07-13-2010, 11:25 AM
Even youngsters are getting personal trainers
I would add the obvious: wealthy parents buying them.
Parents, wanting to boost kids’ health and prevent obesity, shell out bucks for gym memberships, classes
By Laura Casey
lcasey@bayareanewsgroup.com
Thirteen-year-old Zakery Galamabos is climbing a new bouldering wall at a gym in Walnut Creek with help and encouragement from his personal trainer, Robert Jackson.
Kids as young as 3 are working on running and squatting skills with personal trainers and CrossFit instructors Lesha Capitanich Kastl and Bryan Kastl at a fitness facility in Hercules in the East Bay, while their parents take pictures.
Scenes like these of children once thought too young for the gym working with trainers are being played out around the Bay Area. Instead of getting left at home or plopped in a child care center, kids are learning some of the same exercises — modified to suit their capabilities — that their parents do. They are working with personal trainers and taking classes in yoga, Zumba (a Latin dance-fitness program) and Cross-Fit and boot camp training.
“Parents want their kids to be introduced to a gym and have the tools for exercising later on,” says Jackson, co-owner of the Walnut Creek facility, Forma Gym, which has about 50 young clients, ages 6 and up, whose parents pay as much as $75 an hour for one-on-one sessions like Zakery’s.
A reason for the young clients here and elsewhere is that some parents see an urgent need for their kids to stay active since, according
to the 2008 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System, almost 20 percent of U.S. children are either obese or at risk of becoming so. A second reason is that parents want to help their children gain a competitive edge over peers. Zakery’s dad, Nelson Galambos, says, “We’re giving him all the tools he needs to succeed. Not only does it keep him busy and out of trouble; he excels. It’s a wise investment.”
Galambos predicts the physical training will also pay off mentally for Zakery. “He will notice a difference when he competes against kids his age and older kids,” the father says.
The family hopes the personalized help might lead to an athletic scholarship for Zakery, who wants to study at a top-tier East Coast school such as Boston University. The boy asked for a trainer to improve his hockey skills, Galambos says, adding the family wouldn’t push him to do that if Zakery hadn’t made the request.
A third reason young people are hiring trainers is to improve their physiques and boost self-esteem. Matthew Haupmann, 17, has been working with trainer Kirk Michals at All in One Fitness in Walnut Creek for more than a year. A skinny kid when he first arrived, Haupmann has gained 32 pounds of muscle.
“I feel a lot more confident now that I have a bigger body and more muscle,” he says, adding that the training experience has helped him become more focused on goals. Now he’s training with Michals to become fit enough for work as a firefighter.
Haupmann’s mother, Emma Andreoli, says her son was never into sports, so she wanted to find a way for him to become physically active. She predicts he will enjoy exercising for the rest of his life. “He’s found something that he likes, and it’s worth it to me” to pay for the training, she says.
Lynn Love, a personal trainer at Club One Silver Creek in San Jose, says kids often are “very uncomfortable” when they first come to the gym “because they don’t know what to do, and they don’t even know what they are looking at” when checking out the weights, barbells, workout benches, stair-climbers, treadmills, etc.
Love says she looks enough like a 16-year-old for teenagers to feel comfortable approaching her, and when she explains which equipment is appropriate for them and how to use it, they feel much more at ease. She also helps them find their target heart rate and ideal weight for their age and height.
At Hercules Fitness Gym, eight young children surround Lesha Kastl and her husband during the Cross-Fit class, developed to help adults improve their overall physical performance but tweaked for these children. The kids run around, hang from suspended rings and play games for 30 minutes.
One participant is 3-year -old Sierra Thompson, who likely doesn’t even know she’s “exercising.” She does squats and then takes her turn at “duck, duck, goose,” keeping up with the older kids.
Sierra’s mom, Staci Thompson, used to teach physical education at a local school. She’s worried about obesity rates for children and adults, as well as cuts in physical education at schools. “I think it’s important to get kids exercising at an early age,” she says. “I want Sierra to have a healthy lifestyle.” Carol Jorgensen, guardian to 4-year-old Khamani Mc-Ghee, says she tries to be a fitness role model for him by doing workouts herself at the Hercules gym. Experts say little guys like Khamani learn that exercise is fun through classes like CrossFit.
A fourth reason more kids are showing up at the gym is that some parents consider the environment there safer than letting children play outside.
Thompson says, as a child, she played outdoors with friends, and her family left the door unlocked all day long. Now, she says, “I lock the door right when I go inside. It’s just not the same as it used to be out there.”
When she was a child, Lesha Kastl says, “We lived in a cul-de-sac and played all day. You just don’t see that anymore.”
Like the CrossFit class, other types of training are adjusted to suit the kids’ bodies. In Zumba for children, the dance moves are scaled down, and the pace is less frenetic than for adults. In yoga, instructors often use different names for the poses and hold the kids’ attention through storytelling.
Jasmine Buczek, co-owner of All in One Fitness, says kids often have a better attitude about exercise than grownups. Adults want to see quick results, and are often “down on themselves, especially women,” she says.
“Overall, adults have a harder time noticing the positive results. Kids can be very appreciative … when they see just a little bit of results.”
She also points out kids benefit from fitness training because they have had less time to form bad habits than adults, who sometimes have spent many years inactive physically and eating poorly. Buczek teaches about nutrition as well as exercise.
