Fitness Challenge, which is open to those in grades 7-12.

The high school is one of two schools statewide to use the monitors as part of a six-week study conducted by BodyMedia in conjunction with the Fitness Challenge.

While BodyMedia lends the monitors and software to the school and focuses on tracking daily caloric burn, its partner, ATN, provides a series of educational videos, awards prizes and runs a Web site to help students reach their fitness goals.

The students wear the monitors continuously, except when swimming or bathing, on their right arms, with the sensors touching their triceps. The monitors measure such variables as heart rate, hours of sleep, number of steps taken and caloric burn, but not caloric intake.

The monitors make the students aware of these fitness indicators, and hopefully strive to improve them.

The students wear the monitors every Monday through Friday, then give them to health and physical education teacher Greg Rozgonyi. Over the weekend, he downloads the data from the monitors into a software program and shows the students their results the next Monday.

Rozgonyi wore one of the monitors for two weeks before the program to see what it was like. "You kind of get used to it and don't even know you're wearing it," he said.

Glaser said he, too, usually doesn't even notice he's wearing the monitor, which is a little larger than a cigarette pack and weighs less than a pound. But he has to take it off when doing triceps exercises in the gym, and it sometimes gets in the way while he sleeps. And just knowing the monitor is recording data hasn't made any difference in his diet or activity level, he said.

For McClaren, however, the monitor is a motivator.

"Having it on makes you work harder," she said, because if she's slacking off, her teachers will know it. She said the monitor hadn't caused her any discomfort or inconvenience.

Ripper said her monitor results had motivated her to get more sleep.

Besides the data from the monitors, the students are using the results of a pretest for which they did push-ups and stomach crunches, ran a mile and took a sit-and-reach test of flexibility. At the end of the challenge, they will take a post test to see how much they've improved.

As part of the challenge, ATN is offering a nine-hour video series free to the school this year through a grant from the state Department of Health.

Mark Clemente, the producer of the series, said one of its main areas of focus was nutrition. For example, Steelers nutritionist Leslie Bonci tells students in one video that although low-carbohydrate diets such as the Atkins diet might help some older, inactive people lose weight, they aren't appropriate for active teenagers. In the same video, she corrects the misconception that people will gain weight by eating after 7 p.m.

Glaser said ATN's Web site taught him which exercises he should do every day and which exercises, such as weight lifting, he should do only every other day.

The students will receive their final results April 19. Those showing the most improvement will be eligible to win prizes for themselves and the school.