Finding the gift of fitness

After their outdoor sports activities began to wane last fall, Barry “Bubba” Baker Jr. and his dad felt themselves getting soft.

“My dad and I just really wanted to get in shape. We just weren’t feeling good about ourselves,” the 13-year-old from Liberty Lake said.

In November, the Bakers hired a personal trainer at the Liberty Lake Athletic Club. The younger Baker said at the time he was heavier than he would have liked and was hesitant to push himself at first.

But before he could say wind sprints, trainer Ben Greenfield had him and his dad keeping food journals, sprinting across the gym, lifting weights and going all-out on treadmills, elliptical trainers and stationary bikes – three times a week.

“After I started working out with Ben, it just made me want to run and exercise more,” the Baker teen said in a recent phone interview. A veteran baseball player, he said he surprised even himself when in winter, for the first time ever, he made his seventh-grade basketball team.

That’s the sort of success personal trainers who’ve begun working with kids all over America are raving about, experts say.

“It was about a $4 million a year industry in 2004 and growing,” says Greenfield, who also trains triathletes, does online training through the Web site www.pacificfit.net and directs sports performance programs at Champions Sports Medicine center in Post Falls.

The bulk of this niche market involves young athletes striving to boost performances in specific sports like football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, track and field and the like.

Yet the number of young sofa spuds using personal trainers to whip them into shape is growing, too, say industry experts. It’s a great way for kids who dislike exercise to get in touch with their inner athletes, say the pros.

First off, personal training strips away chances of being ridiculed in the gym.

“One of the most common things in overweight or out-of-shape kids is they don’t like to exercise (in a group) because they feel they’re competing with other children and their lack of physical prowess might show through,” explains Greenfield.

“Personal training puts them in an environment where the only person they’re competing with is themselves. It helps build confidence and coordination and to potentially build bodies that may excel at athletics,” he adds.

Laura Meyer, founder and owner of the new Hayden, Idaho-based Kids Athletic Club, says personal training is especially constructive for kids with health concerns.

“A personal trainer can individualize a program to a particular child’s needs,” says Meyer. “If a child has scoliosis, the trainer will help develop the child’s core (abs and back) muscles, taking her condition into consideration.”

And trainers know kids shouldn’t be expected to follow the same exercise routines as adults.

“A good trainer will asses a child, encourage the child to be the best they can, to like who they are and to make individual goals they can attain and feel really good about,” she says. And they need to have a gift for motivating kids and making exercise fun.

Spokane’s Dr. P.Z. Pearce, medical director of several Ironman competitions, wishes kids got enough exercise at school. But since most don’t, he said, athletic trainers can span the gap.

“Anything you can do to get a kid moving is really wonderful. If it’s through a personal trainer, it’s incredible. You’ll have given them the greatest gift you can give them – the gift of fitness,” said Pearce, team physician for the Spokane Indians baseball team and the Spokane Chiefs hockey team.

“If you learn fitness as a kid, you’re more likely to continue that as an adult,” he says.

And paying for training adds incentive.

“If you have a trainer and schedule a session, then you make it happen. Otherwise it’s easy to find something else to do. The structure is really helpful,” says the older Baker, 51.