The Training of Young Athletes: “When Should my Child Start Training with You?”
We started this blog series on training young athletes because parents often wonder what the benefits are to training kids at Core Blend. In today’s post, I’m going to address lifelong fitness habits, and instilling a love for exercise at a young age.
There is a Core Blend client who’s a college football player, and I’ve worked with him since he was in high school. A few weeks ago, he finished up his summer prep with me and started back at school. We talked for a while about expectations for the season, weightlifting goals, my complete dominion over him in Mario Kart: normal gym stuff.
As we were walking out the door, the conversation abruptly shifted to post-college plans. He was excited about being able to do a different style of training once football is done. He looks forward to exercise, and is excited to try new things and continue to improve his fitness level. That’s a fundamental goal for everyone I work with: successful lifelong fitness.
People that are really successful with exercise find their niche and enjoy it. This may seem like a foreign concept to you if you don’t enjoy exercising, but it’s true nonetheless. If you associate exercise with being miserable then it’s not going to go well for you. Maybe you’ll be able to get focused and do it for a week, a month, six months, a year, but it won’t last. That girl you hate that you always see jogging past your house enjoys jogging. That guy you know that is always talking about the gym talks about it because he loves it. They look forward to that part of the day. I might do a post about you in the future, but today I’m going to focus on your kids. I would like them to enjoy exercise and associate positive memories with it.
Your child will probably not play sports in college (some do obviously, but it’s not the norm). Your child will probably not be a professional athlete (fewer do, rare opportunity). As such, around 18-22 years old they’ll no longer have a coach telling them to exercise 5 days a week. At that point, they’ll be in the position you are now, needing to take the initiative and put time and effort into fitness, even though no one is forcing them to do it.
That’s where I come in. Workouts at Core Blend are fun. Kids look forward to coming back every week. The workouts aren’t easy; if it was easy it wouldn’t inspire change within them. At Core Blend, I create a fun atmosphere where younger kids get in better shape and enjoy doing so. We show them how fun it can be and get them to push themselves.
We don’t have contracts at Core Blend. These kids have a choice to make every month and choose to come exercise. Parents often tell me that they never have to force their kids into the car to come train with us, that they’re always ready to come; there’s really no higher praise than that. That’ll stay with them for life. They won’t associate going to the gym or exercising with someone yelling at them or being bored. To them, exercise is fun and something that they willingly hop into the car to do.
Your kids are not that far away from being on their own for exercise, and I want them to grow up and be that girl who runs by your house, and that guy who talks about his gym. I want them to grow up to be adults that exercise for health and value lifelong fitness, and there’s no better time than now to start that habit.
Catch up on Part 1 of this series, Speed Training.
Core Blend Training is a powerlifting, athlete training, Olympic weightlifting Gym, owned and operated by Corey Davis. Voted Best Gym and Best Weightloss Program in Athens in 2013.