Children and Exercise

Been doing some work today with a gym based childrens exercise program at the Galtres Fitness Centre in Easingwold. As a personal trainer, I'm used to helping clients set goals and devising them detailed exercise programs to help them reach their goals.

Was like a breath of fresh air to see people exercising just for the fun of it. No complex programs. Just doing the activities they enjoyed doing. If they were bored of rowing after 5 minutes they'd move on and do something else. They didn't feel they had to do a set time at a set pace. They just enjoyed what they were doing, or tried something different.

Working with adults, it is often necessary to devise programs to take account of muscle imbalances and health conditions but in many cases if they had carried on being active through into adulthood they wouldn't have these problems in the first place.

So what stops people being more active as they get older? Certainly lack of time, lack of facilities and cost play a part, but a large part of the problem is us adults taking the fun out of exercise. Competitive sport is extremely beneficial for lots of reasons but there's an even bigger need to make sure everyone enjoys exercise in one form or another and is able to take part as often as they want.

"Improving health by creating positive attitudes towards fitness"