What a Child Can Teach Us About Fitness

As someone who makes their living teaching people to be strong and fit, I would like to believe I am in fairly good shape. But after spending my first week working with kids at Parker Street Ministries, I may have to revisit some of my assumptions:

- I can deadlift, bench (almost) and squat) twice my bodyweight, therefore I am strong. Wrong.

- I can run a mile in under six minutes, there fore I have endurance. Wrong.

- I can beat an eight year old kid in arm wrestling?!! Dead wrong.

The reality is that the formula for kicking my ass are is as simple as twenty two 7-9 year olds running, jumping and crawling across a small gym for 45 minutes.

Unlike an adult class where we can simply set up interval stations or tell the kids to "get water" when we tire, coaching a group of youngsters who have no clue what any of these things means we perish with anything less than completely dialed in focus and energy.

1. Seeing is believing- Though adults complain and drag on certain exercises, it is fairly easy to explain a concept and run them through an exercise. With a kid whose attention span is less than six seconds, the ONLY way to ensure participation is to keeping showing them EXACTLY what you want.

In our warm up for example, I realized this meant choosing two basic exercises-- lets say a push up and a squat-- and making these the focus of the warm up. Standing in front of the kids, I held my arms (branches) in front of me and I was suddenly a shrinking "tree".

Counting down 1-2-3 shrinks the tree, the kids followed and (laughed hysterically for some reason) as we moved from top to bottom several times.

2. Fun versus Fitness- While adults hide their discontent with certain tasks, kids simply lose interest and run away if something sucks. This is why a focus on games and partner activities really seemed to work well. We attempted (key word) to separate our kids in to partner drills (standing in lines side by side to perform toe taps thru a speed ladder) and "follow the leader" drills where the kids follow the instructor.

I liked this rotation because the kids can learn in a fairly ordered environment first followed by a more relaxed, game like atmosphere with their instructor second.

3. Training attention span- If a kid's attention span lasts around 30-45 seconds, it is no wonder a sixty minute class can get boring! In fact, it seemed no longer than 25 minutes before the class began to degenerate and run amok (in fact the only way we kept them in line was by breaking out the big gunz)

This means that when planning your work with a child ages 7-10 years old, keep each activity to no more than 10 minutes and the class to around 25-30 minutes:

- Warm up- 5 minutes

- Partner games- 10 minutes

- Follow leader drills- 5-10 minutes

- Cooldown/stretching- 5-10 minutes

Overall, I have to say I have a new found respect for the work of my teachers and parents. I am looking forward to doing a regular kids class in the future (once per week only!) and learning more from our Parker Street crew.

Here are a few resource I will be leaning on and I highly recommend for any trainers looking to learning more about teaching kids of various ages:

Crossfit kids

Developing Athletics