Australian children are among the laziest in the world, according to a new landmark study that shows more than 80 per cent fail to get an hour of exercise a day. So with our kids getting fatter and spending longer in front of screens, is signing them up to a gym the answer?
There’s no question that childhood obesity is a hot topic, and with many of our children not getting the activity they need, the latest – and simplest – solution seems to be to push them out of the playground and into the gymnasium.
Although Fitness Australia recommends that gyms only allow kids to join over the age of 14, some gyms across the country are offering classes and memberships to kids as young as ten, while a search of the internet shows mini gym equipment aimed at children as young as six. So, what do the health professionals have to say?
“I think they have a place, but I wouldn’t be recommending them generally as a form of physical activity and exercise for children,” advises Dr Carolyn Broderick, Staff Specialist in Paediatric Sports Medicine at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney. “And the main reason for that is because they’re not inherently enjoyable for children. I think they are much better off outside doing fun activities, otherwise they may associate exercise with something that is not very enjoyable.
“You see adults who sign up to gyms, and many of them drop out, so you can only imagine what it’s like for kids doing three sets of 15 repetitions of some activity! They might do it in the short term, but they’re likely to drop out and that might sour their thoughts about physical activity.”
While Dr Broderick doesn’t rule joining a gym may be appropriate and advisable for certain young people ( see case history below), she does stress that it’s important children don’t overdo training, especially when it comes to lifting weights before the final stages of puberty. “The incidence of injury is reasonably low with an appropriately supervised, age-specific strength training program,” she says. “The main thing is that they don’t do any massive bulking. And before they have reached skeletal maturity [and she stresses there is no specific age for this. due to the difference in how quickly kids go through puberty], kids shouldn’t do any maximal lifting; in other words lifting the heaviest weight you can.”
Fitness First, which runs programs and classes for teenagers called FITT for Teens during school holidays, ban kids under the age of 16 from using weights unless supervised by a parent or trainer.
“Our rule is if you are under 14, you can’t exercise in our club, then from the ages of 14-16 it should be under the supervision of a parent or guardian,” explains Fitness First Head of Fitness Rob Hale. “If the teenager wants to come in and use the gym, we ask that they stick to cardiovascular exercise and body-weight based training, or our group exercise classes. And if they would like to do weights on their own, they need to be under the supervision of their parent or guardian at the time.”
So with kids as young as 14 pumping iron, are we in danger of generating a breed of mini gym junkies?
“We have to change the way we promote bodies, and not with girls but with boys too,” says Dr Broderick. “Girls strive to be thin, whereas boys strive to be ‘cut’ and have good muscle definition. And the thing with weight training is that boys tend to get results fairly quickly. So as long as it’s not the only thing that they do, I don’t have a huge problem with it, as long as it’s part of a well-balanced exercise program.
“And I suppose if you think about what the alternatives are, you could say that it’s better than sitting on the computer all day.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Rob Hale. “I think we have a pretty big problem on our hands in terms of inactivity of kids and their diet and lifestyle, and I think that anything we can do to encourage people to exercise more and make it part of their life can only be a good thing. You do see teenagers that are coming in, and you see that exercise is something that they value and that’s better than the alternative.”
