Too Fat to Get Fit?: Addressing the Physical Development Needs of Today’s
Youth
By
Brett Klika
It isn’t pretty, but it’s a reality. Our youth are getting fatter and
unhealthier by the day. Physical education classes are either gone or absolutely
minimized in our educational curriculum. The classes that are still intact are
ill-suited for the new generation.
As trainers working with youth, many of us do a poor job of adapting our
programs to the needs of these kids. This oversight decreases the impact that
we’re able to have on them, both in the short term and in the long term. This
article will discuss some common issues when working with overweight youth and
how to modify programs so that their needs are more appropriately met.
I work with large numbers of kids. A couple of weeks ago I had the
opportunity to work with over 1000 kids while at the NFL experience in Tampa,
Florida. One of our sponsors had set up a large “football combine” simulation
with a variety of “test” stations including ones for pull-ups, push-ups, agility
ladders, and broad jumps as well as the 40-yard dash. The ages of the kids
varied from 8-years-old to 18-years-old, but most were in the 9–13-years-old
range. I can
honestly say that out of the over 1000 kids I saw in four days, I can remember a
handful who could do one pull-up. About half could do one legitimate push-up and
about the same number could do an actual lunge. Furthermore, these kids had to
put down their soda and churros to do the drills!
I remembered back to when I was in grade school. I wasn’t a strong kid. I was
a little chubby, actually. I did everything that kids are supposed to do, but my
mom was a great cook, and I was a late bloomer. I remember being so embarrassed
in my sixth grade physical education class because I was one of two boys who
couldn’t do a pull-up. Two kids out of 20 couldn’t do a body weight pull-up. At
the NFL event, I observed about 985 kids out of 1000 who couldn’t do a pull-up!
The inactivity of our youth has affected them in the sense that they observe
a large decrease in strength to weight ratios. Maintaining a favorable strength
to weight ratio is essential for athletic performance as well as the
accomplishment of functional daily tasks as you get older. A good
assessment of strength to weight ratio is how well one can do body weight
activities including pull-ups, push-ups, jumps, and sprints. The strength and
coordination for these activities used to be developed throughout youth as kids
ran around, threw snowballs, climbed trees, dug holes, and did chores. As we
know, kids don’t do these things anymore. These general body weight
activities are essential for developing functional strength to reinforce more
specific movement patterns like running, jumping, pulling, pushing, throwing,
kicking, and grasping, as well as a host of other motor tasks.
If youth don’t perform a volume of these general tasks, they can be at a
functional detriment for the rest of their lives. In addition, modern society,
with an abundance of crap food and lack of parental supervision, has left this
young generation with an inability to put down the junk food. Compound the lack
of movement for calorie burning and strength development with a near intravenous
supply of processed fat and sugar and you get a generation that is obese because
they don’t exercise. Then, it’s harder for them to exercise because they’re
obese!
As I said before, it isn’t pretty, but it’s a fact. We have to now “own up” to
the problem. Our current curriculum for working with kids is outdated. It is
designed and implemented on the assumption that kids are still capable of doing
the things that kids did 20 or 30 years ago. When this curriculum is implemented
with groups of kids, whether it’s in physical education classes, sports, teams,
camps, or even personal training groups, you’ll see that less than 10 percent of
the kids can actually accomplish the given tasks. Ninety percent of the group is
failing, yet the apathetic instructor moves on. It’s like physical education has
become akin to law school. However, instead of getting people out of parking
tickets for a living, you have a heart attack at age 25 if you aren’t in the top
10 percent.
To be proactive, we need to start viewing body weight activities with our
youth as “skills” instead of “exercises.” In the good old days, kids developed
many physical skills on their own through general daily activity. When an
instructor would have them do a push-up, the summation of their daily tasks
would allow for the strength and stability to do so. Pushing their body weight
away from the ground was a demonstration of their coordination and strength.
They didn’t really need to practice it much because of their active, adaptive
neural systems. In those days, you could just throw “exercises” out at the kids
and they could do them pretty well with some basic coaching. It doesn’t work
that way anymore.
With the inactivity problem, there is hardly any strength and coordination to
“showcase” in an exercise. A push-up has to be a learned skill. It has to be
adapted, progressed, and practiced. Even general movement tasks like bear
crawls, crab walks, and skips have to be acquired as a skill.
Consider this example. Let’s say you’ve taken Latin for ten years. You decide
you want to learn Spanish. Your years of Latin will help you pick up the
Latin-based language pretty quickly because you have an understanding of the
basic phonetic structure. The Spanish language just narrows the focus of your
Latin language skill set and introduces some new structure. Now, let’s say
you’ve taken Latin for ten years, and you want to learn Chinese. With no general
language foundation, every word or phrase you learn in Chinese is a whole new
phonetic skill set.
The acquisition of physical skill is like learning Chinese for many of our
modern youth. From a practical standpoint, we need to focus our curriculum on
more general activities, replicating what kids used to do on their own—skipping,
crawling, climbing, pushing, and pulling. It would be beneficial to hold off on
introducing more specific skill sets like push-ups, pull-ups, lunges, and squats
until they can do the general activities well. When moving on to these more
specific skill sets, there should be an observed progression. Take push-ups for
example. First of all, the youngster should be able to hold a perfect push-up
position for 40 seconds to a minute. This is how we introduce push-ups at
Fitness Quest 10. We then do eccentric push-ups. We go to the floor as slowly as
possible, get to the knees, and come back up. Then, we use the blue balance pads
as a goal for them to touch their chest.
We’ll start with as many as three under their chest. As they become capable,
we take one away. We don’t use numbers of repetitions as criteria, only time.
Five perfect push-ups in 30 seconds are far better than 15 bad ones in ten
seconds. For overweight and extremely out of shape kids, we use jump stretch
bands to help remove some of the weight. We do this with every body weight
exercise that we teach including lunges, pull-ups, and push-ups. We’ll take as
thin a band as possible and either wrap it around their waist or their feet or
we’ll have them hold it. Their robust body weight adds too much neuromuscular
overload to learn the proper coordination of a new task. With the jump stretch
bands, we take out the overload factor and allow the neuromuscular system to
learn the new task. Once the task becomes more engrained, we use thinner and
thinner cords until they can do it on their own. It’s like adding or subtracting
weight to the bar.
Watch a demonstration of some of our exercises at the following links:
By shifting our focus from “exercises” to “skills” and implementing proper
adaptations and progressions, we have seen tremendous progress in the youngsters
we work with. The strength and mobility they acquire through the skills we teach
allow them to go out and exercise. They can ride their bikes, swim, run, or play
a sport for a longer period of time and at an improved level. This not only
makes daily exercises a less arduous activity for these kids, but it also builds
a sense of confidence and self-efficacy. These youngsters feel physically
capable, and exercise becomes a positive experience. This view of physical
activity will follow them for the rest of their lives. This is the true “result”
of a successful youth athletic development program.
Coach Brett Klika is the director of athletic performance at Todd Durkin’s
Fitness Quest 10 in San Diego, California. He specializes in youth fitness and
athletic performance, overseeing a staff of eight strength coaches developing
programs for over 300 youth per week, both athletes and non-athletes. He
presents around the world for a variety of organizations on topics of health,
wellness, and athletic performance. In addition, Brett has authored chapters in
academic texts as well as published many articles and DVDs on athletic
performance. Brett can be contacted at
brett@fitnessquest10.com. For more information please visit
www.FitnessQuest10.com or
www.ToddDurkin.com.
