The Fun, the Furious, and the Fantastic!

As we all know, when we are having fun time flies.  But, when we don’t like what we are doing time stands still. This is even more the case for youngsters. Yet, we still want to make tasks hard and expect positive results.

The most important factor in being successful when working with kids on their fitness, or any thing for that matter, is to have a complete clear understanding of the goal. If we look deep into the goal we have set for kids’ fitness we can come up with so many fun, fantastic and furious ways to get results. I think the best way for me to make my point is to give you examples.

  • Nearly 15 years ago when I was teaching physical education, I built up the kids endurance by blasting the music and letting them run around the gym for 5, 7, 9, 10 minutes. I allowed the kids to walk if they needed to. Music made running fun as well as, I allowed the kids to run with friends and chat. The mistake I made was not looking clearly at our goal. The goal was to increase endurance and fitness, not make them run. What I should have done is design fun activities, at a furious pace, for a fantastic time. We could have played tag games, relay races, and obstacle courses where the kids just keep moving and grooving the entire time. This not only is fun but it builds endurance and they are having a blast.
  • How often have you heard of football coaches making their team run distance to get in shape? The goal certainly isn’t to run distance. As a matter of fact, it is the complete opposite. So, why not design activities that allow the athletes to build endurance yet be challenged and have fun. When I coached football our team would pair up with each other and have a challenge. The players would have to push a two man sled for 50 yards, each pick up a 50lb bag of sand and run it back to the start, sprint back and pick up another heavy bag and run it back. I would time the pairs and they tried to improve each week. This was a difficult task, but because it was a competition they players loved it. I certainly accomplished my goal of conditioning, but did it in a furious way.

Once again, the most important thing we can all do is understand the final outcome or goal. When we do so, we can begin to realize there are so many more effective ways to getting to our goal than the traditional ways of doing things.

Any time you can increase the fun of and activity, furious nature of the activity, and make a fantastic experience everyone wins and you increase the compliance of your athletes and non-athletes.

Kids are supposed to have fun. Why do we doubt this sometimes?

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