My daughter asked me if she should join the track team. As a fitness professional, this is what I told her.

It might not be what you expect

Hi! I’m Naomi and in case this is your first time here, I am a fitness professional focusing on strength in midlife for women. I also write about health, fitness, and aging, with a particular emphasis on perimenopause. I used to write a lot more about the intersection of health, fitness, and motherhood, but I haven’t in a bit. This personal story stemming from a conversation I had with my oldest kid felt important to share because I think there’s an assumption about how we, as fitness pros, might encourage our kids to be super physically active. And certainly, some do.

But I don’t.

I take a different approach.

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“Mom, should I join the track team?”

My 13 year old asked me this question a few days ago when I was driving her home from school.

“Why do you want to join the track team?” I asked her.

She sighed and explained that she felt like she should be more physically active to be healthy.

For the past few months, she’s been on this “need to be healthy” kick. Apparently a few nurses from the local hospital system here in Colorado, came to her school to talk about heart health and covered the “do’s and don’ts” of healthy behaviors – everything from vaping, smoking, and drugs to exercise and what foods to eat .

It hasn’t yet resulted in concerning choices or actions, but every so often she’ll bring it up in conversations like this one.

“Do you even like running?” I asked. I already knew the answer. She hates running. It feels terrible in her body.

But give her anything with wheels, and she excels. She first tried rollerskating at 4 years old and had it figured out by 5. She taught herself how to ride a skateboard in 2nd grade. She uses her bike to get to friends’ houses and sometimes even to school, 4 miles away. She learned how to ride a onewheel in less than 20 minutes.

I asked again, “if you hate running, why would you want to join the track team?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just feel like I’m supposed to be doing more physical activity and I don’t know what else to do.”

***

I am a fitness professional, so of course I have lots of thoughts about this. But I’m a mom first. I’ve spent the past 8 years watching how schools approach educating kids about fitness and health and while some of it is fine, a lot of it is still rooted in diet culture, which causes so much harm and often starts when kids are young. I was in 3rd grade when I first started hating my body and not much older when I first took unhealthy actions to try and change my body.

I want my kids to grow up with a healthier relationship to their bodies and to movement than I did. So I am not interested in forcing movement on them, either as a way to get gold stars for fitness or as something that is a moral imperative.

When my daughter asked me about joining track, I had a hunch about something so I asked her about the talk the nurses gave to her school and how it made her feel.

She told me that while she appreciated the things they said about vaping, smoking cigarettes, and doing drugs, everything they said about exercise and eating stressed her out.

The nurses said that kids, including middle schoolers, should be exercising for an hour everyday and avoiding certain foods if they want to be healthy. She felt like it was helpful information, but it also made her feel bad. “I don’t have time to exercise for an hour everyday,” she told me. She’s up at 6:15 to get to school and home around 2:45pm, so she’s already exhausted by the time school is over.

She also worries about the food choices she makes since not everything she likes to eat falls into the “healthy foods” category the nurses suggested.

But more than the food, she felt guilty about her inability to exercise as much as they said she should be and worries that it’s impacting her health.

This is where I am going to put my expert hat on and say, multiple things can be true.

Here’s one thing that’s true: the AHA (American Heart Association) recommends that kids, ages 6-17, do moderate to vigorous exercise for an hour everyday – just as the nurses recommended to my daughter and her classmates.

Here’s another thing that’s true: kids don’t get as much physical activity as they used to, generationally-speaking. This is attributed to all sorts of things and it’s not just an issue in the US. I looked at studies done internationally and the findings are similar.

Here’s one more thing that’s true: you can’t guilt trip or shame kids into exercise and expect to have positive results.

As a fitness professional, it’s probably fairly obvious that I am a big fan of moving my body and not just for the health benefits.

I actually LIKE moving my body.

I love going on hikes, I take 3 dance classes a week for the pure joy of it. When my kids were littler, I loved an empty playground because then it was less weird when I, as an adult, was playing on the playground equipment – not just with my kids, but to have fun for myself.

And yes, I value that hiking, dancing, and running are all good for my heart. I love that lifting weights makes me stronger and helps to better prepare my body for the ravages of time (aka aging). I love that dancing, especially, is just as good for my brain as it is for my body. There are SO MANY health benefits to regular movement.

