Getting into the routine of an active lifestyle is hard — especially if you didn’t start as a kid.
By the time we become adults, our habits and routines are set. To create new ones means the mental challenge of slowly untying the old ones.
That’s why it’s important for kids to be active. Not just for their immediate benefit, but for their long-term physical — and mental — health.
It starts with finding an activity they’ll want to continue in adulthood. That’s not always basketball, volleyball, or the other traditional sports. For some — for me — the activity worth falling in love with is one that takes searching for. Takes encouraging. Takes a choice.
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It’s exciting to see movement toward that way of thinking in Winona. Jefferson Elementary’s physical education teacher Mary Cappel — a semi-finalist for the Minnesota Teacher of the Year — has made great strides in changing the teaching style most of us remember from gym class years ago.
Instead of sticking to traditional sports, her goal is to introduce kids to as many activities as she can: Zumba, snowshoeing, noncompetitive games, rock climbing. The point is there are many different ways to be active. Some you’re good at, some you’re not. Doesn’t matter, as long as you pick one.
“As long as you do something,” she said.
It took me more than a decade to find my own.
When I was younger I didn’t exercise, ate food that made me feel bad about myself, was convinced I couldn’t control my weight, hid myself in baggy clothes.
It all started with baloney sandwiches.
One summer when I was 10, I stayed at my grandma’s for a month. While she was at work I ate nothing but baloney sandwiches. I had never had them before. After adding the single-slice American processed cheese on top of white bread, I couldn’t stop. Sometimes I would eat two sandwiches in a serving — as I sat in front of the television.
The only exercise I got was walking from the fridge and back, and when I came home, I was 20 pounds heavier and started sixth grade at 165 pounds.
I didn’t know how to be healthy. I didn’t know how to lose weight or be active. I didn’t even know where to begin.
The only active kids I knew were athletic superstars — they seemed so far removed from my lifestyle that it was a fantasy to think I’d ever be like them.
Still, holding on to a glimmer of hope, I joined school sports teams.
I tried basketball, but never got to touch the ball because no one passed it to me. I was too slow and untrained. I tried volleyball, but could rarely hit the ball where I wanted to. I tried softball, at which point the pressure of everyone watching me fail taught me the wrong lesson, that I shouldn’t be in sports.
I felt like there was no room for overweight amateurs like myself. I labeled myself a failure and resigned to living with low self-esteem. The attitude caught and spiraled, and well into adulthood I wore dark, baggy clothes. I pretended it was my style. In reality I was hiding from my weight and wallowing in the thought that I would always be unhealthy.
Then, about four years ago, I found Zumba.
I had quit smoking and joined the YMCA, even though I still believed exercise would never become a part of my life.
But when I stepped into my first Zumba class, I knew I had found what I had looked so long for, an activity where I could have fun and exercise at the same time.
I danced. I sweated. I felt beautiful.
I felt less like a failure, and more like blossoming dancing queen.
I was hooked. Within a year, between Zumba and other fitness classes, I lost 30 pounds. For the first time in my life I glowed with confidence and health.
All I needed was finding that something that fit my personality. Something meant just for me. I wasn’t good at volleyball, basketball, or softball, but man, was I good at dancing to a rhythm.
Because the YMCA offered so many activities, I was able to see beyond my childhood view that exercising was all about playing traditional sports or not being active at all.
It seems so simple. It changed my life.
Knowing that Mary Cappel and other phys ed teachers are catching onto that idea, it warms my heart to know kids are being given the chance not only to hit a home run, but the chance to find an activity that hits home.
Whether it’s football, basketball, dance, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, running, or just playing together as a noncompetitive team, kids should know there is a whole world out there full of ways to be active.
To grow up in the confinements of thinking that world doesn’t exist is, quite frankly, baloney.
Date: March 14, 2016