Personal Fitness Professional - September 2008 - (Page 13)

that they will ‘fall oﬀ the wagon’ and eventually revert back to the lifestyle actions that brought us to them in the ﬁrst place. This is a tragic revolving-door scenario with adults. It is virtual child abuse with kids. The Fun Factor Boot camps, fat camps and surgical interventions, irrespective of how successful they may appear in the short-term, do absolutely nothing to attack the problem. Kids are too inactive on a daily basis. Increase daily activity, and you will have solved the problem from its core in one fell swoop. In order to make that happen, you must create daily ﬁtness activities that are both developmentally sound and fun for kids — fun and developmentally sound being operative points in this equation. Children are not little adults, and the exercise requirements they have are vastly diﬀerent than those of fully grown adults. The fun factor is something that we simply must embrace. Children are not naïve, nor are they mentally incapable of understanding what they enjoy. When kids have fun, they want to do it again. It can’t get more basic or plainspoken than that. 1 Things to Remember 2 Ensuring that your youth ﬁtness program is proﬁtable is not a matter of getting results quickly for your young clients; it’s about helping make activity fun for them and allowing a ‘become active daily’ process to occur naturally over time. Your revenue dollars will come ﬂowing in once your local community sees how much fun the kids in your program are having and how much they are beneﬁting from your slower, yet consistent, path to success. Keep kids off of strength and cardiovascular training equipment. A developing human being requires free movement-based stimulus in order to build proper bodily function. Machines are far too restrictive in the aspect of free movement to have full beneﬁt related to kids. Avoid ‘personal training’ with children. The social interaction of ﬁtness is of equal value to kids as is the exercise itself. Don’t over-coach for perfect form. Outline an exercise or drill, and then let the kids play. Have fun, and allow their bodies to understand the concepts of the movement. This is imperative for proper development. In terms of exercise selection, don’t over-think the matter. Create games and drills around ﬁve basic headings: Run, Jump, Throw, Crawl and Climb. If your training programs involve these basic movements, you can be assured that the exercises are developmentally sound and evoking the necessary responses through the nervous system of a growing organism. Brian Grasso is the Founder and CEO of the International Youth Conditioning Association. Become a certified Youth Fitness Specialist or learn about the specific aspects of training children, youths and teens for free by visiting www.IYCA.org. ● SEPTEMBER2008 · WWW.FIT-PRO.COM 3 4 5 13 http://www.IYCA.org http://WWW.FIT-PRO.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Personal Fitness Professional - September 2008

Personal Fitness Professional - September 2008 Contents Letter from the Editor, Writers Adding Pilates and Yoga to Your Clients' Workouts Combating Youth Obesity Prescription for Success NEW! The Balancing Act Technical Necessities Product Profiles Current Controversies Mark Your Calendar Coaching Your Client's Diet Life Coaching 101 Exercise Spotlight Product Profiles New on the Market [Spotlight] Gregg Miehle

Personal Fitness Professional - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.