The thing is, most people are not like me – someone who has literally built her life and career around movement because she loves being physically active.

Lots of people would love to exercise more, but feel like they don’t have time or energy.

Access to exercise is similar to access to good health in that there are also social determinants at play. Gyms and fitness equipment can be cost prohibitive. Or, if you don’t have a car to drive to the gym, transportation-prohibitive. If you’re working several jobs just to pay the bills, getting in a workout is almost comically unrealistic. People who are disabled might have difficulty navigating exercises that are made for able-bodied people without guidance and modifications. If you are chronically ill, it likely feels impossible to exercise.

I share all of this not because it relates to my daughter or her worries about getting enough exercise but because oftentimes when health professionals talk about health, it feels as though there is a moral value placed on being physically active.

You should be exercising everyday and if you’re not, you are failing to take care of yourself. This idea is reinforced by the current administration and their insistence that good health, including physical fitness, is a personal choice that illustrates their character.

And all of this is further complicated by the reality that inaccessibility-aside, while not everyone likes moving their bodies, either for exercise or pleasure, everyone can benefit from physical activity.

You might not like it but it will benefit you if you do it. That’s what makes it tricky.

I think when all of this filters down to kids, whose brains aren’t yet fully developed, the narrative about health can become dangerous. This messaging about fitness teaches them from a young age that health and fitness is their responsibility. The institutions they are part of won’t help them by giving them the time or the space or in some cases, the access to focus on fitness, but those same institutions will also expect them to be physically fit.

Here’s what I mean by that:

What would help my kid be more physically active is not joining track after school, especially if she hates every second of it.

What would help is dedicating more time during the school day to physical activities.

Instead of PE happening infrequently, make PE daily.

Incorporate movement breaks into academic classes, which as a bonus is also great for mental stimulation.

Things need to change systemically in schools to view physical activity to be as valuable as academic subjects.

Plus, it shouldn’t be her responsibility, as a kid, to initiate physical activity. That’s something that is taught and practiced like any other skill. Daily physical activity is not something that is easy for most adults to do. If it was, more adults would be hitting those AHA recommendations for heart and general health, but over 70% are not.

As a fitness professional, I spend a lot of my time helping people figure out how to be more consistent with movement and physical fitness. There are some key things that help but of those, the ones that feel super relevant for this story are these 3:

It’s gotta be easy

Know your why

If you don’t really want to do it, you probably won’t

I’ll break it down:

If something isn’t easy, we’re unlikely to do it. Most people need a low barrier for entry, especially for something new or uncomfortable in some way.

Knowing your why is important because motivation is fickle. If you are really clear on why you’re doing something, you’re more likely to do the thing even if it feels difficult.

Lots of people think they can convince themselves to do something they don’t want to do, but it’s a lot of resistance to push against. I’m not saying people don’t succeed in this. People do. But it’s rarely healthy.

***

So how does this help my kid or anyone else’s kid who feels this weird pressure to be healthy and fit in a world that doesn’t make it convenient or accessible for them?

This is what I talked to my daughter about in the car..

Not with those exact words, but with those vibes. I said something like this:

If you don’t like running, don’t join the track team. It will feel like punishment every time and exercise shouldn’t be a punishment.

If you think you might like running if you try it or you like the idea of exercising with a group of people, one of whom is your bestie, then by all means, join the track team. If you decide you hate it, you can always stop.

Trying new ways of moving is valuable because it gives you information, but I think what’s more important is to figure out what you already like doing. You like dancing, so keep doing that. You like riding your bike, so when the weather is a little warmer, ride your bike to and from school most days of the week. Grab your rollerblades after school and skate around for a bit. Jump on your skateboard and try some new tricks. Enjoy the things you really love to do and make time for them. (At this moment she interrupted my monologue to remind me that her rollerblades no longer fit and point taken….).

The point is that there are lots of things you like to do with your body, so actively choose to do those things.

Now, it’s worth noting that you’re not going to love everything your body needs to do to be physically fit. I love lifting weights, but some days I really don’t want to do it. When it comes to fitness, you never need to do anything you genuinely don’t want to do, but usually that’s just resistance in the form of “I’d rather read my book or do this crossword puzzle or sit and watch TV.” The thing is, I really love how lifting weights makes me feel – I like being strong and confident in my body. So on those days I’m not entirely in the mood to lift weights, I usually do it anyway because I want to keep feeling strong and confident. It’s a lot easier to stop doing something than to start or restart which is why being consistent is so important. What helps me stay consistent is to remember why I’m doing the thing and how it makes me feel.

