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There is a staggering lack of imagination on display from most gyms and apartment associations that refuse to let kids train in their facilities.
In an ideal world, kids would spend 6-10 hours a week in obstacle courses with climbing, swimming, pulling, crawling, pushing, brachiating, hanging etc. They would learn to lift with awareness and stability. And they would play some sport too. This would ideally happen in school or some after-school setup.
But these things don’t exist.
The vacuum needs filling. Given Indians are famously undermuscled and joint-circumference challenged, the time to remedy this is during childhood between 5 and 18. Any shot we have at improving their body composition, bone health and strength levels for life is when they are young.
Instead most gyms ban kids from training. Apartment associations, those most geriatric and unwise of institutions, also give kids a hard time.
I am not for kids running around gyms and wreaking havoc on equipment and destroying property.
Give them a structured program, teach them proper etiquette and let them get strong. Given my industry has struggled to do this for adults, I can see why we are avoiding kids. But kids are easier to mold and they carry far fewer stupid, preconceived notions than the average Indian adult. And they embrace reality and fact much sooner. In fact, they enjoy activity and exertion. And when you show them progress, they lap it up and demand second servings.
This isn’t fiction. We’ve seen it with at least 30 kids at our gym. I didn’t know what a pull up was at the age of 15, but one kid did 15 of them in a row last week.
The sooner we (both as an industry and as a parent) step up to fill the vacuum of physical activity kids need to grow up to be bigger and stronger than we ever will be, the sooner we can make all those articles about Indians being vulnerable to cardiovascular disease, being pear-shaped or skinny-fat a thing of the past.