How Old Should You be to Workout?
I’ve been an Austin personal trainer for a good long while, and a gym owner for almost a decade. I get a lot of typical questions during the course of my days. Some interesting, such as when someone inquires if a certain approach towards an exercise will benefit their ongoing medical condition, and of course, some rather uninteresting ones as well. Such questions as will you train me for free, and do I have to pay for a gym membership in order to use the gym qualify as not only uninteresting questions, but rather annoying as well. One question, however, that’s actually one of the best, and still after all these years, one of the hardest to answer is, how old should you be to workout?
As I’ve written many a time throughout my numerous blog posts
and essays, everything in fitness is individual, and that said, there is no one size fits all approach or answer to any question. How old you should be to workout is just as much if an individual thing as asking what your daily caloric intake should be considering your goals, age, medical history, and so on. No sweeping statement will give a satisfactory answer if you’re looking for the honest truth.
So, how old should you be to workout? That depends on a whole variety of things, starting with the kid’s maturity level, ability to follow instructions, and ability to stay focused. Many a time I’ve been approached by the parents of an overweight pre teen and asked if I would consider working with the child. The answer there is that if the child is able to focus, stay engaged, and give an honest effort, then it would be my pleasure. If the child has no interest in being at the gym, is disruptive to other gym patrons, and fails to give a good effort, then they qualify as being too young.
One thing any parent should ask themselves before inquiring how old should you be to workout, is why does your child need to workout? If it is to repair an imbalance from an injury or a long standing condition, that’s perfectly reasonable. Is it for sport specific training? That’s fine as well, but if the answer is simply because the child is overweight and lives a sedentary lifestyle coupled with poor eating habits, a personal trainer is not going to be of much benefit. Remember that all things start at home. Young kids do what they see and hear. If you eat poorly and don’t exercise, you are teaching them those same bad habits. I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a couple of fit, healthy, and in shape parents present an overweight child to me and inquire about weight loss training.
If you want your child to excel at sports, get over issues stemming from injuries, or perhaps, just get stronger, a gym pass with a few sessions from a personal trainer is a fine idea, that a lot of kids will embrace. In those scenarios, it’s not much of a question of how old you should be to workout, but is that individual child mature and interested enough to go about it. On the other hand, if it’s a problem of the family not exercising and eating nutritious foods regularly, and thus becoming overweight and out of shape, then perhaps the entire family should consider joining the gym and making achieving, and subsequently living a healthy lifestyle, a family affair. Nobody is too young, nor too old for that.
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Andy
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