Fit kids ARE smarter!

I’m a very active person. With my first child, I didn’t consider how my fitness habits impacted him. I just exercised regularly and whether my son noticed or not…I really didn’t give it much thought. When he was coordinated enough to join sports, he did without hesitation, soccer, football, baseball, whatever. He was a very physically apt child.

This didn’t strike me as unique because when I was growing up, all kids were physical. We all loved to be outside with our friends wearing ourselves out for hours doing just about anything that required energy. The worse thing that could possibly happen to us was getting “grounded”. Nobody wanted that. Not being able to go outside and play with your friends was a death sentence.  This isn’t the case nowadays. Just take a drive around a few neighborhoods…where the heck are all the kids? Back in the day, you could bump into a group of kids every block playing sports, skating, biking, chasing each other, just moving. Kids aren’t out and about nowadays, they’re indoors, living a sedentary existence during the most crucial time of their lives. The time in which healthy active habits can be formed and carried through their entire lives. A time where balance and coordination is honed during awkward growth spurts.

When my son was in elementary school I learned that he didn’t have physical education class until sixth grade. This was never more evident then when my wife asked him to show us jumping jacks when he was ten…he couldn’t do them, didn’t have the coordination, was never taught. Are you serious? I was in P.E. in first grade and I worked hard to get my Presidential Physical Education patch every single year through all of elementary school.

I kept my son active in sports and soon we enrolled him in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Kickboxing. This was just around the time his hormones were raging and so was he. It was in an effort to help him learn humility. What he got was so much more. My son is a baseball fanatic, he loves to play it, watch it, dream about it. He was always “okay” but never the best player. After ramping up his physical fitness to include martial arts, baseball, basketball, and even tennis, his skills on the field began to blossom. The last two years he made the all star team and this year he won every award for his league, best batting average, fastest runner, most bases stolen, fastest throw, and on and on. On top of all this, his grades increased to perfection. My son has maintained a 4.0 GPA from 6^th to 8^th grade and this earned him admission and a scholarship to Regis High School.

I never attempted to put it all together. The physical fitness he engaged in and his grades. I just thanked God for blessing me with such an intelligent and driven child. But after reading Fit kids are smarter in the Huffington Post by former Olympian Jeff Galloway, I started to understand the direct connection between my son’s physical prowess and intellectual achievements. I continued to read and found another article in the New York Times, and another on active.com.

When my second child, my little princess Janessa, came along. I started to realize that my fit lifestyle directly influenced my children. My daughter could barely stand on her own before she was trying to exercise like me. Just like my son, my daughter became physical the moment she was coordinated enough. Much to my wife’s dismay, Janessa took to boxing at the age of five. My wife wanted a gymnast, now she’s got a six-year-old girl who can throw crisp punch combinations and jump rope for five minutes straight. No joke.

I am a trainer myself and I train in cross fit, kickboxing, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and anything else that gets my heart rate up. My entire family trains at one place…American Top Team Altitude. My daughter is part of the youth boxing program. My son and I compete regularly in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competitions and we kickbox together.

Don’t let your children be part of the 17% that are currently obese, or the almost 30% that are completely sedentary. Make physical fitness a family affair. Come check out our Family fitness center and let’s get the entire family where they should be…happy and healthy!