Plenty of exercise is essential to the proper upbringing of children. Active play and team sports are a great way to get your kid moving, but some people are suggesting that organized training should start younger than school age or even in toddlerhood. Babies as young as six months old are exercising and using fitness DVDs. Is this cutting-edge-genius or is it a classic case of good advice taken too far? Doreen Bolhuis, a fitness coach from Michigan, has created GymTrix. GymTrix provides babies and toddlers with the opportunity to develop sports-like skills through exercise DVDs.
Many professionals are against the idea of sports training for children so young. Dr. Lyle Micheli has made no secret of his disdain for the trend. He sees no benefits to subjecting such young children to exercise DVDs. He actually fears that it may produce more “overuse injury” among children. Former NBA player Bob Bigelow gives his opinion as well, saying “this is Baby Mozart stuff; you play Mozart for the baby in utero and it comes out some sort of fine arts major,” he said. “There are millions of American parents worried to death that their children might fall behind somebody else’s kid. So the emphasis in youth sports has become more, more, more, younger, younger, younger.”
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