Margie Weiss: My name is Margie Weiss. I’ve been in fitness all my life, as a national champion in gymnastics as a child, through to an adult, where I have been teaching children, athletes, and regular kids, sports conditioning, personal training, ways to get them better at the sports that they do, and to get better fitness in children. It’s a passion of mine teaching kids, making them happy when they are doing sports.
What I am going to do today involves cardio fitness for children, it’s trying to keep their heart rate up, trying to get them to move. When my kids were little, I got three international level athletes because we trained outside of their sport, in strength, flexibility and cardio work, to make them better athletes, not only for their safety, but for the expertise in their sports. My son Michael Weiss made it to Olympic teams in figure skating because partly due to the fact of the exercises that we did off the ice with him to keep him strong and flexible.
So, today what we’re going to do with the rates of obesity in children and diabetes becoming a ramp into the United States, and the lifestyles becoming slower and more sedentary. We need to find ways that children can do cardio workouts that are fun, safe and effective that they can do at home, with mom and dad, they can do it with their friends, and something that they’ll enjoy doing, not only now, but because it becomes a part of their lifestyle, they’ll be able to do that all through their life.
So, we’re going to do, it’s called kids cardio fitness. We’re going to raise the heart rate safely. We’re going to make sure that we have clothes that are good for this type of activity, good pair of tennis shoes with a good support, clothes that are loose fitting but not so floppy that you’re going to get caught in them. We’re going to have a few different pieces of apparatus. If you’ve got some hand weights, which you can get at a local store, that’s great, if not, you can use tin cans from the kitchen. We’re also going to use some other pieces of equipment that you can buy if you want. One is called a Bosu ball. It’s a new fitness craze but they are really fun, the kids love them. You can buy those at local sport stores, as well as resist-a-balls, which are the huge balls that kids love to just play with, sit on, do their homework on. You can also use some slides, but if you don’t have a slide, which we’re going to show you later, you can use paper plate.
So, there is always a way that you can do fitness. There are no excuses. Moms and dads can do it with the kids; you want to make sure that the child is safe because they may have some injuries; they may have some issues that you want to deal with ahead of time. Once they’re cleared for take off, you want to do this fitness program, cardio work for their heart and for their mind and body for the rest of their life.
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