How hard is it to get your teenagers to work on their fitness!!
They love their sport - hockey, football, rowing etc. - but won't get fit to support themselves. This can be especially frustrating in the off-season as we know that much of the early part of the season is taken up recovering fitness.
While I don't believe there is magic dust for this problem I do believe there are some simple truths about fitness and what motivates children to do anything that can help us.
Truth#1
Children are social creatures. Us adults have a nasty habit of deciding what matters in sport and then trying to transplant these truths into their minds. Win, become a champion, score goals, break records... These are fantasies in the minds of children. Born of a narrative built by Dads (mostly but not exclusively). Well intentioned but badly misplaced and misinformed. Stand in the school playground - something I get do every day - and watch. You will see joyfulness and relentless effort and, underlying it all, social connection.
Truth#2
Endurance exercise does not need the highest possible demand on the body. One of the most pervasive myths is the equivalence of effort and outcome or productivity in exercise. I genuinely don't know how this myth got started because there are so few capacities constructed by maximal effort (fun fact: maximal effort or rate is the only one!).
The human body's aerobic (cardiovascular) system is a vast network of metabolic processes and we can signal it to grow by lifting aerobic stress up to the point beyond which we cease normal breathing and heart rate function: between 60 and 70% of maximal heart rate. Much lower than most people realise and within our capability to keep talking.
Pushing our children to high levels of physical duress actually makes many of them afraid for their lives. They don't understand what they are experiencing and it's an instinctive reaction to stop. It takes most humans quite a lot of experience to discover that it's not an existential threat when our heart rates and breathing rates are at their limit.
In any case, it's bloody unpleasant and hardly surprising that most children don't want to come back again for more.
So what can parents do to motivate and support their children to get fit?
Asking them to exercise alone and in a way that is extremely uncomfortable does not work. They need companionship and it can't be physically awful. Exercise with them, arrange a group of children - the bigger the better - and keep the intensity low. Your number one goal is adherence so reward participation. Let them nominate a reward system for themselves that is linked to sessions completed. Above all, create an environment in which friendships can be formed.
