Youth Fitness?

Before I headed out yesterday morning to train my group of kids, ranging in age from 10-20 separated into 2 groups, I caught a cliff-hangar on the news saying something to the effect of "stay tuned, a report on kids and fitness after this."

I was interested, so I hung around to watch. This is what I saw:

http://capitalnews9.com/content/health/child_wellness_wednesday/478945/make-childhood-workouts-fun/?RegionCookie=12&ap=1&MP4

If you skipped the link, take the time to watch it, it's less than 2 minutes and blew me away.

Now there's a lot of good things about the media; anyone who has a message can get it across in one way or another, whether it be on tv, internet, newspaper, whatever. But with those benefits comes irresponsible "journalism" and reports by so called "experts" who really have no hands on experience dealing with the very issue they are preaching about.

I laugh almost every time I see this woman on my local news. (I heard I actually missed one where she was recommending people do turkish get ups with an olympic bar-unreal).

There are a lot of misconceptions about youth fitness between coaches, parents, and over-zealous trainers. Reports like this simply serve to reassure those who are already way off base. The only positive thing of this story was the quote that "training needs to be fun for kids." Genius.

In 2009 a pediatrician actually said "lifting (strength training) may not be good for bone health." This was being said in the background as our "fitness expert" is teaching a kid how to use a seated leg extension machine. Other "valuable" exercises shown in the video: prone leg curls on a machine, lat pulldown on a fixed machine, a kid on a stair stepper, and a girl on a back extension machine.




So teaching a 9 year old kid to do body weight lunges, or carry a 5 pound weight with good posture, is going to stunt their growth, but these fixed machines are so expensive that they must be good.

The kicker: The pediatrician actually recommends 5th graders to train for a 5k. Even with all of the primary research in the last 10-15 years documenting the evils of distance running for almost EVERYBODY, we're gonna have our 10 year olds train for a 3 mile race. The great line right after this recommendation: "One thing to worry about is repetitive stress, overuse type injuries."

What's the number 1 cause of these injuries? Ask any PT, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say distance running.

Do they even edit, or do any real research for these reports, or do they just look up "pediatrician" in the Yellow Pages and dial a couple numbers to see what sticks?

It's kind of ironic, but this garbage reporting makes our job of educating parents and kids much more difficult, but at the same time ensures a need for good coaches who will educate themselves to know what's best for the kids.

Anyway, enough of my rant, off to train more kids and kill their bone health. Maybe I'll just take their money today and send them on an hour long run out on route 9.

Jon