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Tue. January 10, 2006, 09:47pm PST
No kids at the gym
Every time we hit our local Tacoma YMCA in the early evenings there are crowds of kids being shuttled to and fro by parents. Most of these youth have, to date, been in programs specifically for them. Tonight, however, was different. We hit they gym for the first time in 2006 tonight hoping some of the post-New Years resolution, guilt of the holidays crowd would've thinned out. As I'm sure it already has there were still noticably more people attempting to get fit. One thing I noticed that troubled me was that now some of these young kids were playing adult and working out one treadmills and elliptical machines.
I'm not bothered [much] by kids in general so it has nothing to do with a personal preference to keep them out of my hair. It's more out of the concern for their health -- that's right, I'm worried about the fact that their health and future well-being may be effected by hard core workouts at such young ages. Tonight I saw a couple kids in the machine room. One was boy no older than 13 pounding away on a treadmill. I say pounding because he wasn't merely doing a light jog or brisk walk. He was running pretty hard and turning bright red because of it. Another was a blond-haired girl dressed in all the garb pumping her legs and arms on an elliptical machine. My guess at her age puts her somewhere around 10.
What's the big deal? I'm no expert, but there are reasons pediatrics exists and that's because children have different needs and health considerations than do adults because their rate of development is fast and easily influenced. My grip comes from a parallel concern wherein workouts and equipment for adult bodies differs than that which is healthy for kids. Jarring a kids joints and bones at a marathon pace can't be good. Could this mean an early onset of arthritis? Bone loss? How 'bout the girl on the elliptical? That machine looked like some boat of a '70s car wrapped around an old lady -- it's too big and wasn't designed to fit that kinda' person. The machine looked like it was controlling her and probably didn't have anything close to the correct spacing for her arms and legs.
So there's my concern. If we don't want TVs to be babysitters let's not let gyms be their only outlet for keeping healthy. Encourage sports or just general playtime -- that way kids can get out, get some fresh air, and learn a few social skills why they're at it.
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