I would add the obvious: wealthy parents buying them.
Parents, wanting to boost kids’ health and prevent obesity, shell out bucks for gym memberships, classes
By Laura Casey
lcasey@bayareanewsgroup.com
Thirteen-year-old Zakery Galamabos is climbing a new bouldering wall at a gym in Walnut Creek with help and encouragement from his personal trainer, Robert Jackson.
Kids as young as 3 are working on running and squatting skills with personal trainers and CrossFit instructors Lesha Capitanich Kastl and Bryan Kastl at a fitness facility in Hercules in the East Bay, while their parents take pictures.
Scenes like these of children once thought too young for the gym working with trainers are being played out around the Bay Area. Instead of getting left at home or plopped in a child care center, kids are learning some of the same exercises — modified to suit their capabilities — that their parents do. They are working with personal trainers and taking classes in yoga, Zumba (a Latin dance-fitness program) and Cross-Fit and boot camp training.
“Parents want their kids to be introduced to a gym and have the tools for exercising later on,” says Jackson, co-owner of the Walnut Creek facility, Forma Gym, which has about 50 young clients, ages 6 and up, whose parents pay as much as $75 an hour for one-on-one sessions like Zakery’s.
A reason for the young clients here and elsewhere is that some parents see an urgent need for their kids to stay active since, according
to the 2008 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System, almost 20 percent of U.S. children are either obese or at risk of becoming so. A second reason is that parents want to help their children gain a competitive edge over peers. Zakery’s dad, Nelson Galambos, says, “We’re giving him all the tools he needs to succeed. Not only does it keep him busy and out of trouble; he excels. It’s a wise investment.”
Galambos predicts the physical training will also pay off mentally for Zakery. “He will notice a difference when he competes against kids his age and older kids,” the father says.
The family hopes the personalized help might lead to an athletic scholarship for Zakery, who wants to study at a top-tier East Coast school such as Boston University. The boy asked for a trainer to improve his hockey skills, Galambos says, adding the family wouldn’t push him to do that if Zakery hadn’t made the request.
A third reason young people are hiring trainers is to improve their physiques and boost self-esteem. Matthew Haupmann, 17, has been working with trainer Kirk Michals at All in One Fitness in Walnut Creek for more than a year. A skinny kid when he first arrived, Haupmann has gained 32 pounds of muscle.
“I feel a lot more confident now that I have a bigger body and more muscle,” he says, adding that the training experience has helped him become more focused on goals. Now he’s training with Michals to become fit enough for work as a firefighter.
Haupmann’s mother, Emma Andreoli, says her son was never into sports, so she wanted to find a way for him to become physically active. She predicts he will enjoy exercising for the rest of his life. “He’s found something that he likes, and it’s worth it to me” to pay for the training, she says.
Lynn Love, a personal trainer at Club One Silver Creek in San Jose, says kids often are “very uncomfortable” when they first come to the gym “because they don’t know what to do, and they don’t even know what they are looking at” when checking out the weights, barbells, workout benches, stair-climbers, treadmills, etc.
Love says she looks enough like a 16-year-old for teenagers to feel comfortable approaching her, and when she explains which equipment is appropriate for them and how to use it, they feel much more at ease. She also helps them find their target heart rate and ideal weight for their age and height.
At Hercules Fitness Gym, eight young children surround Lesha Kastl and her husband during the Cross-Fit class, developed to help adults improve their overall physical performance but tweaked for these children. The kids run around, hang from suspended rings and play games for 30 minutes.
One participant is 3-year -old Sierra Thompson, who likely doesn’t even know she’s “exercising.” She does squats and then takes her turn at “duck, duck, goose,” keeping up with the older kids.
Sierra’s mom, Staci Thompson, used to teach physical education at a local school. She’s worried about obesity rates for children and adults, as well as cuts in physical education at schools. “I think it’s important to get kids exercising at an early age,” she says. “I want Sierra to have a healthy lifestyle.” Carol Jorgensen, guardian to 4-year-old Khamani Mc-Ghee, says she tries to be a fitness role model for him by doing workouts herself at the Hercules gym. Experts say little guys like Khamani learn that exercise is fun through classes like CrossFit.
A fourth reason more kids are showing up at the gym is that some parents consider the environment there safer than letting children play outside.
Thompson says, as a child, she played outdoors with friends, and her family left the door unlocked all day long. Now, she says, “I lock the door right when I go inside. It’s just not the same as it used to be out there.”
When she was a child, Lesha Kastl says, “We lived in a cul-de-sac and played all day. You just don’t see that anymore.”
Like the CrossFit class, other types of training are adjusted to suit the kids’ bodies. In Zumba for children, the dance moves are scaled down, and the pace is less frenetic than for adults. In yoga, instructors often use different names for the poses and hold the kids’ attention through storytelling.
Jasmine Buczek, co-owner of All in One Fitness, says kids often have a better attitude about exercise than grownups. Adults want to see quick results, and are often “down on themselves, especially women,” she says.
“Overall, adults have a harder time noticing the positive results. Kids can be very appreciative … when they see just a little bit of results.”
She also points out kids benefit from fitness training because they have had less time to form bad habits than adults, who sometimes have spent many years inactive physically and eating poorly. Buczek teaches about nutrition as well as exercise.