Exercise for teenagers sadly doesn’t seem to be in fashion any more as the number of obese adolescents goes up and up in the US and Europe every year. Many things have been blamed for this including computer games, sugary sweets and television, all of which encourage kids to stay in their rooms and to eat unhealthy sweets. This is probably a rather unfair assumption however as sweets have always existed (well, they have for thousands of years anyway) and the same criticisms were never levelled at reading or at listening to music. Can you imagine parents complaining that reading should be banned because their kids are enjoying War and Peace instead of pumping iron? Well some parents probably would but then parents never are happy…

The point is that the existence of computer games needn’t necessarily prevent children from exercising. It is possible to have more than one interest believe it or not so there’s no reason why a child can’t enjoy a game of football then come back to play GTA. I’m rather defensive here because computer games have been made the scapegoat for everything – from high school shootings, to poor eyesight and now to the death of exercise for teenagers. A scapegoat is exactly what computer games are however – a convenient thing for parents and society to blame when really it just boils down to an inability (or a lack of motivation?) to interest teenagers in exercise.

All this makes it strange that so many gyms don’t allow users younger than 16. This further makes exercise for teenagers more difficult to begin with. While a lack of younger members can make it easier for the adults to concentrate and take their own training seriously, it wouldn’t hurt if just a few gyms had facilities for younger users or time slots for them to use the equipment. Schools could also provide a gym or at least gym trips for their pupils, but sadly both are rare. It also doesn’t help that many ‘experts’ recommend against children and teenagers exercising because it can ‘stunt growth’. The explanation behind this is that going to the gym is ‘high impact’ and so can interrupt with the mechanisms of the growth plates. While no one wants their children to have stunted growth this is also allegedly the case for basketball, football and any other ‘impact sport’. Anything involving running in fact! Unless children were giving a programme of just swimming then – any exercise will stunt their growth. This certainly doesn’t mean all exercise for teenagers should be avoided completely.

In reality this is also a rather uninformed concept, as exercise also stimulates the release of many different hormones – including growth hormone. Produced at night growth hormone is responsible not only for the growth of muscle and the healing of wounds but also for natural teenage growth. The amount of growth hormone in a teenager’s system will be greatly increased through exercise.

That’s not the only benefit of exercise for teenagers either. Obviously if a teenager is overweight then exercise will have many different health benefits and will decrease their risk of heart disease, diabetes and other conditions. It has far more advantages than this however and will have many psychological and social knock on effects for their teenage lives.

Exercising stimulates the production of endorphins which leads to something often described as ‘the runners high’. This can make exercise a great way to increase energy levels and mood. As teenagers are so often a raging sea of hormones which leaves them feeling confused and angry, exercise for teenagers can also act as a great way to rebalance their emotions working almost as an anti-depressant.

These endorphins are also fairly addictive, as is the process of watching yourself slowly improve and build on something. Whether they enjoy football or bodybuilding, the ability to week after week notice an improvement in skill or in strength is something that can completely focus a teenager’s attention. The great thing about this then is that it gives teenagers something to focus their energies on. This in turn will mean that they don’t get addicted to other things like smoking or drugs. Tripe though it may sound – exercise is a great way to keep kids off of the street. And if you can get teenagers to value their health as much as their parents do then these issues might cause fewer arguments. It can even have a positive knock on effect for diet and mean that teenagers start eating more healthily to help their performance on the pitch or in the gym, though if they do continue to eat junk food at least they’ll be burning it off.

Furthermore, exercise will improve their academic performance. Not only through their new found ability to focus on a task, but through the very fact that exercise actually improves the function of the brain. All cardiovascular activity has been shown to improve short term memory and fluid intelligence (reasoning tasks that aren’t reliant on pre-learned knowledge) and exercise with weights has also been shown to lead to neurogenesis in the hippocampus. In plain English that means the birth of new brain cells in the areas of the brain related to memory.

Exercise for teenagers also acts as a great way to get children outside socialising with their friends. If they go to a gym with other teenagers then they will get the chance to meet others with the same interest, while if they join a football team or other sports team they’ll learn to be a member of a team and probably make some life long friends along the way.

As though that wasn’t enough – and this is probably the part that will appeal to the teenagers themselves, working out or increasing their physical fitness will buy them street cred. For those too old to know what that means to a teenager (Jesus Grandpa!) that means their reputation amongst peers and is probably what most kids between the ages of 13 and 18 spend their time worrying about. The reasons for this are myriad but it essentially comes down to the fact that a lot of kids are in gangs, beating up other kids and trying to impress the opposite sex. Exercise for teenagers will help them in all these capacities, giving them the confidence to be immune to peer pressure, the strength to wipe the blackboard with the bullies’ heads and the abs to impress their crushes. Working out will take teenagers out of the geek zone and into the realm of the jock, but at the same time it’ll show them that they don’t need to impress their friends by smoking and drinking behind the bike sheds.

So in other words exercise for teenagers is important and can solve a lot of problems growing up and even teach a lot of life lessons. Parents would do well to encourage them to join a sports team, or to get a gym membership. This can be done with the use of role models – point out how all the guys and girls on MTV have ripped abs, or how they too could be a football star if they wanted to be and were willing to put in the work. Playing football in the garden with your children can also help get the ball rolling and be a great bonding experience, as can going on family bike rides.

For some children though you just won’t be able to generate an interest in fitness. Some just lack natural physical aptitude and so a home workout be a great way to get them fitter without risking embarrassment. Another way to generate interest is to buy an exciting piece of training equipment that doesn’t take too much work – for example a treadmill, or more excitingly a punching bag. No kid can resist a punching bag… (especially if you stick a picture of your face to it then ground them…)

For any teenagers reading this who might not have access to a gym, or their parents, the following is a great home workout that any teenager can do – not too intense so as to ‘stunt growth’ (jees) and nothing that takes too long. It will require a set of dumbbells up to 10kg each.

Exercise Programme for Teenagers:

Skipping/shadow boxing/jogging for 15 minutes

Press Ups 3 x 20

Dumbbell Curls 3 x 12 x 7kg

Tricep Dips 3 x 30

Shoulder Presses 3 x 10 x 10kg

Upward Rows 3 x 10 x 10kg

Sit Ups 3 x 50

Mack LeMouse

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