Her response to this whole speech was to say, “Thanks, mama,” then proceed to stare out the window the rest of the way home.

So maybe I went a little overboard.

But it still felt important to say.

And hopefully some of it landed.

My daughter is probably not going to join the track team, which is fine with me. I am a runner but she doesn’t have to be. She can create her own path to discover how she likes to move her body and what will work for her, but I sure as hell won’t force her to do more movement just for the sake of “physical fitness.”

I’ll help her, if and when she asks for it. But I won’t judge her for making choices that are different from mine. And I won’t pressure her or guilt trip her to add more physical activity to her life.

As an example, on Thursday night she said she was going to ride her bike to school on Friday. But when she woke up on Friday, it was colder outside than she anticipated. And she woke up late, so she didn’t have time to pump her tires.

I didn’t tell her she should do it anyway. I just reminded her that if she wants to ride her bike, she needs to start getting in the habit of pumping her tires the night before or actually getting up when her alarm goes off instead of sleeping for an extra 10 minutes.

Making her feel bad about not riding her bike is only going to build an unhealthy relationship with riding it, which I’d like to avoid. Riding her bike around town is a key to her freedom, not just physical fitness. No way am I going to take that away from her.

At the end of the day, what kids don’t need is more stress.

They don’t need the pressure that comes with the expectation of 60 minutes of exercise daily. Similarly, they don’t need to be told that there are bad foods and good foods and if they eat bad foods, they are jeopardizing their health.

Neither of these things help them. It’s just makes them anxious about what they eat and shame for not being able to do enough physical activity after school.

Asking kids to be fully in charge of their health and fitness is just another way of adultifying kids.

For what it’s worth, I also don’t think it’s helpful or healthy for parents to be their kids fitness instructor/coach either. That’s partially why I steer clear of encouraging my kids to workout. They don’t need me to coach them when they’re picking up a weight or going for a jog or making up silly yoga poses. They just need to know it’s safe to try and do those things.

If adults want kids to exercise more, they need to advocate for more physical activity in schools, integrated into programming. Not separate from the core educational subjects.

Kids deserve to be kids.

They don’t need pressure or guilt or shame around their health and built into their fitness practices. When it comes to health and access to fitness, they need support, encouragement, ease, and safety.

And they have plenty of time to learn how to build the skill of feeding themselves in a sustainable way and moving their bodies for fitness (but also, maybe joy).

***

Here are 2 more examples of how I approach physical fitness with my other 2 kids, who are younger than their sister (4th grade and 1st grade):

A few weeks ago, my son was waking up absurdly early and decided he wanted to go for a run while I walked the dog. We’d start out walking together. Then he’d take off and run for a few blocks, catching up with me at another point on my walk. He repeated this until we were a block or so from home and usually he’d walk that last block with me.

Adorably, he’d often stop at various Little Free Libraries in our neighborhood on his run and look for books for himself or his little sister, carrying his haul while he ran to catch up with me.

He managed this for a few days before he stopped waking up early.

I haven’t asked him why he’s not waking up early anymore, nor did I suggest he should be. I haven’t even mentioned those early morning walk/runs at all.

But he did join the running club at school.

Both he and his younger sister occasionally come downstairs into my basement gym when I’m working out in the morning. My son has been known to do pull-ups on my bar (or jump ups, since that’s what he’s really doing) and sit-ups on the bench. He sometimes grabs weights and lifts them, too, usually very asymmetrically, doing a lot on one side before he switches to the other side, worn out.

My youngest, who is 6, often comes downstairs and builds an obstacle course with whatever she can lift and balance on. Sometimes she’ll grab a light weight and lift it, too, pressing it over her head and squealing triumphantly when she does.

This morning she surprised me by trying to do sit-ups, like her brother.

She couldn’t do them at first, so I suggested crossing her arms in front of her chest and when she finally managed to do a sit-up, she yelled, “Mommy, look, I did it!” And then said, “I am so strong.”

my youngest on Friday morning, at the top of her first sit-up

*****

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